VIDEO_TS to .vob or .iso for WDTV

[slothrob]

I'm probably just being dense, but I think I have a simple problem for which I can't find the right Mac solution.

I have non-DRM VIDEO_TS files available from DVDs I want to view on a WDTV. I've chosen not to Handbrake it, because my iBook takes 20 hours to make an .mkv.

I can simply drag the VIDEO_TS folder over to the hard disk, but that wastes a lot of space as I only want the main feature and the English soundtrack.

It see that the WIndows people use DVDShrink to quickly extract the main feature and write it to a .vob or .iso, claiming it takes about 10 minutes. I don't really own a Windows machine (I've only ever owned Macs, since the '80's) other than a 8 year old (perhaps) 800gHz pIII notebook garbage pile find.

Is there a Mac solution that would do what I want, or should I see if I can run DVDShrink on that old Windows notebook?

 

[alexbates]

Try putting your movies in a different format or get a later version of handbrake. Do you mean .mov instead of .mkv? If not, try the .mov format.

 

[slothrob]

.mkv it's not really much different than .mov, I don't think. Just a different container for a H.264 file.

I've tried a number of different Handbrake settings and target formats. I think the shortest time I had was 14 hours. I'm using Handbrake 0.9.1, which is the most recent version that will work on my Mac.

 

[Alrescha]

It see that the WIndows people use DVDShrink to quickly extract the main feature and write it to a .vob or .iso, claiming it takes about 10 minutes. I don't really own a Windows machine (I've only ever owned Macs, since the '80's) other than a 8 year old (perhaps) 800gHz pIII notebook garbage pile find.

Is there a Mac solution that would do what I want, or should I see if I can run DVDShrink on that old Windows notebook?

Toast Titanium or Popcorn from Roxio will do this, albeit without lots of control.

.mkv it's not really much different than .mov, I don't think. Just a different container for a H.264 file.

[rant]
The difference is that .mov works and is supported by many programs, and .mkv is broken and/or unsupported on every platform I've ever tried. Even VLC has serious issues with it.
[/rant]

A.

 

[slothrob]

Toast Titanium or Popcorn from Roxio will do this, albeit without lots of control.

[rant]
The difference is that .mov works and is supported by many programs, and .mkv is broken and/or unsupported on every platform I've ever tried. Even VLC has serious issues with it.
[/rant]

Thanks for the advice. I think I might have an old copy of Toast somewhere... I'll give it a try if I can find the disc.

As far as .mov and .mkv, I just meant that there isn't much difference in encoding time. The WDTV supports both, but I believe more features are enabled for the .mkv files, which makes them slightly more desirable for that application.

 

[TheZA]

You could use the latest edition of DVD2OneX (DTOX) which will allow to select just the main feature and it will also give you the ability to have just a single vob output designed to be played on things like WDTV. You can download and try out the trial for 30 days to see if you like it. It will be really fast especially if you aren't going with any compression.

Using Handbrake I've converted a few things to mkv for WDTV, which is nice because it has chapter support for mkv. However I find it difficult/impossible to edit the metadata for mkv or mov files, mostly thumbnails. Therefore I've been going to mp4. With the skip ahead I don't miss chapter support that much, but hope that WD will add that for mp4 in the future.

 

[slothrob]

I've tried MTR, to get film only versions, and get beautiful .m2v video in about the time of the film. I end up with a separate .AC3 file, though. The WDTV will play the video, or the sound file, but doesn't play the two together. Any idea how to link the two?

MTR seems to get thrown by bad sectors on a lot of material, as well.

I might try the DVD2OneX, but $50 is a little steep for me at the moment, unless I can't get any of the freeware tools to work.

 

[kolax]

It's your iBook's specs that are letting you down. People who can do this in 10 minutes on a Windows machine have powerful specs compared to what you have. Video encoding requires an enormous amount of CPU power, and 20 hours sounds about right for your iBook, and software isn't really going to make much of an improvement.

 

[slothrob]

I understand that software isn't going to change the time to convert, and conversion takes way too long. That's why I'm looking at just extracting the VIDEO_TS, .vob or .m2v files, which takes 10% of the time. I just haven't figured out how to get fully functional files yet.

EDIT: Any idea how to recombine the extracted .m2v and .ac3 files into a simultaneous playable file?

 

[Corisco]

New In Video - Video_ts

Hi all, I've got a dvd with VIDEO_TS + files. I've tried opening DVD Player > Open DVD and a message "There is a problem opening the media - The media type is not supported" I would like to watch and re-edit this dvd... Any idea on how to proceed? Many many thanks

 

[Shiner]

Hi all, I've got a dvd with VIDEO_TS + files. I've tried opening DVD Player > Open DVD and a message "There is a problem opening the media - The media type is not supported" I would like to watch and re-edit this dvd... Any idea on how to proceed? Many many thanks

When I first started I made this mistake. Open video file not DVD. It will work.

Hmmm I don't see that option in snow leopard.