How can i watch my movies from a thumb drive?

[threadx2003]

I would like to put my dvd and blu-ray disks onto a thumb drive that can be watched on my tv.
In other words, instead of storing my movies on a disk,,, storing them on a hard drive and then copying them to a thumb drive to be inserted into my tv and watched.
Can someone point me in the right direction to where I can learn to do this?
Thank you!

[admin]

The easiest way to do this is with Handbrake or VidCoder (which is also based on Handbrake, but a bit easier to use). Your TV supports MP4/MKV playback, right?

[threadx2003]

Thank you for the info...
Yes, my TV supports those formats.

I also have a Roku 3 and a Samsung Blu-ray player, both with usb ports. Would it be better to use one of them to play the movie off of the usb flash drive?

[admin]

Try the TV first, it should do the job unless the format is something really obscure. As I mentioned, try Handbrake or VidCoder (and encode to the H.264 format only), these should produce nice MP4/MKV (Matroska) files that most devices (including your TV) should support.

Here's a guide for VidCoder, it's a bit outdated in places, but it should help you get started.

[simeon]

As long as your TV supports the blu ray format - it can be done with little technical know how..

[threadx2003]

Thank you for the info. I just got around to doing it.
Using VidCoder.
Using the "High Profile" default setting. But adjusting the "Constant Quality" to 15. Thought I might be able to get better picture quality doing this. Can't really tell yet though. Converted a few movies now and their coming out around 2 GB in size, which is fine with me.
Haven't yet figured out the difference in leaving the "cropping" setting to "automatic" which shows that the (output) "Display Resolution" will be 853x360.
Or setting it to "None" which shows that the (output) resolution will be 853x480, which is the same as the input.
I've done both and can't yet tell a difference in the picture.