Easy Guide for DVD to WMV with 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound
A guide for converting your DVDs to high quality WMV files for viewing on your Xbox 360.
Hello, and thanks for checking out my batch file!!!
When Microsoft released the ability to play WMV files via XP, I wanted to enjoy my DVD collection in the best possible format while being streamed from my computer. I found a lot of different ways to convert the files from one format to another (Thanks Happy Beggar and VideoHelp.com), but no real simple way to convert my DVD collection to WMV AND keep the 5.1 surround sound.
Enter my batch file. Simply running this file after all below software is installed will create a WMV file with 5.1 surround sound and great video quality. I could have compressed the file more, but I view the movies on an HD projector, and I have lots of hard drive space, so I wanted the best quality with little sacrifice. I'm seeing encoding times around 10 hours, so you should most likely run this while you sleep (whenever time of the day that happens for you).
==SOFTWARE YOU WILL NEED==
ac3 filter available here:
(Allows for reading of the audio file created by bbTOOLS) http://ac3filter.net/
REM BeSweetv1.4 available here:
(Splits the audio file into one WAV file per channel) http://dspguru.doom9.net/
Elecard MPEG2 Decoder and Streaming Plug-in for WMP v3.4 available here:
(The video encoder used by WME to read the video file created by bbTOOLS) http://www.elecard.com/download/index.php
My Batch File
(The one click solution to it all) encode.bat
==INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS==
-Create directory C:\downloads\rips\ (if default location is not used, you will have to change this in the batch file)
-Install ac3 filter
-Install DVDDecrypter (if default location is not used, you will have to change this in the batch file)
-Unzip bbTOOLS to C:\downloads\rips\bbtool\(if default location is not used, you will have to change this in the batch file)
-Unzip BeSweet to C:\downloads\rips\BeSweet\(if default location is not used, you will have to change this in the batch file)
-Install Elecard MPEG2 Decoder and Streaming Plug-in for WMP v3.4
-Install Windows Media Encoder
-Open the batch file in notepad and make sure the variables near the top match your directories
-Run the batch file
-Wait ~10 hours
-Enjoy high quality movies on your Xbox 360
Thanks and enjoy,
skibit@somewhere.com (replace somewhere with g m a i l)
==Fix Log==
22 Dec 2006 11:00AM
Set width, hight, and crop values as configurable variables.
18 Dec 2006 10:50AM
Added new forum links
Added -Install Elecard MPEG2 Decoder and Streaming Plug-in for WMP v3.4 to list of software needing to be installed.
27 Nov 2006 9:13PM
Fixed bad path for DVD Decrypter