DVD to MPEG2-TS Ripper for Linux

martin@wimpress.com (Martin Wimpress) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:53:58 +0000

A while back I released a script that rips a DVD to MPEG-2 PS allowing the user to select one audio stream and one subtitle stream. Optionally the video can be requantised, using M2VRequantiser and an ISO image created. If creating an ISO image the chapters are also preserved from the original DVD. You can see the original post below.

DVD to MPEG-2 PS Ripper for Linux

I’ve just released an update to that original script which fixes subtitles in the original MPEG-2 PS mode but now adds the capability to rip MPEG-2 TS. The video stream can still be shrunk and in MPEG-2 PS mode the video is still requantised but in MPEG-2 TS mode the video is re-encoded as H.264.

Requantising is faster but can introduce artifacting. H.264 encoding is slower, but produces very good quality. I am currently re-importing my entire DVD collection, using this script, to my DLNA server using MPEG-2 TS and re-encoding the video to H.264. This gives me high quality rips at relatively small size (~3Gb) whilst preserving Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Perfect for playback via DLNA on the PS3. Some things to be aware of:

Subtitles are only supported in MPEG-2 PS mode.
MPEG-2 PS files created by this script are DVD compliant.
ISO files created by this script will preserve the chapters from the original DVD.
The PS3 can only play DTS audio in MPEG-2 PS streams when they have been authored to DVD.
The PS3 can only play subtitles in MPEG-2 PS streams when they have been authored to DVD.
The PS3 can’t play DTS audio in MPEG-2 TS streams therefore this script will transcode DTS to AC3 when in MPEG-2 TS mode.

To download the script and find out how to make full use of it visit the release page below.

DVD-to-MPG

MKV to MPEG-4 conversion script

martin@wimpress.com (Martin Wimpress) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:48:58 +0000

The PlayStation 3 can’t play MKV files. Therefore I’ve written a script that creates a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 compatible MPEG-4 from Matroska providing the video is H.264 and audio is AC3 or DTS.

Xbox 360 compatibility requires that audio is forcibly downmixed to stereo with --stereo. AAC 5.1 audio will have the correct channel assignments when transcoding from AC3 5.1 and DTS 5.1. If neroAacEnc is installed then it is used in preference to faac for encoding the AAC audio, as it produces better quality output. neroAacEnc is optional.

The script does as little re-encoding as possible, only the audio and subtitles are re-encoded or converted. The script can detect profile 5.1 H.264 and patch it to 4.1 in under a second. Any subtitles in the Matroska are preserved. If mp4creator is used the subtitles are extracted stored in a seperate file. If MP4Box is used (default) the subtitles are converted to GPAC Timed Text and muxed into the resulting MPEG-4. The PlayStation 3 can’t display these subtitles but some software players can.

The script can optionally split the Matroska if it is greater than 4GB to ensure PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and FAT32 compatibility. This script works on Ubuntu and should work on any other Linux/Unix flavour and possibly Mac OS X providing you have the required tools installed.

MKV-to-MP4

H.264 on Wimpy's World

DVD to MPEG2-TS Ripper for Linux

MKV to MPEG-4 conversion script