Best way to Rip, then Serve archived DVD's (and retain menu functionality)?

J

jokah

Member
From hours of reading on here:

DvdFab tip to VIDEO_TS format (uncheck the split into 1 mb files option?)
MyMovies plugin to download cover art, etc.

However I have also read that playing back through media center and MC extenders, you cannot skip chapters or fast forward? Is this true?

I dont mind throwing 8gb down on a HD in a single DVD, however, I want to try to retain menu functionality if at all possible. For instance, Elmos world theme song is catchy and all, but if i cant skip that i will have to kill something.

Also - budget isnt huge, so the LUVx2 is a little spendy :D
 
jokah said:
From hours of reading on here:

DvdFab tip to VIDEO_TS format (uncheck the split into 1 mb files option?)
MyMovies plugin to download cover art, etc.

However I have also read that playing back through media center and MC extenders, you cannot skip chapters or fast forward? Is this true?

I dont mind throwing 8gb down on a HD in a single DVD, however, I want to try to retain menu functionality if at all possible. For instance, Elmos world theme song is catchy and all, but if i cant skip that i will have to kill something.

Also - budget isnt huge, so the LUVx2 is a little spendy :D
Click to expand...

AnyDVD allows you to copy as is, jump to the movie itself or jump to the menu by selecting the option you want in the setup screen. If you are archiving Blu-ray, the only option is to jump to the movie. They evidently haven't been able to allow you to start with the menu due to some technical reasons I can't explain.

I hope this helped!
 
AnyDVD HD will retain all elements of the DVD/BD disc (menus, chapters, etc). So will DVDFab for those disc that don't cause it problems.

You also need a player that knows how to play this type of content. Some do. Some only know how to play the .VOB or .M2TS files.

In addition, some players can turn multi-channel audio (from the disc) into two channel audio if you don't have a TV or AVR that can play multi-channel audio. Some players can only pass the multi-channel audio through to your TV or AVR. I found that out when I tried to play content from a disc that only had English in a multi-channel audio track, the only audio tracks the TV (no AVR in that room) could play were in French or Spanish.

Check out:

http://www.duneplayer.com/shop/

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
 
Going to try the first set then, DVDFab and MyMovies for Vista Media Center, then play them on Xbox MCE
 
I use Mythtv, DVD's are all ripped down to about 1.4G each. I can skip around in the video just fine. I don't have chapters in my rips though. Don't know why you'd need it. If you need to stop, you hit select and it saves a bookmark.
 
I would rip to ISO (disk image). Not all players have the ability to mount them though. Some programs have the option to kick out a .dvd file in addition. This contains the layer-split blocks so if you need to burn it back it helps ensure the disk dosn't skip at the layer split. ISO is a great format because you now have a real backup of your disk, and not just a compressed knockoff.

If that isn't possible then go to the folder structure (VIDEO_TS). The VIDEO_TS folder has no conversion going on - it is the origional MPEG2 format of the disk. Disk space is so cheap per GB right now do not recompress videos - keep them as origional. There is a noticable quality loss that a videophile can detect if recompressed, and anyone can see in a side-by-side comparison. Do not split each mb! If there is an option, you want to split per VOB file. This retains the origional structure of the disk. There is most likely a 'Entire Disk' mode to the software you're using, use that instead of 'Movie Only' to retain bonus features and menus. You will also need the 'Entire Disk' mode to rip DVDs of television series - 'Movie Only' mode gets confused and can't figure out which episode to rip.

When ripping the disk, there are often options to remove region codes, and in your case, blocked commands. This is great for being able to skip previews that some disks try to force you to watch. However ---- and this is important - in some rare cases, removing the blocked buttons can cause you to crash a disk/player.

I use SmartRipper. It's an old peice of software, but works great. It's free - do some googling for it. AnyDVD is also a very good peice of software as well. Also, WMC in Win7 has no trouble mounting my ISO's that I have on my network storage for playback. Havn't tried it through an extender though.

Hope this helps,
Kent
 
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