[stamina1914]

I am trying to put together my HT system. I have a xbox and just purchased a My Book Live 2TB. While I watch most of my shows via Blu Ray, However, I do have a lot of old DVDs. Could I save my movies on the my book live? If so tell me how it is done.


Thanks

 

[onlysublime]

so are you asking if you can put your DVDs onto the external hard drive (as either ISO format or DVD files) and then hook the external hard drive to the Xbox to play them? if that's the question, the answer is no.

 

[bd2003]



Quote:
Originally Posted by onlysublime  /t/1416428/can-someone-walk-me-through-this-process#post_22146055


so are you asking if you can put your DVDs onto the external hard drive (as either ISO format or DVD files) and then hook the external hard drive to the Xbox to play them? if that's the question, the answer is no.

If he were to take the time to convert them to the right format, such as xvid, it should work.

 

[Yrd]

There's a couple programs you need Handbrake and MakeMKV. Convert the DVDs into a format the xbox can read. Google those two and you'll find plenty of how to's. I'm still looking into a perfect setup myself. I would like to have an exact copy of my DVD library in digital format, with all the commentary tracks and specials instead of just the straight movie files that come from those 2 programs.

 

[onlysublime]

handbrake can preserve all your audio tracks and subtitle tracks from your DVD. if the only subtitles are the old-fashioned bitmap titles, I convert them to text before including them in the MKV so that I have nice sharp vector text. mkvmergeGUI is a great for manipulating the contents of a MKV file.


but the question remains whether you can play video files off of an external hard drive on the Xbox and I'm pretty sure the answer is no now since if you plug it in, it'll want to format it and set it to 16GB no matter how big the drive. If you want to stream your movies to the Xbox, no problem if you go with a wired connection to your network. and since he hasn't made his DVD movies yet, he can choose a format that works best for the Xbox. If the Xbox and PC are the playback devices, making WMV would be the best. If he needs to play on other devices, then sticking to H.264 or MPEG4 is needed.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/settings-and-initial-setup/watch-dvds-movies


AVI support

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for AVI:


File extensions: .avi, .divx

Containers: AVI

Video profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2 (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile)

Video bit rate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 × 720 at 30 fps

Audio profiles: Dolby® Digital (2 channel and 5.1 channel), MP3

Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

H.264 support

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for H.264:


File extensions: .mp4, .m4v, mp4v, .mov, .avi

Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime

Video profiles: Baseline, main and high (up to level 4.1)

Video bit rate: 10 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps

Audio profiles: AAC, 2-channel, Low Complexity

Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

MPEG-4 Part 2 support

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for MPEG-4:


File extensions: .mp4, .m4v, .mp4v, .mov, .avi

Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime

Video profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2 (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile)

Video bit rate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 × 720 at 30 fps

Audio profiles: AAC, 2-channel, Low Complexity

Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

WMV (VC-1) support

The Xbox 360 console supports the following for WMV:


File extensions: .wmv

Containers: ASF

Video profiles: WMV7 (WMV1), WMV8 (WMV2), WMV9 (WMV3), VC-1 (WVC1 or WMVA) in simple, main and advanced up to level 3

Video bit rate: 15 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps

Audio profiles: WMA7/8, WMA9 Pro (stereo and 5.1), WMA Lossless

Audio max bit rate: No restrictions

 

[rdethloff]

The 16GB limitation is only for formatting as an xbox "memory card". You can plug in a large HDD formatted as FAT32 or HFS+ with 100's of gigs of music, pictures or videos. The HFS+ format is preferred because of its ability to have files greater than 4GB....


Now that I say this though...I haven't plugged in a hard drive since MS started to allow flash drive saving of games. Is this info no longer correct?

 

[onlysublime]



Quote:
Originally Posted by rdethloff  /t/1416428/can-someone-walk-me-through-this-process#post_22147924


The 16GB limitation is only for formatting as an xbox "memory card". You can plug in a large HDD formatted as FAT32 or HFS+ with 100's of gigs of music, pictures or videos. The HFS+ format is preferred because of its ability to have files greater than 4GB....

Now that I say this though...I haven't plugged in a hard drive since MS started to allow flash drive saving of games. Is this info no longer correct?

I'll check this out again tonight with a FAT32 formatted drive. Most of my externals are formatted NTFS.

 

[Richard713]

Fat32 drives definitely still work.

 

[stamina1914]

wow. i must admit, a lot of what your guys are saying is going over my head. having said this, for clarification the WD will be connected to my home network. So yes, I simply need a medium to few the movies in the home theatre. So based on the posts, I should save the dvd's in a wmv format?

 

[onlysublime]

yes, if you are having your hard drive connected to a windows PC and want to play on the Xbox, WMV is the best option. If you want the movie to play across more devices, then you start thinking about the other formats.

 

[number1laing]

I just did this with my old DVDs, on a Mac. I used Mac DVD Ripper Pro to rip and Handbrake to convert. I then put the hard drive on my network and stream it with my jailbroken AppleTV. I can't watch the videos on 360 or PS3 because those systems are very specific about the network setups they allow. PS3 needs a media server like Plex IIRC.


But running them from a HTPC should be trivial.

 

[stamina1914]

Well the hard drive will not be connected to my PC per say. It will be connected to my network via the ethernet port. It is a WD my book live. It will operate like my own home cloud. moreover it will allow me to access files when i am not at home using my network.


What i am trying to accomplish is to Rip/Burn my dvd's using my home pc, but save the movies on the WD external hard drive. Since both the hard drive and the xbox are on the same network, I would then like to see i it would be possible to stream the movie to the xbox for viewing. In th future, I would also like to be able to watch a movie via my phone/laptop/tablet via the same hard drive when I am on the road.


Thanks

 

[number1laing]

Yea, I am telling you that I don't think you will be able to get the movies to stream on the Xbox. On the PC, though, it is easy.


The problem is that the 360 is designed to stream from other Windows devices - not NAS (network attached storage) devices. There are some options, though, but they would run through your HTPC.


First step would be to get the movies streaming onto your HTPC. Then look into software to do what you want, like Plex or Twonky. Windows Media Center will do the job for 360, but if you want it to go to more devices you need a non-MS solution.