I just wanted -1- movie, I didn't want to deal with 2 movies, or disks, or anything like that. I wanted to be able to hit play once and watch the entire thing.
These instructions will show you how to turn a 2-DVD movie (like Lord of Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Extended edition) into a single M2TS file for viewing with a Windows Media Center and XBox 360 Media center extender.
Software Required/Used:
- AnyDVD HD (not free)
- Ripbot264 (free)
- TsMuxer (free)
- Use AnyDVD, by right clicking on its system tray icon, and rip the DVD to your hard disk using "Rip Video DVD to Hard disk..."
- Specify a destination directory and then click "Copy DVD".
- Do this for both disks in separate locations. It will take several minutes for each disk, depending on the speed of your system.
- Launch RipBot264
- Repeat the following instructions for both DVDs. Make sure to give the destination folders of each job different names
- Click on Add and browse to the folder where you ripped the DVD. Select the second large VOB file from the main move set. For The Lord of the rings, this is VTS_01_1.VOB.
- After you choose the file, it will take a few moments for Ripbot264 to index the movie and you will see a screen like this:
- When it is done indexing, the controls on the page will become enabled.
- Make sure the following settings are configured.
- Near the bottom, set the "Save As" format to AVCHD (you need to do this first, as it affects other menus and drop downs)
- Video (left side)
- Profile is configured to [High 4.0]
- Mode = CQ
- CRF = 18
- Audio (right side)
- Profile is configured to [x.x COPY STREAM]
- Normalize is OFF (if you are using a stereo receiver)
- Language = Undetermined
- Set the output location to the directory you want. Change the name of the output location to indicate disk 1 or disk 2, depending on which disk you are working on.
- Next hit 'Properties' button
- Set the Crop setting to "Automatically"
- Set the Size setting to HD-Ready 1280x720
- Fortunately, in these movies the forced English subtitles are already burned in, so we don't need to worry about them.
- Hit the Right arrow to go to the next page
- These movies are interlaced, so we must deinterlace them.
- (Interestingly, my copy of Return of the King was not interlaced, so the menu to specify/change deinterlace was disabled. If this is the case for your movies, you can ignore the deinterlace setting)
- Set Deinterlace to 'Inverse Telecine'. This should automatically set Decimate to "Restore -> 23.976"
- If you want, hit 'Preview Script' to take a look and make sure things look OK.
- Then click OK to close this window.
- Then click 'Done' to close the main job window.
- (repeat for the other DVD)
- Once you have both DVD jobs created it should look like this on the main window:
- Click "Start" to being. Each job will probably take a few hours.
- Once they are complete you will have 2 Bluray directory structures with the M2TS files for each half of the movie under the 'STREAM' subdirectory.
- Launch TsMuxer GUI
- You shouldn't have to toggle any settings on any of the tabs.
- Click 'add' and select the M2TS file that is the first half of the movie.
- Click 'join' and select the M2TS file that is the second half of the movie.
- Make sure the Output is configured to "M2TS muxing"
- Set the Output destination to wherever you would like the final movie to go.
- The click 'Start muxing' at the bottom of the dialog.
- It will only take a few minutes, and then you will have your 2 halves combined!
