Using DVD Shrink, Media Center Links and Media Center Master I am able to see my DVD's and art on my Xbox360 DVD Library.

I have almost given up on getting any other metadata to show up in the DVD Library though. I can see all metadata in the VMC just not through the Xbox360 DVD library.

I guess I Should just be happy with the DVD cover art......... The main reason why I want the other metadata to show is so I can block my son from seeing movies that he shouldn't be watching (if that is even possible), not sure if I can get profile specific on Xbox360 like i can on games or not.

Besides adding specific movies to the 2nd Xbox, I wanted to know if anyone had any other ideas about how to block certain movies where the content is not suitable for younger kids? Just in case he used the xbox upstairs?

Here you go, I finally figured it out

Vista Media Center, Xbox 360 and Full Metadata
No Quality Loss using only 2 Programs

System
Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition w/ SP1 (fresh image)

DVD shrink

My Movies

I haven’t installed any other updates at this point

First I installed My Movies v2.54 for my particular machine (64-bit)

-Under the Start button there will be a My Movies folder and under that, you should see Collection Management. Place a shortcut on your desktop for CM.

Install DVD Shrink 3.2

Then I setup the Media Center (fresh install).

Check to see that you have a My Movies link showing on your Xbox 360.

Not sure if it will work if you setup Media Center then install My Movies, I am sure it would but I’m not redoing it to see. heheh

Setup up a folder for your Movies
Mine is d:\DVD Collection

How to burn the movie.
*** DVD shrink will not be able to decrypt all movies, but it is capable of burning about 90%.

Other programs are available like DVDfab. If you guys have any suggestions that would be great! I want something as simple as DVD Shrink if possible.

After opening DVD Shrink, click Edit then Preferences.

On the Output Files tab uncheck ‘Split VOB files into 1GB size chunks’ then click OK.

Place the DVD in the drive
At the top in the toolbar click Re-author

In the Right-hand screen Look for Main Movie. Drag and drop Title 1 to the left-hand screen.

Highlight Title 1

In the Right-hand screen select the Compression Settings. Currently at Automatic choose No Compression.

Each DVD will be around 4.5 to 6 GB.

For myself, I uncheck all Subpicture (don’t care about subtitles) check boxes and only choose AC3 5.1-ch English for the audio.

Create a folder for the Movie.

On my system it will be
D:\DVD Collection\Bad Boys II

At the top of DVD Shrink click Backup (no don’t back up…..sorry my attempt at gnome humor).

If the DVD is too large you will get an error:
The current DVD size is too big! I don’t care because I’m not burning back to a dvd.

Click Yes to continue if you get the error message

You will be asked to select a target folder. Obviously for me it would be
D:\DVD Collection\Bad Boys II

Uncheck ‘Create Video_TS and Audio_TS subfolders’

Click OK at the bottom to start ripping.

Once completed open your movie folder. You will see a nice sized .vob file with 3 or 4 other files. Delete everything but the .vob file.

If you see a lot of files then either you didn’t follow directions, or some idiot didn’t write down the directions correctly for you to follow (not sure who that could be though????) haha

Very Important** Rename the .vob to the movie name and set the extension to mpeg not mpg.

In my case I renamed the file to Bad Boys II.mpeg

My Movies Collection Management part

The program may ask you to sign up for an account (do that) and if this is what you want donate to the creators.

Open Collection Management short cut you placed on the desktop earlier.

Select the By Title tab.

In the Movie Title: block type the name you used when renaming your .vob file.

Click Search

The results will be printed on screen at the bottom. Choose the best for you

Highlight the one you want to use and select Add Online

Point it back to the folder you just created.

In My case it would be d:\DVD Collection\Bad Boys II

Then click the Add to owned for keeps button.

It may also ask if you want to update more actor info if it found it. (I always say yes).

Now you should have 3 files in your folder.
The mpeg movie
Folder – just the pic
moviename.dvdid – this allows the program to go look for the metadata.

You should be back to the main screen in Collection management.

At the very bottom choose Save Title (not sure if this does anything but I do it anyway).

That’s it!!!! Now you can go to your Xbox 360, choose My Movies and it will show you the movie and all metadata. You can even look at the actors bios (if they are available on-line)

One big note though.
If you ever decided to move your collection you will just have to delete everything in the folder except the .mpeg file and re-run Collection Management again for each movie (not bad though, burning the DVD took the longest.

Thanks for the great post. I followed your instructions and everything is working pretty much as well as I would have hoped.

Quick question for anyone. Converting the VOB to MPEG works and streams great to the XBox 360 but I was thinking about converting them to WMV files to get better fast forward and reverse control. I had tried to use WMV's before and when I tried to play them from the XBox I got the video error and nothing else would stream to the XBox until I exited the WCE and re-started it.

I figure I must have done something wrong in my format of the video file. The odd thing is, is that I can play the same files just fine from my XBox if I go through the Shared Media and play it outside of the MCE. Does anybody have any idea of what I could have done wrong? They also play fine from within the WMC.

I am so sorry that I have not responded. I took off a week to work in my backyard.

The update that I haven't put in the post is this. After you burn down the dvd to the vob file use Video redo to burn from VOB to drv-ms. Keeps full quality and you are able to rw - ffd - pause pretty much everything that you can do with a DVD.

The use My Movies to get the metadata. So the order of use would be

DVDshrink
Video Redo
My Movies.


I posted this same thing in this forum under another link last week just in case.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the response! Is the application for converting the video to dvr-ms the software from videoredo.com? Which version do you feel is required for that functionality?

As a side note, I have been sometimes seeing the video pause for a moment during playback. could that be a function of using mpeg files vs dvr-ms? I am on a wired network so I don't believe that is the issue (but it could be)

Thanks again for the response, I feel like I am really close to getting this where I would like it.