WD Live Does NOT Show Certain Movies

Hello.  I’m very new at the WD Live and putting my movies on a WD My Book 4 tb external hard drive.  I thought this would be a good way to have all my movies in one movable area.  My niece and nephews were scratching the heck out of the discs so I found that I can copy my Bluray Discs to an external hard drive and play them through the WD Live.  It has worked perfectly for almost all of my movies but a few.  I cannot get the WD Live to recogize certain movies.  I’ve even tried to copy them over again thinking there may have been a problem with that process.  So let me start with what I have and what programs I use.

I have:

WD Live

WD My Book 4 TB (it has been formatted because I already lost my stuff one before)

I use PavTube Bluray Coverter Software in the MPEG 4 .mp4 format

Samsung 3D LED TV (though I doubt this makes the difference)

I use the same format for everything and almost all my movies work.  The ones that don’t are some of the Lord of the Rings discs.  Fellowship of the Ring Part 1, the Two Towers Part 2 and the Return of the King Part 1 all work but the other three don’t.  Harry Potter Sorcerer’s Stone, Prisoner of Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows Part 1 all work, but Chamber of Secrets, Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Part 2 don’t.

They are on the hard drive but the WD Live is not reading them.  What am I doing wrong or is there something that I need to do that I’m not?  I’m a little pressed for time to get this done because I’m having my 12 hours surgery done one week from today and I know that I will be down and out for several months recovering and I would really love to have all my movies on this one external to make it easy for me.

Does anyone have an answer?  Thanks so much!

Kim

Okay an update.  Whilst waiting for a reply (which there are none yet), I took a movie that was not being able to be read and changed the format to 264 .mp4 and it read it.  I cannot use this format as it will be 20 TB when it is done.  Is there something wrong with the format that I’m choosing or is there something I need to turn on the WD Live that will make it read the movies?

It’s possible there’s a specific setting being applied into those movies or something not translating properly during the conversion process. The WD TV Live’s User Manual contains a list of supported combinations of containers and extensions for compatibility. It would be best to post the Media Info of a movie that plays alongside the info related to a movie that does not play for comparison purposes.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2745/

Regards,

1 Like

Trancer . . . I do apologize for taking so long to respond.  I was in another thread working on the firmware thinking that maybe that was the problem, but no luck so far.  I also called WD and they were unable to help and will have technical support level 2 call me tomorrow.

To give a little more information: we have 2 WD Lives and 2 WD 4tb My Books.  This happens on all of them.  The firmware is now back to 2.01.86 (I have not reupdated).

Here is the information in a tree view for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (a movie that works).  I had to export it out of the MediaInfo into Microsoft Notepad to copy it over so sorry it’s not nice like I’ve seen others do.

General
Complete name                            : F:\Movies\Movie Series\Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom
File size                                : 6.98 GiB
Duration                                 : 2h 40mn
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 6 212 Kbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Tagged date                              : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Writing application                      : Lavf53.24.2

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile                           : Simple@L1
Format settings, BVOP                    : No
Format settings, QPel                    : No
Format settings, GMC                     : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix                  : Default (H.263)
Codec ID                                 : 20
Duration                                 : 2h 40mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 6 107 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 18.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.098
Stream size                              : 6.87 GiB (98%)
Writing library                          : Lavc53.42.4
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Tagged date                              : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : 40
Duration                                 : 2h 40mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 96.0 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 111 MiB (2%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Tagged date                              : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00

Here is the information for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (a movie that doesn’t work).  These two movies are from the same box set and were copied using the same program and same process to the same folder.  You might also be interested to know that if I put all the movies that DO NOT work in the same folder, neither the movies nor the folder will show up on the WD Live.

General
Complete name                            : F:\Movies\Movie Series\Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media
Codec ID                                 : isom
File size                                : 8.50 GiB
Duration                                 : 2h 32mn
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 7 984 Kbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Tagged date                              : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Writing application                      : Lavf53.24.2

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile                           : Simple@L1
Format settings, BVOP                    : No
Format settings, QPel                    : No
Format settings, GMC                     : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix                  : Default (H.263)
Codec ID                                 : 20
Duration                                 : 2h 32mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 7 879 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 18.0 Mbps
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 30.000 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.127
Stream size                              : 8.38 GiB (99%)
Writing library                          : Lavc53.42.4
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Tagged date                              : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : 40
Duration                                 : 2h 32mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 96.0 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 105 MiB (1%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00
Tagged date                              : UTC 1970-01-01 00:00:00

My entire MP4 collection i have none that  are …

Format profile   : Simple@L1

all of mine are:

Format profile  : High@L4.0   or  High@L4.1

Simple @ L1      Recommended max resolution and frame rate    176x144x15 ?   . [source]

Your video is 1080p with a Max Bitrate of 18.0 Mbps

Sounds a bit dodgy to me ?

1 Like

As its an HD video it ought to be encoded in H.264 and not H.263. This would allow the format profiles of High@L4.0  or  High@L4.1 referred to by Joey.

The recommended max resolution according to the table Joey linked to for H.263 is 720x576x30 fps

1 Like

Joey Smyth and Barry Grey Beard . . . thank you so much for the information. 

As I stated in my original post, I’m a little pressed for time and would love to solve this problem before my surgery even if it mean recopying all my movies because someone in the house can put the movie in and press convert if I have the correct settings on. 

I use PavTube (purchased and has Bluray converter software) and copy from Blurays (almost excusively except for a few DVDs for my nephew of X-Men cartoons and things of that nature).  So what I am trying to do is get great quality but also keep the GBs down as much as possible as I have a very large children’s library and my family has a pretty big bluray library.  We do have two WD My Books at 4 tbs each, so I’m hoping that this will be enought to store “tons” of movies plus pictures and music.

Do you know which format I should use on PavTube?  Or should I not use PavTube and be using a different program?

In the mean time, I will work on looking at the settings for each format.  Thanks again for all the help!

I would definitely choose h.264 as the video codec, the bitrate depending on you own considerations of size vs quality. I find a max of 5000kbps more than adequate but its a personal preference. Also it depends how you will be streaming the file, anything over 8000-9000kbps could be a problem over wireless.

For the audio codec I would choose dolby for 5.1 sound, mainly because my system wont play aac 5.1. If its stereo then you can go for aac, its more efficient.

My preferred container is MKV as it supports internal text subtitles. You can choose mp4 container but I think you are restricted to aac audio and external subtitles.

It appears you can do this with the program you have.

(EDIT: on looking closer at the program specs it appears it doesn’t support dolby digital so you may be restricted to aac audio)

1 Like

Barry Grey Beard . . . the PavTube has soooo many options for video coversion.  There is a common that has a lot and then there is a “folder” with “subfolders” that is labeled as HD.  Should I be using the HD folder and choose one of these formats and then look to see in the settings that is is h.264 video code?  Could you also please explain the bitrate and how to choose which would be best for me?  I am not streaming wirelessly.  We have two wd lives in the rooms that are used to watch tv.  The WD My Book can then be taken to either room and used to movies, music, pictures.

Thank you very much for all your help and information. :slight_smile:

I am not sure which program you are using (the plethora of “converters” is vast and confusing) but I suggest you look at the program help guides, like http://www.pavtube.cn/guide/convert-bdmv-to-avi-mp4-mov.html as you see the important thing, the codec is h264. The bitrate is a question of personal taste, try 5000kbps to see if the quality vs. size is acceptable for you, if not either raise the bitrate for a larger file or decrease for a smaller file. Experiment to see what you prefer.

1 Like

Thank you very much for the help.  I will do more research and “play” around until I find something that works and I like!

MP4 supports embedded text subtitles and VobSubs (off spec?).

@kimday

Use MakeMKV to rip the movie to MKV, use MKVToolnix > global > split mode > split after duration > 120s to extract a 2 minute clip. Open it in Handbrake and set video > framerate to constant. Encode the clip and check the quality. If that looks good, use that setting.

1 Like

Kimday  

                  I note you are using Pavtube Blu-ray software. This software actually has a format optimised for WDTV under settings ,HD Video there is a setting BDAV HD     (.mt2s) which is optimised. Have used it for converting most formats & the quality is good & file sizes are not excessive.          

1 Like