Kodi Community Forum

I thought this may be helpful to some people.

http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=22619

This is from a guy named StephenB on the Netgear forums (for the Digital Entertainer HD, or EVA-8000). It details how to make high-quality encodes that will play flawlessly on the Netgear player, with batch files to make it as painless as possible. Newer versions will transcode m2ts as well.

Read the whole thread. (it's only 2 pages)

Unfortunately, forum registration is required (they don't want people downloading the beta firmwares unless they register).

Make sure to look down to around post 30 and on, where he posts the contents of the corrected "batch" files he made using the "code" function.

If you don't want to read the forum post and just want to play around, the tools and batch files are available in one package here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/109582925/EV...2.zip.html

Using XBMC and the right hardware, we should be able to encode at higher bitrates and get even better results.

Hope this helps someone.

-Wes

more info, if you decided to just download the tools and play around:

First of all, there is a readme.pdf in the EVO2EVA folder, so, um... read that.

The "2eva" nomenclature refers to making these file at a bitrate playable on Netgear's EVA-8000 Digital Entertainer.
(so we can safely ignore it )

These tools give us a choice to transcode BluRay or HD DVD to either xVid or h.264, if you run ALL2EVA.bat.


So, basically, you should read the readme, install these tools, and run ALL2EVA in order for the magic to happen.

StephenB, Netgear Forums Wrote:(a) BLU2EVA.BAT added, and integrated with ALL2EVA.

(b) F264.BAT added (fast x264 encoding), and is the default video codec.
On a 2-core machine, the encoding speed is about the same as xvid.bat, but with higher quality. If you can afford a 30% increase in encoding time, there is a commented-out mencoder call in f264.bat which improves the quality by about 1 mb\s. X264.bat is (of course) higher quality still, but takes much longer to encode.

© Batch files now support the new EAC3TO track file names. The old file names are supported as well.

(d) If MKV2VFR fails to convert Video.mkv to Video.avi, re-attempt the conversion with mkvextract and (if that fails) with mencoder. This allows mpg2 media to be successfully converted.

(e) Tools in the zip were updated to most recent version

(f) TsRemux and TsMuxer added to distribution zip (they are not used by the batch files, but are good useful for demuxing problematic .ts and .m2ts files).

I gather this all runs under windows? Would be nice to have something like this that can run on the Linux XBMC box

Hrm, this is probably a bit OT for this forum however if you check the link in my sig you'll see how I'm encoding. I've gotten pretty good at it!

The reason why so much of this is Windows based is Slysoft's AnyDVD which can decrypt HD-DVD and BD disks including BD+ encrypted crap. So far as I know this is MUCH harder on Linux and Ubuntu 7.10 doesn't even support UDF 2.5 which is the disk format for HD-DVD and BD. Does 8.04? At one point they quashed discussion of this from the Ubuntu Wiki too.

I notice that they are redistributing Madhsi's eac3to, that version is a rev old and has at least one bug that I've reported - he might not approve. He can be reached on the Doom9 forums and deserves MUCH props for his work!

Frankly? It's really not hard to rip and encode these movies. AnyDVD, eac3to, Haali, ffMPEG, AVIsynth, Graphedit, and meGUI are all that's needed to do this. You do not even HAVE to use Graphedit or AVIsynth but I do. I encode at an 11meg bitrate and XBMC crunches it just fine.

I'm VERY happy to help people sort this stuff out but please hit me up on the Slysoft or Doom9 forums where this is already heavily discussed. I've ripped like 25+ HD movies, mostly the easier HD-DVD but some PITA BD too so I've got the process down pretty good. Seamless branching BD are a problem however but usually someone else has already figured out the file order.

BLKMGK Wrote:Hrm, this is probably a bit OT for this forum however if you check the link in my sig you'll see how I'm encoding. I've gotten pretty good at it!

Yeah, I really didn't know where to post it, but wanted to be helpful. Perhaps another forum altogether would have been more prudent...

Many of those tools are available for Linux as well.

As far as credit goes, I think the script author gives credit to all of the program creators, and includes full legal docs and readme stuff.

[QUOTE=BLKMGK][
It's really not hard to rip and encode these movies. AnyDVD, eac3to, Haali, ffMPEG, AVIsynth, Graphedit, and meGUI are all that's needed to do this.
/QUOTE]

That sounds pretty daunting to me, using eac3to, Haali, and ffMPEG, especially via command line. There are a plethora of options that boggles the mind.

I just like this because it's a simple script where you put in the numbers and out pops a file.

Anyway, Sorry if this was too off-topic.

-Wes

Haali and ffMPRG sre install and forget tools. eac3to has a GUI but it's easier to use a commandline and you use teh same options each time. <shrug>

Hi waldo22, I like to thank you for sharing this useful package of tools.
It helped me a lot to get my old hd-dvd discs to played on my xbmc instead of on my xbox. (see i even created an account just to post this )

Now I see that there is some bugs still in the script, namely "vcpy.bat". Do you have an updated version at all?

Glad to have helped!

I didn't write these scripts, a guy named StephenB on Netgear's forums did.

Check the end of this thread here:

http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=22619

If there are updates, they will be there. (you have to register for this forum)

StephenB updates the batch files that control these tools (the ones that BLKMGK mentions), but the tools themselves are all open-source and freely available, so you should be able to grab the latest versions of those from their respective websites.

-Wes