The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The zune and the putting of video on it
Shogun
Hair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered User regular
Hair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered User regular
I have a Zune. After much fighting with Windows over service packs and updates I have the zune synced with my music. I am now interested in loading some video on there. The idea is short stuff such as adult swim shows such as ATFH, Sea Lab, Space Ghost, etc etc. 11 minutes per episode means quick entertainment. I have all this crap on DVD and I need to figure out how to get it on my pc, converted, and then on to the zune. I've already spent a couple hours googling and my trail has gone cold. Some expertise would really be appreciated.
Shogun on
0
Posts
1. Can I post/link to software for decrypting a dvd
2. Can I mention the name of software (that rips/decrypts) or what to do/how to use it
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
that'd be great
Shogun Streams Vidya
Ok, i'll do that tomorrow though now. I'm on UK time here and it's time for bed, i'll type it up tomorrow. I'll even throw in a video example.
My guide will cover: DGMPGDec (formerly known as dvd2avi), vfapi and Windows Media Encoder. And maybe dvd decrypting if a mod allows it.
BTW, if someone gets in with a guide before me. Windows Media Encoder is the best encoder to use for WMV encoding.
Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile is the best WMV format to use, however that's more processor intensive (both encoding and decoding) than standard WMV9 so you may want to stick to normal WMV9 if you're concerned about battery life.
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Shogun Streams Vidya
BTW, what format did you rip your cd's to? WMA or MP3?
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Windows Media Encoder
DGIndex (download is here)
BeLight (rather than linking to a site for belight, besweet and all the requisite programs i've amassed them all into a single download for you.. belight is just a frontend to a bunch of programs)
Vfapi
===============================================================================
This post will be edited with more information as it progresses, mostly because I don't want to type it all out in one go.
===============================================================================
This assumes the person doing the encoding has ripped their dvd and demuxed the mpeg-2 video and ac3 to seperate files (with file splitting disabled).
1. Basic Installation.
* Install Windows media encoder.
* Decompress DGIndex, BeLight and Vfapi to their own directories. I highly recommend creating a directory called Encoding in C:\Program Files and putting each program in their own directory.
* When the programs are in their directories go into the Vfapi (VFAPICodecV105) directory and double click on vifpset.bat, this will register the vfapi codec. (this will be explained later)
2. Preparation before the main video encoding.
* DGIndex
Start it up, at first you'll have a blank window like this:
What we're going to do here is tell it to index the video, what this does (basically) is write a file with general information about the (mpeg-2) video itself.
This is required for the next step (vfapi).
To do this, do the following:
1. Go to the DGIndex menu, select File and then select Open.
2. Browse to the location where the m2v (MPEG-2 Video) file is located and select it.
3. You will now have a window which has a listview with the buttons ADD, UP, DOWN, DEL, DEL ALL & OK
4. Assuming you have extracted the .m2v file to a single file click OK. (as shown in the picture below)
You will now notice you can view the video by moving the index location (button thing at the bottom of the window).
5. Go to the DGIndex menu, select File and select Save Project, save it (use a name memorable to you, like say ATHF S01E01). This will take a few seconds to a few minutes depending on the speed of your processor and hard drive. It will inform you when it's done.
6. Close DGIndex when it's finished indexing.
* Vfapi
I've always found vfapi to be pretty darn cool.
So, what is it? *cough* (if nobody gets this with the above image so help me I will kill)
It's a frame server, it uses the information from the indexed file created by DGIndex and loads the mpeg-2 video on the fly and then serves it to any program that can open an .avi file. (which is just about everything)
For example, you can open an vfapi .avi file in windows media player and enjoy it. (no sound, it only frame serves video.. however, it was really designed to serve video to programs like windows media encoder, virtualdub etc)
Creating frame served video:
1. Open VFAPIConv.exe, you will be presented with a fairly simple and easy to use program. You have the selections Add Job, Delete job, Convert (this will be greyed out) and Exit. (vfapi pic 1)
2. Click on Add Job.
3. Browse to the location where you saved the indexed file (hopefully you saved this to the same location as the m2v file) and select the .d2v file, for example "ATHF S01E01.d2v".
4. A new window will open (vfapi pic 2), accept the defaults by selecting OK.
5. It will now look somewhat similar to VFAPI Pic 1 except you will notice the Convert button is no longer greyed out and there is some text inside the window.
6. Click convert, once it's finished click Exit. (the conversion takes a few seconds)
VFAPI Pic 1:
VFAPI Pic 2:
3. Converting the audio.
BeLight is the front-end to a bunch of programs that are capable of resampling and converting to and from various sound formats.
It's the easier to use equivalent front-end of Besweet which is slightly notorious for the mass of options.
On first load you'll be presented with this window:
For this guide we'll be leaving all the options alone and simply converting the audio to a 44.1kHz Stereo WAV file.
Therefore, do the following:
1. Go to the menu, select File and then Open..., select the AC3 file that you have.
2. If it's happy with the file select Start Processing
3. Be patient, it will take a few minutes to convert the AC3 audio file to a WAV file. (depending on processor speed)
4. Once done close BeLight, it will have saved the WAV file to the same location as the AC3 file.
4. Encoding the video. (the long bit)
This is where you'll need your patience, it takes time to encode video.
First we'll need to set all the encoding options before we even begin.
Start Windows Media Encoder and immediately go to the menu.
Select Tools then Options.... The options window will now open, select the Performance tab and ensure that the When encoding to a file slider is at Better Quality. This is very important, especially when using lower bitrates. Make sure to also click Apply to all new sessions. When Broadcasting can be ignored unless you plan to encode video on the fly.
What is it? Essentially it tells the encoder how thorough to be for things like detecting movement and so forth when encoding to the file. The downside is that it makes it longer to encode video, the upside is it delivers better quality video and doesn't affect decoder performance.
5. Possible issues and problems you may face.
* Video/Audio bitrate may be too high for the Zune
* Aspect ratio
* Interlaced video
* Some video may require cropping (black bars on side of screen on some 4:3 aspect ratio video and horizontal black bars at the top and bottom of 16:9 video)
Addendum
Download this short 35 second video and see if it plays ok on your Zune. This will give me an idea of the capabilities so when I write the encoding bit what kind of bitrates etc you should be aiming for.
For say a 10 minute video, what file size do you want?
Here is a video of me doing all of the above to encode a 35 second clip. (download it rather than watch it in a browser window)
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.