[JulyJulyJuly]

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to get some of my dvd tv show box sets to stream to XBMC with commentary but nothing's working quite right.

Right now my process is: convert DVD to vob using dvdshrink, then using handbrake or autogk to convert to mkv or mp4. However, the hbrake files stutter (even when I play them directly) and autogk takes forever (like, hours) for even a half hour show to encode.

Another issue I'm having is that the video_ts folder has a bunch of vobs and I'm not sure which ones are the actual episodes, but this may just be an issue of trial and error, or encoding everything and deleting the ones which aren't videos.

Anyway, in conclusion: Is there an easy process that retains commentaries which can be played through XBMC? Keep in mind that I have lots of episodes of lots of shows so a process that can be automated as much as possible would be best. Many thanks for all your help,

J

[Prof Yaffle]

By "commentary", you mean the director/cast audio track, yes?

Look in DVDShrink, you should see different audio tracks - normal, different languages, commentary, audio described, etc. If you don't know which is which (and playing the file in mplayer or VLC will tell you), keep them all and you can then select the audio track when playing back in XBMC,

Encoding always takes a while, especially if you're going to H.264 - it's very processor-intensive, so anything less than an i5 will take some time (and a full HD rip could still take 8 hours then). Do it on an Atom and you'll be there forever...

If you want to stay with DVDshrink, look for Ripit4me - that's pretty good at finding the right tracks (i.e. the longest), although you may also still have to process it in DVDshrink separately to pull episodes out. Or look at DVDfab for the rip at least - your choice on the recode, depends on whether you want MPEG2 or not.

[nickr]

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to get some of my dvd tv show box sets to stream to XBMC with commentary but nothing's working quite right.

Right now my process is: convert DVD to vob using dvdshrink, then using handbrake or autogk to convert to mkv or mp4. However, the hbrake files stutter (even when I play them directly) and autogk takes forever (like, hours) for even a half hour show to encode.

Another issue I'm having is that the video_ts folder has a bunch of vobs and I'm not sure which ones are the actual episodes, but this may just be an issue of trial and error, or encoding everything and deleting the ones which aren't videos.

Anyway, in conclusion: Is there an easy process that retains commentaries which can be played through XBMC? Keep in mind that I have lots of episodes of lots of shows so a process that can be automated as much as possible would be best. Many thanks for all your help,

J

Try makemkv. It lets you choose the audio tracks. Quick too as no transcoding, only packing into mkv.

Disadvantages? Not open source, produces larger files