Hello!
I have a collection of dvd's,
both movies and TV, which I am struggling to get to work with XBMC.
I have done this but to no success:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...t=video_ts
I thought would just ask for the best way to get my dvd's onto my pc for XBMC without the loss of quality?
(I am running ubuntu on a revo)
Many thanks!
Aaron.
Firstly, you need to strip the DRM from the DVDs. On windows, I use DVDShrink (I think there is a xDVDShrink for Unbuntu but no idea how well this works). DVDShrink creates a Video_TS folder for your DVD. For movies, you could just add this to your library but I am not sure how it would work for TV Shows (as there is normaly more than one episode on a disc ther might be issues with scrapping - the post you link to should help with that).
However, using Video_TS will launch the menu from the DVD, which to me seems redundant. If you want to click on the item in xbmc and have it play the video straight away, then you should probably convert the video to some other format. I use handbrake to do this (there is a version for Unbuntu but I am not sure if it has a GUI). This will also allow you to rip each episode of a TV show to seperate files. Handbrake is not the most user-friendly program (there are a lot of settings) but if you can get your head around it, it will convert your video without a loss of quality.
To dump the DVD straight to an mkv container (best quality), I'd go with MakeMKV. Takes around 10-15 minutes per DVD. Longer for BD.
To transcode the MPEG-2 video on the DVD to H.264 (you can get quality that is indistinguishable from the DVD with much less file size), use Handbrake and its "High Profile" preset. That will get you close to DVD quality with each movie between 1.8 and 2.5GB depending on the length and scene complexity. Each DVD will take about 2-4 hours to transcode. If you aren't overly worried about file size, then there some handbrake presets which sacrifice a chunk of space but get marginally better image quality. Worth it, in my opinion. PM me if you want it.