I just got into usenet and some of the files downloaded are ISOs. I’m trying to figure out the best way to convert them to mp4s so that I can play them through plex. I’m running on a headless arch server (Manjaro), and I’d prefer to keep the conversion there if possible.
Anyone have experience with this?
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I was so confused because all my isos are of operating systems
I know you’re joking, but actually most ISOs I have are actually operating systems or games. I’ve never seen a normal movie release as an ISO, except maybe 1:1 copies of retail disks.
Radarr seems to love finding blu-ray quality movies as ISOs
Add ISO to the extension blacklist in SAB so that the download fails and Radarr tries a different one.
If they are backups, rather name them .img.
Handbrake reads and converts DVD movie and video ISOs. If they are encrypted, MakMKV and DVDDecrypter can be used to get them ready for Handbrake.
I think this is the best response for OP!
I’ve tried HandBrakeCLI and for some reason it detects all tracks as 5 seconds and outputs a 2.4mb file from a 29gb ISO. Does this mean they’re encrypted?
If it’s a 29GB ISO it’s definitely not a DVD but likely a BluRay. It may be encrypted/corrupted/not a video. Try MakeMKV next to see if it can decrypt and recognize the chapters.
Does MakeMKV have a command line tool for Linux? I’m trying to do this all through ssh
I believe they do. Their Linux installer link is buried in the forums: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
They have batch ISO convert CLI for Windows: https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15426
You may need to network share your headless seedbox or whatever you have the ISO on to do this off a linux or Windows machine.
Turns out
makemkvis on AUR so I was able toyay -S makemkvand one of the options was the CLI! After this I was able to runmakemkvcon mkv iso:<file> all <dir>and it seems to be working! Thank you so much for your helpI’m glad I could help! Can you post the CLI command syntax that worked for you to run makemkv to decrypt your ISO? It will help others are trying to figure this out in the future. Or was it just the single makemkvcon command you posted?
Oh, I did in my comment. It was just:
makemkvcon mkv iso:my_file_name.iso all outputDirectory
Note: outputDirectory must exist, it could even just be ./
makemkv will then scan the iso for its chapters, filter out the small ones, convert the large ones to mkv files and output them in your directory you provided. Then I just looked for the biggest one and deleted the smaller ones, the big one ended up being almost the same size as the ISO and was indeed the movie output I was looking for.
Thank you kind sailor!
Here are makemkvcon syntax parameters for you to try: https://bluray.beandog.org/makemkv/man/makemkvcon.html
Mount that shit
Always mount unknown ISO files you download off music websites.
Handbrake is able to “mount” ISOs, should be pretty straightforward from there.
I’ve tried HandBrakeCLI and for some reason it detects all tracks as 5 seconds and outputs a 2.4mb file from a 29gb ISO
@Cqrd You are looking for https://www.makemkv.com
ISOs are disc images. You’d have to mount them with something like Daemon Tools. To be honest, it’s been awhile since I pirated anything but movies, so there’s probably a better way to do it now. ISOs are also what we use in emulation when the console in question used discs, so I have a bunch of ISOs of discs I backed up to use in emu.
If there is no encryption involved, you should be able to unpack them with 7zip without any mounting and then convert with ffmpeg to a format of your liking. IIRC, DVDs usually consist of a bunch of VOB files. You can just cat them all together and then send directly to ffmpeg.
Cating them together does only work in some cases though.
Could you elaborate?
No, sorry. Only thing i remember the Stackoverflow post warning about some conditions and it didn’t work for me.
Can you mount them? If so what does that look like?
If you are in windows, right click on the iso and the option to mount the image should come up. Once mounted it should look like a DVD or CD was inserted and should behave as such.
Manjaro
Should be similar on most Linux distros.
Is usenet worth it?
My god yes. The download speeds are so fast and I have never had issues with quality while using it. No more waiting 3 weeks to download a movie with 1 seeder.
If you have any questions, I can answer to the best of my ability.
How much is it? And do you use a VPN while connecting to it? Is it like a private torrent tracker?
I pay ~$10/mo for eweka(usenet provider) and nzbfinder.ws(usenet indexer). You do not need a VPN while connecting as long as you are using TLS when downloading. It’s not really like a private tracker because it’s not even torrenting. You’re downloading direct from the usenet provider.
there are plenty of usenet services out there that are cheap in cost. frugal usenet is well regarded since it is, well, cheap and you get access to two usenet backbones with one sub. once you start down this rabbit hole most will have one main server and a backup for missing posts at times which is why frugal is a good value.
@esmazer @Eris http://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providers and https://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/providerdeals is your friend.
Most use block deals from NewsgroupDirect or annually with frugal/newsdemon. NewsgroupDirect with Frugal will give you 5 backbones worth of access for not too much. Then you need an indexer like one here:
http://old.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/indexers
with sabnzbd, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, prowlarr, mylarr, readarr, overseerr, Plex media server and unRAID and you’re set.
It seems pretty nice so far. I was in a few private trackers for movies and TV and they were fine but I stopped using them when my VPN apparently failed me and I got called out by my ISP, so I’m really digging not having to worry about seeding. Also, some private trackers have a weird amount of drama and it’s kind of off-putting.
I still use MAM though, it’s by far the best tracker around and I love the community and books it provides.
Any, part of the improvements I’m seeing I think is just because I’m finally using radarr and sonarr, I think you can technically use these with torrents too, so this quality of life improvement could probably have been achieved without Usenet. But not having to worry about seeding is very nice.
Use ffmpeg to convert them
I’ve always used Free ver. of PowerISO to “mount” the disc image to a virtual drive like others mentioned. Anyone who’s emulated PlayStation 1/2 games would be very familiar with this format. Otherwise any old software released on CD format you’ll probably find as an ISO.
I would imagine if they are ISOs a DVD converter would probably work.
@Cqrd i use wincdemu to mount and 7zip to unzip contents without mounting on windows boxes, same for Linux but wincdemu is cdemu, fuseiso, acetoneiso or brasero
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fuseiso/files/
https://cdemu.sourceforge.io/about/
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Brasero/Documentation
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acetoneisoAssuming the .iso file is a DVD/Bluray image: Open the file in MakeMKV. Select the tracks you want, and it will…make a MKV file out of it. That should be fine for Plex.
I’m doing this through a terminal, no GUI tools
eac3to to demux video and audio, mkvtoolnix or mkvmerge to remux to mkv. edit: You need to extract the dirs from the iso first though, you can use something like 7-zip for that though.
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I’d like to recommend using DVDFab for converting your ISO files to MP4 format. It’s available on Linux, including your Manjaro setup. If you encounter any issues with encrypted DVDs, you might also need to consider tools like MakeMKV for decryption. Just keep in mind that MakeMKV is typically used to extract the video without compression, so you can then use DVDFab HD Decrypter afterward to convert to MP4 if needed.
