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[DanielEKFA]

Hey hey

Been happily using MC since 8.0, recently upgraded to v13, and I'm putting ALL my media stuff on my new mega-insane-12-TB-media-center-crazy-thing, of course powered by MC13

One thing that I'm puzzled by, though, is that I can't play back VOB files I've ripped from my DVDs using Smartripper. The reason I'm puzzled is that I've noticed that MC uses the DirectShow filters I've installed, such as ffdshow, and I think that VOB files are splitted by the Haali splitter which I've also got installed, so I kinda expected everything to be just dandy, but not really, I can't get MC to play back .vob files.

I'm kinda asking if there's something I can do to get .vob files to just play back the way they do in MPCHC, because although it's feasible to remux everything into .mkv files to get them into my new mega-storage, it really sucks to do so because I have to manually fix audio sync issues, extract subtitles, and stuff, and AFAICT when vob files are just "dumped", then everything "just works" But maybe that's just something with MPCHC?

Anyway, the most übercool feature, of course, would be to be able to play back an .iso file created from a DVD, but this is not really a feature request (lord knows, MC13 already is the most feature-filled (and the best) media player out there).

Just kinda wondering about this .vob issue. Or maybe if there's another approach I should take.

Thanks a lot

[DanielEKFA]

Okey dokey... Found meself a solution, me dids!

For anyone else wondering, you should look into the standalone filters from the MPC-HC, or Media Player Classic Home Cinema, project:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=170561&package_id=264678

I've always made it my standard approach to install Haali Media Splitter (for Matroska .mkv and such), ffdshow Tryout, then MPCHC, but it seems Haali might not be necessary after all. First of all, MPCHC now has built-in support for nearly everything, including Matroska, but for all other DirectShow based applications, including Media Center, you can use the filters from the above URL to get the combined media support of Haali and MPCHC, both with regards to splitters and decoders. You still probably want ffshow Tryout though

I.e., for VOB playback support in MC, just download the MpegSplitter package, extract it, open a command prompt and write
    regsvr32 "[path to where you extracted the MpegSplitter.ax file]/MpegSplitter.ax"

Same deal for MKVs and other stuff, just get the filters from the URL above and do the regsvr32 thing

Man, I just made MC even better! **, tehs 4ppz rul0rz!

[DanielEKFA]

Hmmm, sorry for this constant posting, just want to add that for some files I seem to have to add a different extension, e.g. "madagascar.vob" => "madagascar.vob.mkv" to make Media Center want to try to open it.

Not sure what this is related to, but Windows Media Player behaves the same way, although MPCHC opens the file either way. Maybe WMP and MC just discards the .vob file due to its extension?

Anyway, you might have to do this, too

[Alex B]

Are you speaking about vob files that are a part of the "DVD in a VIDEO_TS folder" file structure or about self-contained "vob" video files that don't need supporting files and don't preserve the DVD menu and other DVD features?.

In either case there are several DirectShow filter combinations that should work fine.

However, as you said, it is better to use some other filename extension with self-contained video files. For MPEG2 "vob" files .mpg would be more correct than .mkv.

[DanielEKFA]

Hi Alex,

Yes, I'm talking about just one vob file, not the entire TS folder. I'm not sure about the "needing supporting files", though, I pretty much just ripped them from my DVDs with SmartRipper, asking it not to split the vob file, so that I end up with one big one with just the feature film, including different audio streams and subtitles.

If I delete the .idx, .d2v and other files, I can play them back just fine, so I guess I don't need the extra files... But what about this .mpg file extension, I agree that it would be more semantically correct, but still not right, though? Now that I have your attention, I might as well ask - is a .vob like an .mpg container, a .ts "transport stream" thing, or is it something completely its own?

Thanks

[DanielEKFA]

Also, I might add, the reason for wanting this one file rather than the entire TS folder, is that it makes it easier to move the files around. I always use the built-in renaming tools in MC to organize my files (fantastic tools, by the way, as are the in-line list renaming/tagging functions (second to none)), and AFAIK, you can't move supporting files around, too, can you? With Library Tools -> Move/Rename, that is?

[Alex B]

A "vob" file is in the MPEG container and its mpeg type is "program stream" with some possible additional limitations and specifications in the private streams. After you have created a single vob file from the many vob files on a DVD disc it is a self-contained MPEG video file.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VOB


I too prefer to create self-contained video files of those DVDs I want to store on a hard drive. Though I usually recompress them with the Xvid or x264 codec to save disk space (and create avi or mkv files instead of mpeg). Sometimes I create separate video files from, for instance, the extras or the individual TV series episodes.

[DanielEKFA]

Ah, cool! Thanks for the info

I too make the extras on the discs separate files, but I don't transcode anymore. ATM I have ~15 TB of storage space, so no need for that

Thanks again