DVD -> Video -> Xbox 360
Converting DVD's to Xbox 360 compatible video format and sharing them over your network with your Xbox 360
Step 1 - Make an ISO image
The first thing I do is to rip a DVD into an ISO image on my hard drive, removing the encryption in the process. I do that with DVD Shrink. Sometimes if that doesn't work, due to some newer encryption algorithms out there, I'll use DVD Decrypter, which will store the DVD in a file format on your hard drive, which I then use DVD Shrink to open the files and rip to an ISO image from that.
Step 2 - Mount ISO image in virtual drive
To do this I use a free virtual drive program, Alcohol 52%. Alcohol 52% allows you to have up to 6 virtual drives. They make a more robust version, Alcohol 120% which allows up to 32 virtual drives, but I find 6 is usually more than enough. That, and Alcohol 120% costs $$$.
Step 3 - Convert DVD movie to video file
There are different video editing programs out there that can do this. Personally, I like to use Nero Recode (part of the Nero 7 Ultimate package). Video formats that can be shared with an Xbox 360 can be found here. Using the MPEG-4 H.264 codec, Nero can recode the movies up to an 8 Mbps bitrate. This is plenty big. Personally I recode my stuff to 2 Mbps at 720x400 resolution. This results in a pretty good quality movie while keeping the file sizes down a bit.
For a 45 minute TV episode, the video file is about 700 MB in size. Not bad, especially with how cheap hard drive space is now. I'm actually looking at picking up a 1 TB external hard drive sometime to store my DVD collection on. Then I can browse and watch shows without having to find the discs.
UPDATE - I found a free version of Nero Recode here.
Step 4 - Share your video files over your network
Depending on what video file codec you used, there are different options available to you for this. If you encoded your videos into Windows Media Video (wmv) format, you can use either Windows Media Player 11 or Microsoft Zune software to share your videos. If you did the MPEG-4 Part 2 or H.264 codec, you'll need to use the Zune package. I put all of my video files under the same root directory. I then setup my Zune software to watch that root directory and add the files to the Zune library. In the Zune settings you can then set it up to share with your Xbox 360 on the network.
That should be it. Now you can go to your Xbox 360 and browse your videos, music, or pictures that are in your Zune library. Some additional instructions can be found here.
Step 1 - Make an ISO image
The first thing I do is to rip a DVD into an ISO image on my hard drive, removing the encryption in the process. I do that with DVD Shrink. Sometimes if that doesn't work, due to some newer encryption algorithms out there, I'll use DVD Decrypter, which will store the DVD in a file format on your hard drive, which I then use DVD Shrink to open the files and rip to an ISO image from that.
Step 2 - Mount ISO image in virtual drive
To do this I use a free virtual drive program, Alcohol 52%. Alcohol 52% allows you to have up to 6 virtual drives. They make a more robust version, Alcohol 120% which allows up to 32 virtual drives, but I find 6 is usually more than enough. That, and Alcohol 120% costs $$$.
Step 3 - Convert DVD movie to video file
There are different video editing programs out there that can do this. Personally, I like to use Nero Recode (part of the Nero 7 Ultimate package). Video formats that can be shared with an Xbox 360 can be found here. Using the MPEG-4 H.264 codec, Nero can recode the movies up to an 8 Mbps bitrate. This is plenty big. Personally I recode my stuff to 2 Mbps at 720x400 resolution. This results in a pretty good quality movie while keeping the file sizes down a bit.
For a 45 minute TV episode, the video file is about 700 MB in size. Not bad, especially with how cheap hard drive space is now. I'm actually looking at picking up a 1 TB external hard drive sometime to store my DVD collection on. Then I can browse and watch shows without having to find the discs.
UPDATE - I found a free version of Nero Recode here.
Step 4 - Share your video files over your network
Depending on what video file codec you used, there are different options available to you for this. If you encoded your videos into Windows Media Video (wmv) format, you can use either Windows Media Player 11 or Microsoft Zune software to share your videos. If you did the MPEG-4 Part 2 or H.264 codec, you'll need to use the Zune package. I put all of my video files under the same root directory. I then setup my Zune software to watch that root directory and add the files to the Zune library. In the Zune settings you can then set it up to share with your Xbox 360 on the network.
That should be it. Now you can go to your Xbox 360 and browse your videos, music, or pictures that are in your Zune library. Some additional instructions can be found here.
~CodeMonkey at
4/24/2008 09:58:00 AM
1 Comments
