Most Compatible Format for SD DVD Rips?

[BrianG 11]

I have my whole library of DVDs ripped to ISO. But when playing many of them back, Emby understandably needs transcoding to certain devices (mostly mobile), but my "server" is a lowly i3 CPU so transcoding one movie at a time is about all it can handle. In a house with different family members wanting to watch different things, it becomes difficult. So, I started encoding all of the ISO rips to high-quality MP4, but it's taking a loooong time and is limiting me to 2 channels.

 

Not to mention backup up movies will be a pain. I currently have two 3TB drives for ISO rips on Emby, with two backup 3TB drives for each - the backup drives are hot-swap via a quick remove caddy. So, that's 6 drives in all for ISOs. If I want to keep the original ISOs AND back up the MP4 versions, it's going to take a lot of drives. Yeah, storage is cheap, but swapping drives becomes a pain.

 

Is there some "magical" format that offers non-transcoding playback to all devices, while retaining things like 5.1ch audio?

 

FYI; I generally use DVDFab to rip the DVDs (movie only, no menus, special features, etc), then just copy the resulting ISO to the proper location on the Emby server.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

Rip to MKV, can keep the audio, subtitle, and video tracks intact and greatly increase compatibility.  I do mp4 which is even wider compatibility but mkv is a solid choice.

[BrianG 11]

I thought mkv was simply a wrapper? Wouldn't that be irrelevant if the video inside the mkv can't be played if the device doesn't support it? Even so, it sounds like mp4 is still my best bet for transcode-less compatibility.

 

I'll just have to live with only 2 channels, which really isn't terribly important since we mostly view movies on mobile devices or use headphones on a PC. It just would be nice to retain 5.1ch audio if we ever get a surround system.

[ebr 14972]

mkv or mp4 with h.264 video and aac audio.  The audio can be 5.1.

[BrianG 11]

mkv or mp4 with h.264 video and aac audio.  The audio can be 5.1.

 

Ok, that's what I'm doing (I think). I'm using Vidcoder as Handbrake doesn't seem to like processing batch DVD ISO files. Attached are the screenshots I am using for video and audio settings. I have a sinking feeling that in the "Mixdown" box, I should have chosen "5.1 Channels" instead of "Dolby Pro Logic II". I had created a custom profile and adjusted some settings I found from various threads here and elsewhere, but didn't deviate from the default setting for the audio.

 

In your opinion, what MP4 settings should I have chosen for transcode-less maximum compatibility across mobile (Android mostly) and PC usage, while still retaining the original number of channels?

Edited August 16, 2015 by BrianG

[Deathsquirrel 741]

I generally do MP4 with the best original audio track and an AAC copy of that same track at the max bitrate handbrake supports for that number of channels.  If the best audio is TrueHD or PCM the I have to do MKV instead as handbrake can't embed those in an MP4.

[BrianG 11]

I generally do MP4 with the best original audio track and an AAC copy of that same track at the max bitrate handbrake supports for that number of channels.  If the best audio is TrueHD or PCM the I have to do MKV instead as handbrake can't embed those in an MP4.

 

So, does this mean that I have to pick an encoding profile for each specific DVD since the audio can be different? If so, that's not going to work as I don't have time to sit and customize each encoding for 900+ movies individually. Also, support for mkv is not quite as wide as mp4, at least that's what I've been reading.

 

I'm not all that concerned with TrueHD or PCM audio - I figure for those cases, downgrading to something less will be fine. Most of my library is standard DVD for casual viewing. The main goal is wide compatibility for transcode-less playback, yet retain multichannels with a fallback to 2ch if needed. What setting in vidcoder (attachment in original post) will do this? I am using AAC codec, but not sure about the settings for bitrate, mixdown, sample rate, etc.

[Deathsquirrel 741]

So, does this mean that I have to pick an encoding profile for each specific DVD since the audio can be different? If so, that's not going to work as I don't have time to sit and customize each encoding for 900+ movies individually. Also, support for mkv is not quite as wide as mp4, at least that's what I've been reading.

 

I'm not all that concerned with TrueHD or PCM audio - I figure for those cases, downgrading to something less will be fine. Most of my library is standard DVD for casual viewing. The main goal is wide compatibility for transcode-less playback, yet retain multichannels with a fallback to 2ch if needed. What setting in vidcoder (attachment in original post) will do this? I am using AAC codec, but not sure about the settings for bitrate, mixdown, sample rate, etc.

 

You'll really need to play with the settings yourself and decide what you find acceptable if you choose to reencode.  With MKV it's easier as you aren't reencoding, just changing the container.

[BrianG 11]

Thanks for the input!

 

All this is because of the move to Windows10. With MediaBrowser on WMC, movies would simply play no problem as ISO (using Daemon Tools for ISO mounting). For Android, I was able to access the file share directly using something like ES File Explorer and then using MX Player to play the DVD directly from the ISO. I never had any luck with Media Browser Theater in Windows; the video always looked grainy, required transcoding for anything, and the timeline bar when playing the movie never let me fast-forward or rewind.

 

Now that WMC is no longer available on Win10, I decided to basically start over and make it so every device can use a similar interface (makes the system wife-friendly   ). To that end, converting all the videos to MP4 seemed like a logical step. I got about half my library converted before I thought about possible shortcomings of MP4 (aside from the ~30 minutes per movie it takes to convert).

 

I've been playing around with the Emby native apps for Android and Win10. So far, the web interface for Emby seems to be the best method to access everything. The Emby app for Win10 gives me some error about not being able to play some movie files (as MP4). The Android app seems to crash often (using a Nexus 7). But the Emby web interface is actually better than the native apps oddly enough - and works on Android just as well as PC when viewed in Chrome. Also, while messing around with the web interface earlier today, I noticed I was able to select alternate audio tracks in the MP4s I created; the 2ch audio appears to be the default choice, but there is usually a multi-channel option available. So it looks like my concerns about missing those channels is unfounded.