The PS3 can be...

a real bi*** when you want to copy your DVD collection onto an HDD. I have about 200 DVDs plus all Star Trek Series waiting to be pulled off the DVD and transformed into a PS3 readable format.

Although one might think that this is an easy task, I went from failure to failure in the last couple of weeks. I tested ~20 different programs, combining several video and audio codecs, only to see that almost all of them fail (or I am too dumb to succeed).

My objectives were:

1. PS3 readable
2. Small data footprint (aka "Please... no big files...")
3. Good quality

2 and 3 actually is a question of fine tuning. I don't want to have a 1 gig file for a 40 minute Star Trek Episode. 500 Mb is my limit. Normally, one would rip off the DVD the VOBs and encode them via a tool or another with DivX, xviD or whatever else codec to reduce the data footprint.

Actually point 1 is difficult and the number of discussion one might find if you google for it, is quite impressiv. While different video and audio codecs are available, they are not "mixable" as you want. I could not manage to mix a DivX video stream with an MP3 audio stream. While it play fine on my computer, the PS3 reports "Corrupted data" or "Incompatible data".

I messed around with the vobs but they are just too huge. The only "good" combination I have found is ht263 combined with AC3. Unfortunately, not very much software can combine it. Or they're not fast (waiting ~2 hours on a quad-core machine to ripp-encode an 1:30 h film isn't my idea of fast).

Finally, I stumbled onto CloneDVD mobile (by Slysoft) which combined all I need: PS3 readable without a glitch, fast (1h 30 to ripp-encode 1 film (1:23h in length) and 2 episodes (42 minutes long each)). That is the speed I wanted. I set the quality of video encoding to 18 (whatever that means) which results to a good quality (can't see the difference between DVD and encoded file).

The file size is 905 Mb for the 1:23h film and 459 Mb for the 42 minutes episodes.

And these files (in opposite to the files generated by much other software) does play without a glitch.

Ah yes, I combined Clone DVD mobile with AnyDVD (by Slysoft also) which removes copy protection from any DVD.

Another remark or two:

1. No, I won't hand you any of my encoded files if you ask for them. I encode them for my personal use; I don't spread them...

2. Please refer to your countries laws to know if you may or may not copy your DVDs (and bypass any copy protection). Don't do anything illegal.

Have fun,
Stefan

More than a month...

It's been more than a month without an update on my blog. While I'm sorry for this, I must admit that time was precious and I wasn't quite motivated. There happened a lot of things in the last month, some good and some bad (even very bad).

Let's start with the worst:

A couple of weeks ago my wife, my children and me attended a funeral. Ombelie, a friends 8 year old girl, passed away. While suffering from autism, she was a beautiful little girl able to astonish the people around her. Even though her mother was more an online knowledge, they mother have been a couple of times at my home and we have met them several times per year on discussion group meetings. Just 4 days before Ombelie passed away, her mother and my wife have met in a restaurant to have a dinner together. She told her how much progress Ombelie has made the last couple of weeks. The week after her heart stood still...

Ombelie, we'll miss you. Rest in peace wherever you are...

I didn't have much time for myself the last month. I worked hard (with much overtime) for one of my clients to finish the codebase for his software which he wanted to show at an asian tech expo. I spent almost a week at his office to fine tune everything, bug fix some stuff for his clients and do some other maintenance work on the development environment.

When I came back home, I had problems with the roof of my house. Rain poured into my office. So I had to call the guys who did my roof at the end of last year. They fixed it (at no cost since all this sh** is still under guarantee) and left me with the mess that was my office. So, I ripped out the ceiling of my office, the floor, ripped off the paper off the walls and started the renovation of my office sooner than I wanted. It took me more than a week full time to redo everything.

In the same time, I equipped my house with a 1GB Lan structure. I had a 100 mbit structure before and I wasn't quite satisfied with the speed :) So, for a couple of Euros (60 I think), I bought some new switches. Fortunately, the cabling in my house is recent and works fine with the higher speed.

As soon as I finished my office, I had to jump start working for my client again. I had to test the (rather old) installation process of his software because some clients complained of not being able to install it on 64-bit OSs. Since I didn't have a 64-bit OS machine available, I bought some equipment and changed some stuff in my working machine. The rest was used to set up the 64-Bit Vista machine (which has been converted to a server after testing ;) ).

So, now I have an Intel 2,8 Quad Core CPU in my working machine :)

Before changing the CPU, I had some problems with my working machine not booting properly at startup. It freezed upon reactivation of the USB ports (most often, it went into BSOD). Finally, after much thinking about what to do, I decided to give a shot at a complete reinstall of the system. And this solved my problem... no more freezes right now.

I suppose that I have installed and uninstalled too much sh** in the last 2 years (since I initially set up the machine) which finally screwed the driver setup.

I also did a new version of SSCXML which can be found here. Just go into the download section and get the latest version. If you want to discuss anything about SSCXML, please go here.

Ok... so... now after having tested the installation process, I totally re-implement the entire process and therefor have to change the code base a bit. And this is really ugly because throughout the entire code base FIXED file system pathes are used to identify, manipulate and access files. All this has to be changed. Additionally a "client package creation tool" that has been implemented for my client (by the guy who worked for my client before me) uses a HARDCODED SCRIPT to configure an installer version dating from '95/'96. So, this whole part has to be changed, too... Sometimes it makes me wonder how the heck some people got they programming jobs out there...

This has to be done until end of this month. Afterwards, there are the preparations for the version which will be delivered at the beginning of next year... and I have to fit 5 month of work into less than 3... wish me luck :)

With all this, I didn't really work on Prohibition. Didn't have any time :( Nevertheless, from time to time I'm thinking about one or another aspect of the game and it takes shape in my head :)

Another thing I'm trying to set up is a media server which can be accessed by my PS3. I have a quite extensive DVD collection (containing ALL Star Trek series and all Star Trek films; I even have the animated Star Trek series :) ). I'ld like to put them on HD to stream them to the PS3. Currently I'm testing TVersity which seems to be a fine piece of software. But I get disconnects and the Tversity Service seems to terminate itself when ie. transcoding files (ie. the featured online streams).

Ok... hopefully I'll update my blog more often from now on :)

Have fun,
Stefan

PS: For those able to read german texts: The german PCAction has taken comments I've made in a forum to create a 10 pages article. You can take a look at it here.