ok , so not an easy way !!! well that trully sucks!!! i woud figure that whoever wrote the MyMovie extender software woutl have made it record and convert for us since most of us are not this savy on all of the conversion programs.

I'm really bummed since i have all of this invested HDD to a 1-Tbyte for dvd burns and the xbox 360 to play and extend my MCE 2005 into my living room. 

 

sad day sad sad sad...

 

My Movies is cataloging software, it has nothing to do with the video content itself.

Yes I understand that, but the My Movies software add-on to MCE does offer you the option of "Ripping" the dvd in yoru Dvd drive to your computer for storage and it saves them as .VOB files.  All I was getting at was that I wish the creator would have put what i think is called an emulator (not sure) that offers the option on converting it to lets say .mpg files since the .vob files will only play on the computer or a tv directly connected to it and not play on extenders like the xbox360...

 

I am still sad

YellowDart:

I recommend the following:

You will need: {DVD Decryptor, DVD Shrink, RipIt4Me, VOB2MPG, MyMovies?, Windows Movie Maker?, DVR-MS Toolbox?}

• Rip the DVD using DVD Decryptor, DVD Shrink, RitIt4Me, or some other DVD ripping program that will result in a folder full of VOB files.  RipIt4Me is a valuable tool only with the two previous applications and is primarily for more recent commercially released DVDs.(Please note that I only suggest/support ripping DVDs that you own that you, yourself have created are or archiving for backup purposes and are using under the terms set by the copyright holder.  Remember that you do not own the DVD, but rather you own the limited right to view it under the terms set forth by the producer.) 
  • Note that you can choose in either DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor to either reauthor the DVD or rip a stream.  I recommend this unless you plan on having MPEGs that you can view of the menus and addtional content.  As far as I am aware, there is no simple way to have the entire DVD (ie, menus and extra content) avaiable as a simple MPEG or WMV that will stream to the XBOX360 MCX.
• Open VOB2MPG and point the top file path to the VIDEO_TS folder where your VOBs were ouput to using the above programs.  Point the bottom file path to ouput to your My Videos folder in your My Documents folder (or the Vista Videos equivillant).  If you choose not to point it here for some reason, then note that you will have to tell the Media Center and MCE where to find the file.  You can do this by choosing the Settings>Library option in the MCE or MCX menu.
• Make sure to rename the resulting MPEG file something that will be easily recognizable in your My Videos folder and will not conflict with future file converstions.  (For example: if you leave the name as its default VTS_01.mpg then the next time you output a file it will overwrite the first one.)

At this point you should have ripped the DVD to VOB, converted the VOBs to MPEG and have the resulting MPEG nicely named an in your Videos folder.  Note: cleanup at this point allows you to delete all other files than the final mpeg file that you have created.  They will no longer be necessary and will just take up additional space.  Also: you can try to simply rip the VOB files as a single (non-split) VOB and skip using VOB2MPG by renaming the VOB extension to MPG, but in my experience this hasn't always worked, whereas the VOB2MPG has always worked.

The MPEG file that you have created should now show up on your MCE computer and XBOX360 MCX in the Videos section.  If they do not, you will need to add the directory to your library using the Settings>Library option in the MCE or MCX menu.

You will notice that the MPEG files are a little limited in their navigation.  Although it is not required to view the files, the following steps have been useful for me in some cases.

• To convert MPG to WMV (which some prefer and believe to have better MCE, MCX compatibility), simply open the MPEG file in Windows Movie Maker (Note: This is not Windows DVD Maker) and choose to save the file to your hard drive.  Choose either a compressed format or non-compressed (I find that it is convenient to choose the XBOX-360 720p output that is available in Vista Windows Movie Maker).  The resulting file will be a WMV file and can also be played on the MCE and XBOX360 MCX.
• To convert MPG to DVR-MS (useful if you want to be able to fastwind the DVD in forward or reverse and not just skip back and forward), use the DVR-MS toolbox.  You will need to create an additional profile to do this, but instructions are easy to find on TGB forums and are beyond what I want to include in this post.

Finally, if you wish to have the movies all in a nice place with album art (DVD cover-art whatever), then you may wish to use the MyMovies plugin for media center.  It allows you to keep the movies linked to the source on your hard drive an launch them directyly on the MCE or MCX.  I will not go into how to do this here are there are ample forum discussions already, not to mention the mymovies.name website itself.

I hope this post is useful.  It seems all very obvious to me now, but I am sure that it may be less so to people who are just getting started.  If you are looking for a step-by-step like with screenshots and such, I may be able to produce that at a later date.  If you have specific questions, post them as a reply.

Regards

 

As an afterthought.  I've noticed that above in the thread there are questions as to whether the XBOX360 can stream Dolby or DTS and such.  I have used this process above to rip DVDs with Dolby and DTS encoding with no problem.  The XBOX360 streams it with no problem.  You merely need to choose which stream to import during the DVD Shrink or DVD Decryptor stage.  I highly recommend ripping only the one you will need as things get messy if you rip them all.  I hope that helps.

If you are ripping movies frequently I'd think it would beneficial to spend the ~$35 and get a program like Magic DVD Ripper that would rip directly to WMV.

I appreciate the recommendation. 

I have evaluated several of the "for purchase" programs available and have decided that I want to keep things free in-so-far as possible.  I know that a lot of people in these forums have invested a good deal of money in their systems and are looking for a free solution.

In addition, I only have included the WMV instructions as a last resort.  I prefer the MPEG route in that it preservs the surround sound better, and it also allows for me to stay platform independent (I love Vista and MCE 2005, but not all of my machines run windows).  Unprotected MPEGs run on almost any platform.

I guess what we are all hoping for (and I really wouldn't mind spending good money on) is a program that runs from the Media Center interface, that can rip DVDs directly with lots of options for entire DVD (maybe even with the menus in tact), and that can store the file in a non system-specific format (or at least has the tools to convert to whatever format would be necessary).  Oh ... and lest I forget, it always must be playable through the extenders and work on the extenders. 

Until then, I hope my free method works alongside some of the paid options.

300+ Movies ripped all play perfectly throught the extender.  Here you go.
You will need 3 programs (I'm going to tell you the ones that I use, substitute as you like) all of these have  FREE full trials, so you can try before you buy.

AnyDVD and CloneDVDMobile get these at slysoft.com.

VideoRedo Get this at videoredo.com

Run anydvd to unlock you disk.  Use CDM to rip it to one big VOB.  This take 5 to 10 minutes.

Rename movie.vob to movie.mpg.

Run VideoRedo Tool>QuickStreamFix

Select the new movie.mpg and set the target to something like movie-fix.mpg

This take 5 to 10 minutes.

That is it.  The movie will play on the XBox, lossless, full 5.1 audio.  You can skip ahead and skip back but RW and FF won't work.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

one other thing is that when i hit the watch buttong onthe extender off of xbxox360 mediacenter i get the following error:  

Media Center was unable to load the

 

 page C:\\Program Files\MCE\My Movies\Watch Pressed (false) the program or web site can not be found.

 

have others seen this adn is this also a result of it not being able to read to .vob files?

 

 

TwoTone66:

have others seen this adn is this also a result of it not being able to read to .vob files?

2tone, the files from your DVD should not be vob files, make them mpeg

I've done the anydvd>clonedvdmobile>VideoRedo Tool ripping any everything works great, with one exception. It seems like Im not getting 5.1 sound.

Should I add all of the audio when ripping from clonedvdmobile, or does the xbox 360 not play in 5.1 at all?

I downloaded Transcode 360 and I was hoping that would work in place of having to mess with the files after I DVD Decrypted it, but it seems after 3-5 minutes the audio is no longer in synch with the video... 

Does anyone else have this issue, or do I not have things "set up" right.  Or, do I need to try the programs & method listed in this thread?

My current method (easy, works, gives me a WMV with DD5.1 audio.)

The batch file, as written, requires DVD Decrypter to be installed on the system, and outputs a WMV in the neighborhood of 4GB.  With minor tweaks, it can be made to, instead, recode a movie (ripped in single-file IFO mode [that is, one big VOB file]), and/or at a lower bitrate (as written, it's 5Mb/s video, 256kb/s per audio stream (6 channels.))  For my purposes, commented out the DVD decrypter command line, and lowered the bitrates to 3Mb/s & 192kb/s.  I rip the movie on my desktop (with DVD Decrypter), and upload the files to another (headless) machine on my network (Core2Duo E6400 - does the encoding in around 4 hours.  The desktop (AthlonXP 2700+) is painfully (18-24 hours) slow on the encode.

Cost:  $25 for the codec.  And, crapware-free.  :)