I did it - I saw it - and it worked! Honest!
JLee,
I am not doubting your personal success, however, I can't duplicate it and I do know what I am doing when it comes to backing up my personal DVD movie collection to HDD.
Just in case, JimH or Matt or JohnT or anyone else interested reads these posts, I will explain the problem one last time.
Step 1: Use a good ripping program like DVD Decrypter to perform a COMPLETE (meaning all files on the dvd) file mode (not an IFO mode) backup of your "owned" movie(s) to HDD and correctly store all the ripped video files (VOB, IFO, BUP) for each movie in a "VIDEO_TS" folder like (D:\THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD\VIDEO_TS).
Note: DVD DeCrypter will do all of this automatically for you, ie, create the correct folder names and structure and place all the correct video files in the correct folders, provided you select MODE: File and set TOOLS: Settings: File Mode: Select Files = ALL.
Step2: (optional) use DVDShrink to further compress the movie to save HDD space or to reauthor the movie omitting menus and extras to save even more HDD space.
At this point you have a fully playable movie on your HDD using any commercially available DVD Software player by loading all the files in the VIDEO_TS folder into the software player using "file mode". The movie will play back flawlessly on a properly setup computer.
Step 3: Open MC and navigate MC's internal directory tree to "My Computer". Select the drive where your movie's VIDEO_TS is located. Click on the VIDEO_TS folder and MC 10.0.38 will pop up a window stating "Gathering Information and Updating View". After a few seconds the database window in MC will show a listing of files (i.e. VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.IFO, VTS 01 0.BUP, VTS 01 0.IFO, DVD Title 1 (32 chapters). dvd).
Step 4: Select all the files and add them to "Playing Now". At this point try to play the movie. Press "Play" and a window pops up stating "Gathering Information and Updating View" and you "hear", for a brief second, the beginning sounds (no picture) of the movie and then nothing. In the "Playing Now" dual pane windows in MC you have a blank upper window and a lower window with the single filename: "DVD Title 1 (32 chapters).dvd". I have no idea what this file "DVD Title 1 (32 chapters).dvd" is since it is not created by DVD DeCrypter. I assume that this file must be referring to the actual movie VOB's (VTS 01.1.VOB, VTS 01.2.VOB, VTS 01.3.VOB and VTS 01.4.VOB).
Anyway, all I am trying to point out, is that: (1) MC's "Options/File Associations" does not have settings for "VOB", "IFO" and "BUP" files; and (2) that you simply can not get MC to play intact (read this to mean DVD DeCrypter FILE Mode ripped) movies using the method I have described above.
I am not saying that you can't do it by renaming VOB's to mpeg. However, this is not the way good software dvd players play movies on a HDD, so I don't think it should be the way to do it in MC as a workaround.
Finally, I realize that MC10 is not presently designed to playback movies on HDD; only from the actual DVD itself using a third party software player.
My only request is that MC10 should eventually have the capability to either play movies on HDD natively (which would increase MC's cost) or with the help of a third party dvd software player. IMO the latter would be preferrable, since we all seem to have our preferences as to which dvd software player is best and this would keep the cost of MC down.