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[JohnT]

I have a couple of ripped DVD's on my computer which import as a bunch of separate VOB's rather than a single movie in MC.  I did some investigation and found that they were both missing the VIDEO_TS.IFO file which is necessary according to the DVD spec and it's what Media Center keys off of for importing a DVD movie.  I can think of 4 reasons this file is missing:

1. I accidentally deleted it at some point in the past (dumb).
2. Media Center overwrote it somehow (bad).
3. The ripper was unable to copy it because of a scratched disc or some weird copy protection scheme.
4. The file is not required by the DVD spec. and was never provided on the disc (I may be wrong about the spec. but I doubt it

Please post in this thread if you've had similar DVD import problems.  If it's at all common, we could make some improvements to handle this better.  For example, in my case, there was a VIDEO_TS.BUP file available which is an exact copy of the IFO and Media Center could automatically use that if the IFO file is missing.

[BartMan01]

What are you using to rip the DVDs?

Two options (if you can't recreate the IFO from the BUP):
Re-rip the DVD's with the full file structure intact.
Use a program to join the separate VOB files that contain the movie into one VOB file.

[JohnT]

Thanks BartMan.  I'm not actually looking to fix these two rips - I can easily do it with the backup "BUP" files.  I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen this situation so I can gauge how common it is and whether Media Center should handle it better.

[BartMan01]

What did you rip with?  Did you use MC or another program?  If you used another program you need to find out from them why you are missing the .ifo files.

MC expects the full file structure of the DVD to be there, and the .ifo file is a required/key file in the DVD file layout.  IMHO, MC is doing exactly what it 'should' do:  if the .ifo file is present, use that.  If not, assume the directory is just plain VOB files and use those.  It is not uncommon to rip DVD's to individual VOB files per title (on in some cases like concert DVDs per chapter).

[JohnT]

I ripped with MC.  If there are just a bunch of VOB's, sure we should handle them as separate.  But what if we have a file called "VIDEO_TS.BUP" alongside these VOB's but no VIDEO_TS.IFO?  We know that VIDEO_TS.BUP is just a backup copy of VIDEO_TS.IFO, so why not see if we can use that file?  That's what hardware DVD players will do if the disc is scratched so they can't read VIDEO_TS.IFO.