Recommended ISO rip method for best results on Roku 3

[davidmcgill 2]

I am getting mixed results loading ISO images on Media Browser on my Roku 3 (I suppose that's "as expected", from what I've read in the other forum postings) - some ISO's will load and play, others will come up in certain chapters and only play a short amount (maybe one chapter) of the movie, others will appear to load then the app will close/crash and go back to the main Roku menu. I have not done any debugging or log collecting at this point. Also, some movies don't even have the option to click "Play" - just "Back". 

 

My question: Has anyone found one particular method of ripping the ISO gives them better results on Roku? I have no problems loading any of my movies using MBC or MBT. I just got the Roku 3 and I'm enjoying it - hopefully I will have some time in the next few weeks to test more myself.

 

My ISO rips: I currently use AnyDVD with CloneDVD2, do a full "Clone DVD" rip of the DVD and preserve menus... the kids like having the "extras" otherwise I would just rip the movie straight with no menus. I typically remove any foreign language subtitles and audio streams, leave english checked, and do a full DVD DL rip to a single .ISO image. Nothing too special/different.

 

Thanks.

[Tikuf 663]

Firstly what roku version are you using?

Have you tried a force refresh (from the dash) on one of the items that crashed?

 

Can you please provide server logs (in debug) and a transcode log for an item that crashed if force refresh doesn't change the behavior.

 

TIA

[davidmcgill 2]

I did do a refresh, but I could only find "Refresh All", not on a single item. Didn't help for the crashing, but it did seem to help with adding a "Play" button on all of the other titles, so that did help in this situation.

 

What I ended up doing was to do a re-rip (removing all menus, previews, etc., just keeping the main film) of the title that was crashing... It appears that removing all extraneous items from the ISO image improves the success rate of playing movies on Roku. That movie started right up and played nicely. I will be testing other titles. And I will launch the other title which crashed, using Debug mode. Just haven't gotten to that yet.

 

I have observed that when I bring up an ISO on Roku 3 (4200R, btw, updated with the latest software), it seems to play thru all the vob files in quick succession (such as preview VOB's, behind the scenes, etc.) and then it starts the movie, but in some cases, the audio is completely off from the video. My thought on the crashing DVD is that one of those VOB's wasn't playing nice, and was crashing out before it could even load the menu. I will test it again tonight and post the logs, so maybe we can learn something.  I have noticed that Roku 3 doesn't seem to load DVD's in the same manner as MBC, where you cannot toggle thru the DVD menu using the buttons, to choose Play, Scenes, etc., so taking all the extraneous material out just makes sense in this case.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1151]

I use MakeMKV due to the Roku. Not an ISO rip method but most of my stuff only transcodes subtitles which isn't very strenuous at all. Can even direct play most HD files.

[ebr 15584]

Recommended rip method for ISOs?

 

Don't rip to ISOs .

 

I know, not what you are asking for but, really, there isn't a lot of reason to use the ISO format.  You can maintain everything except the menus with file formats and you can even keep the menus (on players that support them) by going to a file structure instead of an ISO.  Doing that avoids the extra step needed to mount an ISO which eliminates more software and other potential problems.

 

But, one thing to understand is the Roku doesn't know how to play DVDs or BDs whether in ISO or any other format.  It is a streaming device and these disc formats do not stream.  So, the server is transcoding these for you on the fly into a format the Roku can play and, again, with ISOs this can be tricky.

[davidmcgill 2]

You guys make great points. Thanks for the ideas.

[davidmcgill 2]

Trying out MakeMKV, so far so good. I think I need to refine the settings... Wayne Luke, I am guessing you only rip the main title - it made a bunch of Title#.mkv files. 

[Koleckai Silvestri 1151]

Usually only pull the main title. I rename it during save.

 

If I pull multiple I get the title_xx files and go through them with VLC for renaming.helpful for series or entertaining shorts.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Wayne Luke

[davidmcgill 2]

I noticed that there is some compression going on between the media server and Roku - if I play the mkv file from my MBC (computer) the picture looks like the DVD, but if I play the same file over Roku MB the picture has that compressed look... have it set for maximum quality and set it to 20mb. Is this just a "feature" of playing stuff thru the Roku?

[gcw07 347]

Assuming it is transcoding and it probably is if it was a DVD (those are mainly mpeg2video files compared to blu-rays that are h264), you may notice some compression.

 

Remember MBC is basically just playing the file directly compared to having to transcode the file.

[soeasy 0]

What video formats supported by Roku 3 are  H.264 MPEG-4 certain common ones, like .mp4 and .mkv.  It is possible to convert DVD movie to video for streaming with Roku 3.

 

I find a tutorial on it, hope it would be helpful:

http://www.dvdsmith.com/rip-dvd/stream-dvd-movie-to-tv-with-roku-3.html

[TracyLay 0]

There is one more thing you need to know: Roku 3 features a USB Media Player Channel to let you stream local video collection to HDTV. How about ISO image files? What video formats supported by Roku streaming box are only some common ones of H.264 MPEG-4, such as .mp4. Obviously, all DVD ISO movies do not conform it. In other word, change ISO files to video in .mp4 format should be a priority for streaming it to Roku 3 with Emby. Hivimoore DVD Ripper will rip any DVD ISO files to conventional videos to let you stream for Roku 3 USB channel.