Hi everyone,

First post in this section. I have been running a MythTV based HTPC for about 6 months now and have been slowly ripping my dvd's to x264. I kinda do it on and off so it is taking me a while. I have a couple scripts I use. Lately I have been using the h264enc script located here h264enc (http://sourceforge.net/projects/h264enc) and it seems to work very well for all my dolby digital DVD's. I also have quite a few DTS titles and when possible I prefer DTS to DD. However, I can't seem to get the audio in sync when I try to rip using the DTS track. I have have managed to get a few to work in sync using a different script which I found posted somewhere on the net, I don't have access to it right now as I am at work but it was a fairly simple script which would output to mkv container, but even then it wasn't very reliable either, some would work in sync ok and some would slowly drift more and more out of sync as the movie progressed. So I have been just ripping the DD tracks lately but it is really bugging me that I won't be able to use the DTS tracks or actually have to play the disc rather than the rip. Does anyone have a tried and true method of ripping to DTS that works good or have any other pointers or tips to get the sync correct.

Any and help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

I can't offer any help, but why bother going through all of this time and effort for such a small return (reduced hard drive space)?

hard drives are cheap - just leave it in mpeg-2 and rip only the movie with whatever soundtrack you want.

I can't offer any help, but why bother going through all of this time and effort for such a small return (reduced hard drive space)?

hard drives are cheap - just leave it in mpeg-2 and rip only the movie with whatever soundtrack you want.

Yeah I thought about just going back to that method, at least for the DTS discs maybe. I guess I was just trying to use the hard drive space I had available without buying another drive. But you're correct as you can grab a 500 gig for about $100 give or take nowadays.

Kevin

Yeah I thought about just going back to that method, at least for the DTS discs maybe. I guess I was just trying to use the hard drive space I had available without buying another drive. But you're correct as you can grab a 500 gig for about $100 give or take nowadays.

Kevin

Also, I'm not familiar with that script, but while I will compress my movies down, I usually just do a straight copy on the sound track so that I maintain surround sound. Some scripts will take sound and change it from 5 channel to 2 channel.

Also, I'm not familiar with that script, but while I will compress my movies down, I usually just do a straight copy on the sound track so that I maintain surround sound. Some scripts will take sound and change it from 5 channel to 2 channel.

Yep I do do a copy of whatever soundtrack I am using be it DD or DTS. I do get the DTS fine it is just that is tends to go out of sync or it makes the video choppy trying to keep itself in sync(depending on the script I use). Anyways I will look more closely at the mencoder options and see if I find anything that helps.

Kevin

I know we're all supposed to be rooting for the home team here, but have you tried your encoded videos in one of the Windows players (media player classic, etc.) to make sure it's an encoding and not a decoding problem?

I know we're all supposed to be rooting for the home team here, but have you tried your encoded videos in one of the Windows players (media player classic, etc.) to make sure it's an encoding and not a decoding problem?

I don't currently have any working windows installs to test with but to be honest I used to have more issues with playing back videos in Windows than I do in Linux. I think what I am most likely gonna do is just rip all my DTS dvd's to VOB files and continue encoding the DD dvd's to x264.

Kevin

I don't currently have any working windows installs to test with but to be honest I used to have more issues with playing back videos in Windows than I do in Linux. I think what I am most likely gonna do is just rip all my DTS dvd's to VOB files and continue encoding the DD dvd's to x264.

Kevin

This is slightly off topic, but do you lose film grain when you go to x264? My experiments with DVD->xvid back in the day made the video appear too smooth (in a bad way). To preserve film grain, I had to force the bit rate to 15mbits/s, so the files would've been larger than the original DVDs.

This is slightly off topic, but do you lose film grain when you go to x264? My experiments with DVD->xvid back in the day made the video appear too smooth (in a bad way). To preserve film grain, I had to force the bit rate to 15mbits/s, so the files would've been larger than the original DVDs.

I have not noticed any loss of grain in my experience but to be honest I haven't really done a side by side comparison with a ripped x264 and original dvd. I could do that though, do you have a good example of a movie where it would be easily noticeable?

Kevin