WHS 2011 Help streaming movies

[Hondatek]

OK Guys 

 

I've got my sever built. I made it for streaming movies, Pictures, I tunes, file server, need help on the ripping of movies so other PC's (running windows 7 pro) in the house can run them and Xbox, PS3 ect I bought Tversity but I don't think im going to use that. I just used dvd decrypter on a few older movies and they work Fine in windows media center but That dosen't work on new movies. I just want to rip my collection to the server to watch like an HTPC but on the server. I wanna do blurays aswell. any advice would be Greatly appreciated. Thanks 

[Darell3]

Use DLNA? I hold movies on my PC and stream it to the blu-ray player in the lounge. As long as you have WiFi and DLNA is supported on that modem/router then it should work.

[Hondatek]

DLNA? is that a program? I'm new so still learning. 

[dalekphalm]

@Hondatek for ripping DVDs and Blu Rays I HIGHLY recommend MakeMKV. It will rip the main movie without any menus or special features, but will allow you to choose which languages and subtitle tracks to include. It also doesn't transcode the video, so it's quite quick, and you get the best visual quality.

 

From there, if you'd like to make the files smaller, then I'd recommend taking the MKV file you created using MakeMKV and putting it through Handbrake (A video transcoding program). Handbrake will shrink the video file size, and depending on the particular quality setting you choose, you likely won't notice any quality loss.

 

And as for the streaming server, just go into the WHS 2011 Dashboard and make sure that Media Server is enabled (You can access the Dashboard either directly on the server, or on any computer you've installed the "WHS Connector" on.

 

DLNA is a standardized Media Server protocol. Basically a method for the server to send out media information and for devices to read that info and playback the movie. When you enable the Media Server in the dashboard, that is a DLNA server.

 

I personally use Plex Media Server on my server though, since it has a catalogue feature in which is organizes all your media and names it, downloads Meta Data (Album art, movie posters, descriptions, etc), and many other things. Plex Media Server is also a DLNA server, so any device such as a PS3 will still be able to stream the movies from it. There is a "Client" program called Plex Media Center which is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

[Hondatek]

Thank you Dalephalm Ill work on this over the weekend and let you know how its going. 

[Hondatek]

@Dalephalm should I download  MakeMKV and Handbrake straight on the server? or?  

[dalekphalm]

@Dalephalm should I download  MakeMKV and Handbrake straight on the server? or?  

You certainly could if you wanted. I would recommend downloading them to whichever computer has the fastest CPU, be it your gaming PC, server, workstation, etc.

 

Just keep in mind that especially with Handbrake, when encoding video, it can slow the computer down for anything else. So putting it on the server could impact use if anyone was trying to stream video or access files from the server at the same time.

 

If you have a decent CPU in your gaming or main PC, then I'd just install MakeMKV and Handbrake onto them. Keeps things a little more simple that way.