I've been reading through the various threads here and on other forums that discuss how to back up HD movies onto the hard drive but no-one seems to be doing what I'm looking for.
Why is it that everyone ends up with a complex array of multiple files that are only playable using specialized players such as Nero?
With regular DVDs, Media Center and all other basic HTPC software can play them, including from the hard disk once backed up. By playing the DVDs from the hard drive, my 6 year old isn't destroying the DVDs or making a mess with DVDs all over the place.
Core HTPC software can also play back all regular unprotected HD formats, including high definition .mpg, avi, dvr-ms, wmv, etc. Unfortunately none of the core HTPC software can play back HD-DVD or Blue-ray, even if unprotected and backed up on the hard drive. In order to play these HD disks we currently use the not very well integrated (into Media Center) PowerDVD Utra (not to mention sometimes PowerDVD screws up when my wife or children are using it). This is what I want to work around and I want to be able to play these HD movies using the core HTPC software, not PowerDVD or Nero.
Here is what I want to do with some of our collection, especially our children's movies:
- Just the core, basic movie in a single file
- No multi-angle views or any of these special features
- No extras
- Full 1920x1080 resolution
- No loss in video quality
- No change to the video compression format (VC-1 stays as VC-1, mpeg-2 stays as mpeg-2, etc.)
- High quality 6-channel audio
- Doesn't need more than one audio track as long as 6-channels are included and in english
- DTS, DD5.1 or 6-channel discrete would be fine
- Doesn't matter what container (AVI, MKV, dvr-ms, etc.) is used as long as standard DirectShow filters are available
- Ideally a very standard, common container/file type would be used (like AVI, mpg, etc.)
Do any of you have any links to "how to's" to make this happen?
Is there any software out there that can do this job all on its own?
The other thing I'd like to be able to do is burn the movies to regular DVD for our road trip this summer (driving coast to coast). What we prefer to do for long drives is use Nero to burn DVDs using a resolution of the car's 2 DVD players (352x240) and fit as many movies as we can on a single DVD-9 (we typically can squeeze 15-18 hours per DVD with "good enough" quality so we aren't changing DVDs very often). This means that the container/file type/codec needs to be compatible with Nero (I'm not sure MKV is).
Why is it that everyone ends up with a complex array of multiple files that are only playable using specialized players such as Nero?
With regular DVDs, Media Center and all other basic HTPC software can play them, including from the hard disk once backed up. By playing the DVDs from the hard drive, my 6 year old isn't destroying the DVDs or making a mess with DVDs all over the place.
Core HTPC software can also play back all regular unprotected HD formats, including high definition .mpg, avi, dvr-ms, wmv, etc. Unfortunately none of the core HTPC software can play back HD-DVD or Blue-ray, even if unprotected and backed up on the hard drive. In order to play these HD disks we currently use the not very well integrated (into Media Center) PowerDVD Utra (not to mention sometimes PowerDVD screws up when my wife or children are using it). This is what I want to work around and I want to be able to play these HD movies using the core HTPC software, not PowerDVD or Nero.
Here is what I want to do with some of our collection, especially our children's movies:
- Just the core, basic movie in a single file
- No multi-angle views or any of these special features
- No extras
- Full 1920x1080 resolution
- No loss in video quality
- No change to the video compression format (VC-1 stays as VC-1, mpeg-2 stays as mpeg-2, etc.)
- High quality 6-channel audio
- Doesn't need more than one audio track as long as 6-channels are included and in english
- DTS, DD5.1 or 6-channel discrete would be fine
- Doesn't matter what container (AVI, MKV, dvr-ms, etc.) is used as long as standard DirectShow filters are available
- Ideally a very standard, common container/file type would be used (like AVI, mpg, etc.)
Do any of you have any links to "how to's" to make this happen?
Is there any software out there that can do this job all on its own?
The other thing I'd like to be able to do is burn the movies to regular DVD for our road trip this summer (driving coast to coast). What we prefer to do for long drives is use Nero to burn DVDs using a resolution of the car's 2 DVD players (352x240) and fit as many movies as we can on a single DVD-9 (we typically can squeeze 15-18 hours per DVD with "good enough" quality so we aren't changing DVDs very often). This means that the container/file type/codec needs to be compatible with Nero (I'm not sure MKV is).