Geeky: Convert HD-DVD’s to Bluray

If you are sitting on a stack of HD-DVD’s odds are you are a geek that is a early adopter and have some money to burn. Before you even try to read on you must have a HD-DVD Rom drive form your computer (my choice is the XBox HD-DVD addon) and a Bluray burner. If thats not enough, you will also need to buy a program that strips the DRM from HD-DVD’s (Slysoft’s AnyDVD HD for $115) as well as purchase Bluray media for $15-$25 a disk. If you aren’t scared away yet, read on.

This means getting the rip ready to burn to Blu-Ray disc: transcoding refers to changing the file format and size, while authoring refers to preparing and arranging the files so that players may properly understand them.
If you just want to keep the file on the computer as a backup, you can stop here. Even if no one is making physical HD DVD players, there’ll always be software to play the files themselves.
If you’re targeting Blu-Ray, however, you’ll need to get your hands dirty fixing your files to the required specs. You’ll run the ripped HD DVD disk through a bunch of different programs, in the following order:
1. EVOdemux to “demultiplex” the ripped files and pick exactly what you need to keep.
2. H264Info or vc1conv -— which one you need depends on whether the format of HD DVD movie you ripped is h.264 or VC1.
3. eac3to to compress the audio, often necessary to fit movies onto cheaper 25GB Blu-Ray disks.
4. tsMuxeR and TsRemux to get the video streams ready for burning.

This isn’t for the faint of heart, but hard core geeks – have at it!

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