Sage Playing a DVD Folder

[srothwell]

Is there a way to have SageTV playback a DVD folder?

In other words, rip the DVD then be able to play it back without having the disc in the drive?

I tried it, but I can't get it to add it to the imported videos.

Is there another way?

Thanks,

Stacy

[kny3twalker]

you can add .vob to the list of imported files
but you need to rip the movie as one long file
and if it is a dual layer movie it does not play back correctly only single layer movie playback right
you can do Video_TS and rip the movie with DVDshrink and it should play the DVD from the video_TS folder (never got this to work but told it should)

[srothwell]

How do you rip to one long file? Do you mean a single VOB?

Normally the rip would just copy all the files the way they are on the DVD media. Is there some other program that stitches them together?

Thanks

[Grey_Goose]

Stacy -

You should be able to just rip them to folders

DVD_NAME
AUDIO_TS
VIDEO_TS

Sage should be reading the contents of the folder (if they're in your Imports) and showing the folders as playable movies.

I am constantly moving DVD folders into my master import directory w/out problems, how are you going about it?

- In answer to your other question, a lot of ripping software have options to split the movies into 1gb files; by disabling this you get the monster vobs...

[stanger89]

See the link in my sig

[kny3twalker]

smart ripper will allow
chapters, the files from the DVD, sized increments, or one large file

but no one seems to like smart ripper because of the problem where Sage cannot play back the video_TS folder correctly
yet winDVD does it fine (also winDVD would play back the dual layer ripped DVDs fine as well)
I still think it is a bug that Sage will not playback dual layer ripped DVDs/.vobs in the library

I would suggest using DVDshrink since everyone loves it
hopefully it will have the same options
(I have not tired it yet but plan on it, and probably will disconitnue use of smartripper if it works as everyone reports)

[mls]

kny3twalker -

Does selecting a different player decoder within SageTV have any effect on which types or sets of DVD files it can work with? Or is that handled stictly by the SageTV core?

I don't own enough DVD's to make it worth trying on my end, but still do wonder how it handles things.

[kny3twalker]

no selecting a different decoder would not make it so Sage can playback a vob that was ripped from a dual layer DVD

it is the player that must do it correctly

I would say go the DVDshrink way and use the video_TS folder rather than importing vobs like I was attempting

[mls]

tnx for the tip. I do have DVDShrink, but have only used it few times. As I said, I just don't own enough DVD's (yet) to really need to collect them on a hard drive.

Normally, I use PowerDVD to play DVD's (only because it let's me change the Pan'n'Scan of letterboxed 16:9 to full screen 4:3). Although I have watched a few DVD's thru SageTV also (which didn't seem to work all that bad either really).

Kind of busy testing other things right now, but someday I'll give DVDShrink a try the way you suggested just to see how it works out with SageTV.

Again, TNX for the tip.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
no selecting a different decoder would not make it so Sage can playback a vob that was ripped from a dual layer DVD

I've never had a problem with Sage playing any of the DVDs I ripped, that includes all the LOTR disks, and probably a bunch of other DL disks.

As for SR, I've never had luck with any ripper other than DVD Shrink when ripping only parts of DVDs, all the other rippers I've tried did not (or not correctly) build an new video_ts.ifo.

You have to be carefull that you rip to a DVD compliant format, AFAIK the DVD spec doesn't support files over 1GB so players that adhere strictly to the spec don't like larger files.

[srothwell]

Thanks for the info......

When I go to Imported Video items, all I get is a folder called "VIDEO_TS".

Is there a way to name it so I can understand what's in the folder?

Thanks

[stanger89]

Sounds like something didn't import right if that's all you got.

Can you give an example of the path of one of your DVD rips and maybe it's contents?