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This tiny box does two important jobs. Firstly it records any video source (as mp4 files) and secondly, it acts as a video jukebox (i.e. connects to the TV and can play video stored on a PC on the network). It’s a pretty useful gadget! |
I’ve been ripping old VHS videos and archiving old camcorder cassette tapes to mp4 and building up a digital library. The Neuros OSD can stream from our Samba share. The video quality isn’t quite as high as hoped, it’s a bit dark but it’s really nice not to have to go through the hassle of copying video onto a USB stick to play it on our XBox 360.
For reference, to make a DVD in Linux (Ubuntu 8.10) out of the ripped mp4 files, first we chop the mp4 files into small relevant chunks (strip out blank noise / adverts / etc). You have to know the start time and end time in seconds of the section you want to chop out:
sudo apt-get install gpac MP4Box -splitx <startTimeOfSectionYouWantInSeconds>:<endTimeInSeconds> inputFile.mp4 MP4Box -hint outputFile.mp4
The above commands leave the original untouched but creates a new file with the snippet you wanted. In takes about 10 minutes to chop out a 45 minute video. Once we have a bunch of snippets, we then use DeVeDe to compile the DVD using mp4 files as the “tracks”.
