The Last DVD and Blu-Ray Ripping Guide You'll Ever Need
Watching Your Ripped Movies
Now that you've got all your DVDs ripped and archived, your optionsfor enjoying them are plentiful
Converting Your Rips for a Portable Player
HandBrake makes it easy to convert videos to resolutions and codecs suitable for playback on most devices.
So, now you have your DVDs ripped, but you want to convert them for use on your portable devices. Mainly, that means converting to a lower resolution, but it can also mean using less-intensive settings for the H.264 codec or removing support for features like subtitles and chapters. Luckily, HandBrake is more than just a ripper and can also convert video for playback on many common portable players.
The process is simple. Open HandBrake and set the source to File. Browse to the file you want to transcode and then select the preset that matches your hardware. If you want to use hardware that isn’t supported with HandBrake, you have a couple of options. You can load the PSP preset and hope that the least common denominator works, or you can hit Google and look for a preset that other people have used successfully with your hardware. Once you’re happy with your settings, hit Start and wait
The current Windows build of HandBrake has a bug that prevents transcoding of the files we’re recommending people use. However, by the time you read this, there should be a new version that fixes the problem.
Streaming Your Ripped Movies to Your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3
What You Need
- An always-on PC
- A network-connected Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3
- TwonkyMedia Manager ($40, free 30-day trial, www.twonkymedia.com)
Once you have your DVDs ripped and archived on your PC you can not only watch them there, but also stream any of those movies across your network for playback on any number of devices. All you need is a supported network-connected game console, a DVR, or even a UPNP- or DLAN-enabled TV and you can get streaming. Wired connections are preferred—802.11n should provide enough bandwidth for most video, but 802.11g is probably insufficient. We’ll get you streaming to two common streaming devices—the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Luckily, the software we recommend, TwonkyMedia, works with pretty much every streaming device we’ve tested.
First, you’ll need to install TwonkyMedia on a PC that will be on 24/7 (or whenever you might want to watch a movie). When the installer finishes, it should open TwonkyMedia Manager, which is the app you’ll use to configure the server. In Manager, make sure the proper server is selected in the top drop-down menu; then click the Settings icon to the right (it looks like a pair of gears). In the Content Paths section at the bottom of the screen, you’ll need to point TwonkyMedia to the folders that contain the video, music, and pictures you want to stream.
Before you can stream your media, you need to tell Twonky where it is.
If your content is on a network share, you’ll need to either map a network drive to that share or change the account the TwonkyServer service uses to one with permission to use the network. Mapping a network drive is simple: In Windows, browse to your file server, right-click on the share you want mapped, click Map Network Drive, assign a drive letter, and make sure Reconnect at Logon is checked. Swapping the account service is a bit more involved but doesn’t require drive mapping. Run the services.msc app from the command line and scan the list until you see TwonkyMedia Server. Right-click and select Properties. Go to the Sign-on tab and change the option from Local System Account to This Account. Put your username in there and fill in the appropriate password twice. Press OK and then restart the service by right-clicking it and selecting Restart. If all goes well, your Twonky server should have full access to the contents of your network shares.
Now that the server is set up, head to the living room and fire up your streaming box. On the PS3, you’ll need to go to the Video menu, while on the Xbox 360, it’s either in the Media blade under Videos or on the My Xbox menu under My Video. On both consoles the server should automatically show up with a name similar to “<servername> TwonkyMedia”. Once you’re connected, you can browse to any video on the server.
The Twonky setup works great, as long as the videos you’re streaming are natively supported by the streaming boxes. If you’ve got a large collection of unsupported videos, you might have better luck streaming with TVersity. It’s more difficult to set up than TwonkyMedia, but it will transcode video from one format to another on the fly. We have a complete TVersity how-to here.
Twonky can stream more than just video - it also knows how to stream music and photos.
If you just want to watch your ripped videos on your PC, there are lots of options. If you have a recent version of WinDVD or PowerDVD, either of those apps should play the videos, with hardware acceleration to boot. A good alternative is VLC (http://videolan.org/vlc), which should play pretty much any video file you throw at it.
Now go enjoy your movie library!