Question about burning DVDs to hard drive to use on SageTV server

[Genxnurse]

Many thanks for any responses.

I want to back up my 4 year olds huge collection of DVDs to my newly built (from old parts) SageTV server. My weekend project that seems like it is going to take weeks. I have 2 750gig drives and a 250 gig OS drive on the server.

I did a search and it seems like DVDShrink, DVDFab and AnyDVD were the preferred methods.

I used Barbie & the Diamond Princess.

I tried DVDFab and it gave me 4 VOB files (4.7 gig) in the video TS folder and when I put them on the server I had to select each file to play it. Is there a way to make DVDFab do one big file and if so is one big VOB file the best method for quality? Is there any advantage to keeping these huge VOB files instead of using say WMV or is there a preferred format? I don't want to spend all this time making these huge VOB files if there is a better or preferred file type. I don't see much of a point of using DVDFab if I have to use DVDShrink to merge the VOB files into one.

I then used DVDShrinK with re-author command and it allowed me to output to one big VOB file that was like 4.7 gig. Am I doing this right or should I be making the files smaller? Also do you find menus to be necessary or is WAF fine just having the movies?

Is AnyDVD worth the bazillion dollars that it costs? Will it output to one big VOB file or whatever file type that I need?

What file structure works well in sage? Are all the movies in one big folder or do you split them up? If you split them up what are the categories that you use?

Many thanks for any help with this project.
GenXNurse

[paulbeers]

Did you take the entire folder structure that DVDFab created? Should be something like this:

DVDFAB>Full Movie>Batman Begins > Audit_TS (no files exists)
DVDFAB>Full Movie>Batman Begins > Video_TS (VOBS and IFO's should be in here)

If you point Sage to the Full Movie directory listed above, then go to the Media Center and select Videos then select DVD from the top of the screen (if using standard Sage menus). You should then see the Batman Begins Icon in there and selecting that will play back the whole movie.

[Genxnurse]

I am using standard SageTV on the server and I am playing back the movies on a Hauppauge MVP. I got the audio and video TS files but I had to go into the TS file on the MVP to play the movie. The movies don't seem to come up under DVD but I do see them under folders. Perhaps its the way I imported them into sage? I copied them into the video file in windows and then did a search for media in sage. Could this be the problem? Or could it be due to using an MVP for playback?

Or is this something solved by SageMC? If so I may give it a try as it seems to handle video menus much better. I just wanted to get everything stable in sage before I tried adding bells and whistles. My daughter said today "daddy's computers are always broken." That did wonders for my WAF.

Thanks for the help.

GenXNurse

[Opus4]

Appendix I of the SageTV PDF manual in your install directory describes the file layout SageTV looks for when importing hard drive based DVDs. And this FAQ about keeping the VOB files smaller than 1 GB may or may not apply.

- ANdy

[Genxnurse]

Thanks so much

I printed up all 276+ pages of the manual and even highlighted parts of Appendix I. I set up my video import directory but I went astray in the file structure by not putting the video TS files directly below the Movie file as appendix I clearly points out. I didn't think that getting rid of the empty full movie file that DVDFab created would solve the problems I was having with multiple VOB files but it did the trick. So I guess DVDFab is a great tool as I don't need to make one big VOB file.

Thanks again,

GenXNurse