George L. Schmauch Jr.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I forgot to mention that there’s [url=http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03/29/mkv-mania-another-eac3to-gui/]a guide[/url], in case you want to read through that.  If you have the storage space, you could even rip everything to your drives, then set this to run in batch on all of them.

The one feature I’m missing right now is a program which will trigger when a Blu-ray (or HD-DVD) is inserted and do all those steps without me doing a single other thing.  Other than that, I did ask the guy to include an option to embed cover art in the MKV, but with SageTV and BMT, that happens automatically when BMT sees the new file.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I forgot to mention that there’s [url=http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03/29/mkv-mania-another-eac3to-gui/]a guide[/url], in case you want to read through that.  If you have the storage space, you could even rip everything to your drives, then set this to run in batch on all of them.

The one feature I’m missing right now is a program which will trigger when a Blu-ray (or HD-DVD) is inserted and do all those steps without me doing a single other thing.  Other than that, I did ask the guy to include an option to embed cover art in the MKV, but with SageTV and BMT, that happens automatically when BMT sees the new file.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

That’s precisely why I held off for so long and only started doing it in the past month.  I wasn’t willing to struggle with multiple tools and command line editing.  When I found that tool I listed above (they really need to come up with an acronym!), I was ecstatic that there finally was a single tool to do everything I needed.  You set it up, it rips, creates subs, merges to MKV, and (optionally) deletes the remains.  While you have to install multiple programs, that GUI just needs to know where to find the .exe’s and it does the rest for you.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

That’s precisely why I held off for so long and only started doing it in the past month.  I wasn’t willing to struggle with multiple tools and command line editing.  When I found that tool I listed above (they really need to come up with an acronym!), I was ecstatic that there finally was a single tool to do everything I needed.  You set it up, it rips, creates subs, merges to MKV, and (optionally) deletes the remains.  While you have to install multiple programs, that GUI just needs to know where to find the .exe’s and it does the rest for you.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I love my WHS setup, so I’m clearly biased.  The PC backups and drive pool are just plain awesome.  However, if you’re using Media Center, then the integration is currently still lacking (but slowly getting better).  If the jumper trick works, great, but I understand there may be a performance hit from it.  Otherwise, you’ll need to wait for WHS v2.

I wouldn’t exactly say that those additional services are “trivial” to set up.  Since they aren’t supported functions, it may be more work than you’re expecting or may not work exactly as you would like.  I haven’t done any of them, so I can’t say, but I have read about it being done.  While I’m currently doing “unsupported” things on my WHS box, I’ve come to the realization that I would prefer to have WHS simply do WHS tasks and would rather have a non-WHS OS performing these other tasks.

Note that WHS does allow remote access to your files, so you may or may not want/need the FTP server.  Sharing a printer across Windows boxes is pretty simple, no matter what.  Obviously, you don’t need a full server to accomplish that.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I love my WHS setup, so I’m clearly biased.  The PC backups and drive pool are just plain awesome.  However, if you’re using Media Center, then the integration is currently still lacking (but slowly getting better).  If the jumper trick works, great, but I understand there may be a performance hit from it.  Otherwise, you’ll need to wait for WHS v2.

I wouldn’t exactly say that those additional services are “trivial” to set up.  Since they aren’t supported functions, it may be more work than you’re expecting or may not work exactly as you would like.  I haven’t done any of them, so I can’t say, but I have read about it being done.  While I’m currently doing “unsupported” things on my WHS box, I’ve come to the realization that I would prefer to have WHS simply do WHS tasks and would rather have a non-WHS OS performing these other tasks.

Note that WHS does allow remote access to your files, so you may or may not want/need the FTP server.  Sharing a printer across Windows boxes is pretty simple, no matter what.  Obviously, you don’t need a full server to accomplish that.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

Man… now I don’t know what guide I’m missing out on!!!   :'(

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

Man… now I don’t know what guide I’m missing out on!!!   :'(

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

My fear is that as this proliferates this will now push the providers to stop flagging anything as copy freely.  I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

My fear is that as this proliferates this will now push the providers to stop flagging anything as copy freely.  I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

If you have a valid reason for putting the RAM into the XBOX, go for it.  From what I’ve read, though, this only comes in handy if you’re running emulators on it and I don’t know that the memory is compatible.

If you were really asking about the computers (which I think you were), then the question is whether you’ve seen any slowdowns which seem to be memory-related.  If not, then considering that WHS v2 (Vail) will be 64-bit, I’d probably put the RAM into the WHS box.  2GB for a server doesn’t seem like much to me and you’re going to be adding to the load on it.

Also, while I’m sure you know this, but I want to just put it out there that you shouldn’t mix different speeds in a single computer.  Not sure if that will play any role or not.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

If you have a valid reason for putting the RAM into the XBOX, go for it.  From what I’ve read, though, this only comes in handy if you’re running emulators on it and I don’t know that the memory is compatible.

If you were really asking about the computers (which I think you were), then the question is whether you’ve seen any slowdowns which seem to be memory-related.  If not, then considering that WHS v2 (Vail) will be 64-bit, I’d probably put the RAM into the WHS box.  2GB for a server doesn’t seem like much to me and you’re going to be adding to the load on it.

Also, while I’m sure you know this, but I want to just put it out there that you shouldn’t mix different speeds in a single computer.  Not sure if that will play any role or not.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I’ve used that one in the past myself, but I wanted a single tool which would extract audio, video, chapters, and subtitles, then package them up into an MKV without me doing anything after choosing the tracks to extract.  It’s amazing just how difficult that has turned out to be.  I applaud the authors of these programs for writing them.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I’ve used that one in the past myself, but I wanted a single tool which would extract audio, video, chapters, and subtitles, then package them up into an MKV without me doing anything after choosing the tracks to extract.  It’s amazing just how difficult that has turned out to be.  I applaud the authors of these programs for writing them.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I was going to say it doesn’t, but I believe I did use it for HD-DVDs.  I think the only thing I had issues with were 1080i/60 Blu-rays, at which point I used MakeMKV.

[Author]

Posts