Mount and Play DVD Images

[cornrow]

I store my DVD collection as a bunch of .iso files - it's easy to transport from DVD-R to laptop to PC.

What will it take for me to get sage to see these image files and then run a custom command to mount the file before playing?

I'm using SageMC. If the author doesn't want to add the features, I'll do it myself if someone can point me in the right direction. I tried SageTV Studio, but it made no sense at all to me.

TY

[Stratty]

Mounting and playing of ISO, this was accomplished a while ago using Cayars STV plug in. I believe he used a batch or CMD file to automate the mounting of an ISO file. Sadly I have not found a feature that replicates this functionality beyond his STV, and his interface is not 4.x compatible (*I think*).

You will find many people do not use the ISO format for DVD disk based storage, ripping a DVD via external software to only get the content you want (just the movie and a specific soundtrack) is the most popular method.

Sadly I have many DVD's stored in an ISO format for backups. Utilizing these already existing images for playback via SageTV rev 4.x would be a welcome feature.

Some Thoughts-
Im no sage programer, heck I dont even have a custom STV so bear with me and my 'newbielicious' questions.

To enable this functionality in SageTV 4.x would it be as simple as:
1. Enable ISO's to show up in SageTV's interface.
2. Using nielm's Customizable Menu STV to call an external command when the ISO file is highlighed and selected. Something that would call a command prompt, pass the ISO name, and when completed PLAY the content. In short I am thinking the CMD file would mount the image using Daemon Tools (popular ISO mounting tool).

Basically re-using the "ImageMount.cmd" feature from Cayars interface and applying his hard work and enginuity forward to 4.x clients.

If anyone can figure out how to bring this functionality into Sage and post clear instructions (or source files) on how to do it would be very appreciated.

Stratty

[Dooms_Day]

I have had this working since I upgraded to 4.0. I am using SageMCE, I changed the media_player.cmd to

"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0, %1
call dvd_player.cmd

and changed to dvd_player.cmd to point to TheaterTek

"C:\Program Files\TheaterTek\TheaterTek DVD 2.0\TheaterTek DVD.exe" /NOSPLASH /PL %1

I then changed the Sage.properties file to use the external player but limit it to only specified file types.

mlbdude/limit_external_to_extensions=.ISO,.iso,.mdf,.MDF,.mds,.MDS

Hope this help if you have any questions let me know.

[0x1a4]

I made dooms_day's changes, but the files still don't show up. I tried adding .ISO and .iso to the line seeker/video_library_import_filename_extensions, but now when I go to My Videos, Sage just seems to hang. I guess it may be trying to read the ISO files itself. Any ideas?

*Update* - You do need to add the extentions to the import line in sage.properties, the issue I was having was from just one ISO in the folder. Not sure why it was causing Sage to go nuts, I can mount it in Daemon tools manually, and play it fine. But all good, thanks for the tip dooms_day!

[silkshadow]

This should be a sticky or in the FAQ. Thanks Dooms_Day! Being able to mount images was sorely lacking from my meedio-less Sage setup. Can't wait to try it out on my next trip to the weekend home.

[dmidtbo]

Any way to do this using the internal DVD player?

[stanger89]

Use folders/files.

[dmidtbo]

The delete command doesn't work if you use files/folders.

[0x1a4]

Originally Posted by dmidtbo

Any way to do this using the internal DVD player?

I would think that leaving the "call dvd_player.cmd" out of media_player.cmd, then select the video in my videos. It will just mount it and stop. Go to the Sage main menu, and play DVD. It's mounted with Daemon tools, so it theoretically should work. Haven't tried it, though.

I've had a couple ISO's that I copied to the folder I specified for movies hang Sage when I go to My Videos. The ISO's are fine, I can mount them with Daemon tools and play them. Anyone else have this issue? Most of my images work fine.

[DocDrydenn]

I've played around with trying to get sagetv to use the iso image of a dvd.

In my troubleshooting, I've tried may of the ways others have listed. So far I've only been able to get it to work by using Dooms_Day's way.

Originally Posted by Dooms_Day
I have had this working since I upgraded to 4.0. I am using SageMCE, I changed the media_player.cmd to

"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0, %1
call dvd_player.cmd

and changed to dvd_player.cmd to point to TheaterTek

"C:\Program Files\TheaterTek\TheaterTek DVD 2.0\TheaterTek DVD.exe" /NOSPLASH /PL %1

I then changed the Sage.properties file to use the external player but limit it to only specified file types.
mlbdude/limit_external_to_extensions=.ISO,.iso,.mdf,.MDF,.mds,.MDS

This works fine, but I'd still like to use the internal SageTV player instead of TheaterTek.

BTW, I found a funny thing the other day and I'm not sure if anyone else has seen this.... Before I setup the external player (ie. I only had the extensions set so that sage would see the .iso file type) I tried to play the ISO. To my suprise, sagetv started to play the movie, in the ISO format! I made it to the menu of the DVD and after about 30 seconds of playing the menu, sagetv crashed to the desktop without any error messages. It was like it just did an 'Exit SageTV' command. I restarted SageTV and tried it again and it repeated the above process.

As for 0x1a4's...

Originally Posted by 0x1a4's
I would think that leaving the "call dvd_player.cmd" out of media_player.cmd, then select the video in my videos. It will just mount it and stop. Go to the Sage main menu, and play DVD. It's mounted with Daemon tools, so it theoretically should work. Haven't tried it, though.

I have tried this and it works fine. I can mound the iso by changing the media_player.cmd to "C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0, %1" I can then goto the main menu and select "Play DVD" and the movie will play just fine, inside SageTV.

Does anyone know of a way I can avoid having to return to the main menu to select "Play DVD"? Anyone know of a command I could place inside the media_player.cmd, directly after the command to mounting the iso?

[sleonard]

Change your autostart behaviour so that as soon as it's mounted, Sage starts to play it. I have never been able to get the AutoPlay tab on the DVD drive properties to function correctly or consistantly so instead I did this:

Open a folder an go to Tools/Folder Options.
Choose the File Types tab.
Choose the 3rd one down (on my system). It has None for extension and DVD for the file type.
Click the Advanced tab.
In the Actions list, delete all the existing entries and then click the New... button.
In the Action text box type: Play with &Sage
In the Application used to perform text box type: "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\SageTVClient.exe" -event 74 %1
Ok/Save your way out.

As long as Sage is already started and not sleeping, inserting a DVD or mounting one in Daemon Tools will cause the Sage DVD player to start playing the DVD automatically.

[DocDrydenn]

I must say, that idea never crossed my mind. I'll have to check it out as soon as I get home from work! It sounds like it would work without a hitch! Thanks!

[DocDrydenn]

Just wanted to say thanks. Everything is now working just as I had wanted it to! Sleonard, thanks for the tip. You have allowed me to keep the WAF high.

There is one small problem some might come across and its not really that big a deal. The whole idea of this is to make SageTV cause Daemon Tools mount the image and then have windows "Auto-Play" it using SageTV. This all works fine, but if you were to try and re-play the movie after it is already mounted, nothing would happen. Since it was already mounted windows won't see it as having changed, and will not trigger the autoplay.

How do we fix it? Glad you asked.

Simply make Daemon Tools unmount first, before mounting the selected video.

Make your media_player.cmd look like this:

"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -unmount 0
"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0, %1

First line: Daemon Tools will unmount whatever is currently mounted, if anything.
Second line: Then mount the image of the movie you want.

This unmount-mount will trigger the windows autoplay and your movie will start.

Enjoy

[DocDrydenn]

Well, don't you know, after updating my version of sage to 4.1.8b, I'm now getting hangs. It only does it when I have .iso added to the seeker/video setting in the properties.

I noticed a few of you said you were getting this too. Anyone find out what the problem was?

What I've found so far....

I have the newest java, 1.5.0_06 (I've even tried this with 1.4.10 with same results)
I have even tried reverting back to sage 4.1.7b with same results.
If I don't have .iso added, I get no problems at all. (ie no errors reported in the log)
If I add .iso, I get the java connection errors and sagetv will hang. (Server and Client, both)

Any help would be great.

[DocDrydenn]

I've spent all day trying to figure this "hang" problem out. I've found what is causing it, but not how to fix it.

Sure enough, just as 0x1a4 was having problems with some of his ISOs causing Sage to hang.... I've found that this is the same problem I have..

I removed all video/music/picture import directories. I created a new folder and set it as a video import in sage. One by one I added a movie and forced sage to refresh the imports. If sage hung, I would know which ISO file was causing the problem.

To my suprise, over half of them would cause sage to hang. This doesn't make any sense because they all worked prior to me upgrading to v4.1.8. I even went as far as doing a complete removal of SageTV and installing v4.1.7. This was still a NOGO.

I've done the best I can at comparing a "bad" ISO with a "good" ISO and could not find anything that might be causing this. BTW, there doesn't seem to be a real "bad" ISO.... I can mount it and have Sage play it just fine, just not within Sage itself.

I can't pinpoint exactly why a "bad" ISO would be causing a java connection error. I can post a log if someone is willing to take a look at it.

Any suggestions?

[DocDrydenn]

I'm beginning to think that I'm the only one left trying to get ISOs to work. Yes I know I can just use VIDEO_TS folders with IFOs and VOBs, but I would rather there just be 2 files in a single folder; the cover jpeg and the movie. So, just incase there are others out there trying to do the same thing I am, I thought I would continue to share my findings.

Anyway, I've done some more research into this and have some interesting things to report.

I mounted a Sage-friendly ISO and a Sage-hanging ISO into virtual drives and inspected both virtual discs using Ahead Nero's NeroInfoTool. I repeated this with about 6 other "bad" and 6 other "good" ISOs.

The only difference between the two, besides being different movies? Get this, the "bad" ISOs were not reporting the movie length in the Content section in the NeroInfoTool.

I thought I remembered seeing something about "duration?" in the Sage log, so I decided I should check the logs again. The problem seems to be at the point where Sage has found the ISO, determined that it is not MPEG1/2 compliant....using standard duration checking, *HANG*. This leads me to believe the hang problem has something to do with fetching the duration of the video.

Also to note, prior to doing the above, I had left Sage in a hanging state with one "bad" ISO in the video directory. After coming back to SageTV, about 10-20min later, I found that my movie was added to Sage's database and Sage was no longer hung. I proceeded to try and play the movie and it played without problems. I even went as far as restarting Sage. Movie still played without problem. Refreshed the video imports and Sage hung. After about 10-15mins Sage was un-hung and the movie was still there and still played fine. I tried adding about 5 "bad" ISOs to the import folder and Sage was hung for almost an hour before un-hanging and listing the new movies.

Conclusion: 10min scan required per "bad" ISO.
That would kill me. I have to add about 200 more "bad" ISOs. Quick Math: 200x10min = 33 hours! Thats just not going to work. Wouldn't be a problem if I never had to rescan the imports ever again, but then how would I add new video.

So, I'm now working on trying to figure out why some of my ISOs don't report the total movie length and how to go about fixing this. It's not as simple as editing an ID3 tag on a MP3.

Or, if anyone knows how to make SageTV not scan an ISO for a duration, please speak up. (I'm thinking this is a SageTV Core issue and not easily changed, so I'm putting my money on fixing the "bad" ISOs.)

[dmidtbo]

Thanks for the hard work, I too would like to be able to playback .iso images. Recently, I switched to the file/folder method because it was just easier to give in than do it right. I used to use cayars STV and .iso mounting and playback worked great but that was with v2 of Sage.

Anyhow, I had mentioned before I couldn't get the delete command to work in Sage with Files/Folders. In the sage.properties file I found out why...

directory_deletion_of_dvds_enabled=true

I had that set to false for some reason.

[DocDrydenn]

Here is a segment from my log file. I added an image, Appurushido.iso, to my video import directory. I then started a refresh of the import directory. The first line is where I started it. Notice the time: 11:35.59 At this exact point I also get the spinning sage icon in the middle of the screen and Sage is unusable at this point. This is the "hang" some of us have noticed. This spinning icon does not go away until almost about the last line @ 11:45.58 and the entry is added to the Sage library and Sage becomes usable again.

Tue 2/28 11:35:59.114 testFile=Appurushido.iso
Tue 2/28 11:35:59.146 VF GetFileDuration:\\MEDIASERVER\DVD STORAGE 1\_Compressed ISO_\Appurushido\Appurushido.iso
Tue 2/28 11:35:59.155 File is not a valid MPEG-2 PS/TS file...using standard file duration detection
Tue 2/28 11:36:28.354 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:36:54.728 PM currState=3 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:37:10.548 Ministry is waiting for 180 sec
Tue 2/28 11:37:24.716 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:37:54.710 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:38:24.703 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:38:54.696 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:39:24.690 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:39:54.683 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:40:10.507 Ministry is waiting for 180 sec
Tue 2/28 11:40:24.675 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.688 Seeker awoken
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.689 MARK 1 currRecord=null enc=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture clients=[] ir=false
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.689 Seeker in AUTOMATIC mode nextRecord=A[53632,53098,"That '70s Show",15222@0228.19:00,30] nextTTA=26122311
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.689 newRecord=null
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.689 NOTHING TO RECORD FOR NOW...
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.692 VF processing job null nPlayin=false
Tue 2/28 11:40:37.692 VF thread is now waiting for 0:00:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:43:10.567 Ministry is waiting for 180 sec
Tue 2/28 11:45:56.904 Added:MediaFile[id=80051 A[80054,80052,"Appurushido/Appurushido",0@0224.09:41,0] host=mediaserver encodedBy= \\MEDIASERVER\DVD STORAGE 1\_Compressed ISO_\Appurushido\Appurushido.iso, Seg0[Fri 2/24 9:41:39.448-Fri 2/24 9:41:39.449]]
Tue 2/28 11:45:56.906 New Library Video File MediaFile[id=80051 A[80054,80052,"Appurushido/Appurushido",0@0224.09:41,0] host=mediaserver encodedBy= \\MEDIASERVER\DVD STORAGE 1\_Compressed ISO_\Appurushido\Appurushido.iso, Seg0[Fri 2/24 9:41:39.448-Fri 2/24 9:41:39.449]]
Tue 2/28 11:45:56.913 Seeker clearing unwanted and partial files...
Tue 2/28 11:45:56.913 Seeker waiting for 425 mins.
Tue 2/28 11:45:56.914 PM currState=0 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:45:56.970 PM currState=3 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:45:57.369 PM currState=3 wakeupTime=Tue 2/28/2006 18:54:00.000
Tue 2/28 11:45:57.602 Seeker invoking System.gc()
Tue 2/28 11:45:57.882 Seeker System.gc() done
Tue 2/28 11:45:57.993 ImageUtils loading file \\MEDIASERVER\DVD STORAGE 1\_Compressed ISO_\Appurushido\folder.jpg
Tue 2/28 11:45:58.000 ImageUtils creating BI copy sun.awt.image.ToolkitImage@ec4462
Tue 2/28 11:45:58.000 ImageUtils creating scaled masked copy width=82 height=117 mask=null BufferedImage@3778cf: type = 2 DirectColorModel: rmask=ff0000 gmask=ff00 bmask=ff amask=ff000000 IntegerInterleavedRaster: width = 98 height = 140 #Bands = 4 xOff = 0 yOff = 0 dataOffset[0] 0
Tue 2/28 11:46:10.531 Ministry is waiting for 180 sec

I've even deleted the "bad" ISO I already had and went back to the original disk to re-rip a new ISO. I've tried many different ripping programs. All results are the same. Each of the ISOs I've made still, when mounted and viewed with NeroInfoTool, still show "n/a" where the length, format, etc... data should be. I haven't been able to find a way to edit these fields. All of my working ISOs have correct data in these fields. (see attached pics to understand what I'm refering to)

Any Ideas?

[evolart]

So does anyone have this working 100%? I would really love to be able to open my movie images just like I can do on my xbox.

[DocDrydenn]

Just as an update, I have had no luck in finding any way to change the metadata in the ISOs. I've tried many different ISO softwares, yet none seem to address this metadata that is causing sage to choke. I believe, I have exhausted my resorces in finding the way to do this. I have found a workaround, but is not really worth it. (see #2 below)

So what am I to do with the "bad" 200+ ISOs I already have? Well, its simple. I am left with no other choice but to extract them all into VIDEO_TS folders. At this point I will have two options:

1. I can leave them that way and Sage will play them just fine. (Just not the way I would prefer to store them.)
2. I can use Ahead Nero (The only program I have found to "fix" the metadata.) to create a NRG image file.
-2a. Convert NRG to ISO or
-2b. Setup Sage to see NRG files just like the ISO files. (Daemon Tools can mount NRG files the same as ISO.)

BTW, anyone wishing to do #2.... its not as simple as you may think. I will spare everyone the step-by-step instructions, because I don't think anyone will really want to do this. It is quite involved and not really worth it; at least not to me and my 200+ ISOs.

So......Lets summarize.

• It seems to be unknown as to how some ISO files get created without the proper metadata.

• Without this metadata, Sage will "hang" 10mins per ISO file being imported into the library. (This is additive; 2 ISO = 20min, 3 ISO = 30min, and so on)

• While this extended import is in process, Sage is unusable.

• Server and Client machines are both effected in this "hang" state.

• I have not been able to find a way to edit/change the metadata of the ISO without a complete recode of the files. (ie. remake the DVD)

As for myself, I think I've spent to much time on this idea.
There doesn't seem to be a demand for this to work since everyone else is using the VIDEO_TS folder way.

I consider this idea dead unless someone can find a way to correct the ISO metadata or Sage changes the program's core to better handle the files.

"Hey, at least I tried, right?"