Brazil
I have been using Media-Portal for some time now for music, and have only recently set it up on my new HTPC. I am now making the move into storing my (100% licensed and legitimate) DVD collection on the system, so I can select them from a library.
From what I can see, there are a variety of options – I can rip them to MPEG or AVI if I don’t mind the compression and loss of DVD menu structure, or I can use DIV X format. I can also maintain the DVD structure, which is my preferred choice, as I want to keep the language options, subtitles and DVD ‘extras’ that come with each film. I am therefore keeping them in .vob format once I have backed them up so that the entire menu structure and extra features of each DVD are maintained, but when it comes to the scan part, where it updates the information with actors, cover-art and story-line, it feels a little cumbersome, and I am not sure where I am going wrong.
Each DVD I backup has two folders, the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. The AUDIO_TS is always empty, so I am deleting that, and renaming the VIDEO_TS to the title of the film. I am going to check why the AUDIO_TS is empty, and make sure this is not an oversight on my part during the backup process, as I don’t want to find I am missing out the audio options. I have checked playback, and audio is there, but on Howard’s End, for example, there are two DVD options for either Dolby stereo, or Dolby 5.1 Stereo, and on my test-PC I cannot tell if the 5.1 option is working after backup – anyone got any thoughts on this?
Via Media-Portal configuration, I am scanning the directory where I store the films, and it then searches through IMDB for covers, film information, actors etc. This takes quite a while, and usually needs some manual intervention where I tell it specifically what film it should be looking for. Having checked back in the C:\Program Files\Team-Media-Portal\Videos\Thumbs (I think that's it) directory, I usually see a whole load of JPEGS that bear no relation to the films I have, which is strange.
The end result is that in Media Portal I can see a directory with the cover-art and title of the film, which I can right-click on and choose 'Add to Playlist', which then kicks off the movie - this is more 'wife proof' (the main success criteria needed if this is to replace the multitude of other boxes under the TV) than going into the directory, and selecting one of the many files within, and hoping it is the right one.
If anyone can share how their experiences with backing up DVD's, I would be very interested to learn a better way of doing it, as I am only on DVD 8 of my collection of 120+ at the moment! While we cannot discuss the actual topic of backup and ripping itself here, I think we are allowed to discuss what format we keep our video files in? I am particularly interested in how people arrange their file structures to speed the scanning process from IMDB, and the best way to get the DVD cover-art showing.
Many thanks in advance,
From what I can see, there are a variety of options – I can rip them to MPEG or AVI if I don’t mind the compression and loss of DVD menu structure, or I can use DIV X format. I can also maintain the DVD structure, which is my preferred choice, as I want to keep the language options, subtitles and DVD ‘extras’ that come with each film. I am therefore keeping them in .vob format once I have backed them up so that the entire menu structure and extra features of each DVD are maintained, but when it comes to the scan part, where it updates the information with actors, cover-art and story-line, it feels a little cumbersome, and I am not sure where I am going wrong.
Each DVD I backup has two folders, the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. The AUDIO_TS is always empty, so I am deleting that, and renaming the VIDEO_TS to the title of the film. I am going to check why the AUDIO_TS is empty, and make sure this is not an oversight on my part during the backup process, as I don’t want to find I am missing out the audio options. I have checked playback, and audio is there, but on Howard’s End, for example, there are two DVD options for either Dolby stereo, or Dolby 5.1 Stereo, and on my test-PC I cannot tell if the 5.1 option is working after backup – anyone got any thoughts on this?
Via Media-Portal configuration, I am scanning the directory where I store the films, and it then searches through IMDB for covers, film information, actors etc. This takes quite a while, and usually needs some manual intervention where I tell it specifically what film it should be looking for. Having checked back in the C:\Program Files\Team-Media-Portal\Videos\Thumbs (I think that's it) directory, I usually see a whole load of JPEGS that bear no relation to the films I have, which is strange.
The end result is that in Media Portal I can see a directory with the cover-art and title of the film, which I can right-click on and choose 'Add to Playlist', which then kicks off the movie - this is more 'wife proof' (the main success criteria needed if this is to replace the multitude of other boxes under the TV) than going into the directory, and selecting one of the many files within, and hoping it is the right one.
If anyone can share how their experiences with backing up DVD's, I would be very interested to learn a better way of doing it, as I am only on DVD 8 of my collection of 120+ at the moment! While we cannot discuss the actual topic of backup and ripping itself here, I think we are allowed to discuss what format we keep our video files in? I am particularly interested in how people arrange their file structures to speed the scanning process from IMDB, and the best way to get the DVD cover-art showing.
Many thanks in advance,
