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[Sam]

Another post reminded me of something I'd been wanting to try with MC.  I've used MC for playing video files on my TV, but I haven't done much with DVDs because it's just as easy to stick the disc in my DVD player.

I have a lot of hard drive space, and I'd like to rip my DVD collection to my hard drive and play them as DVDs (and not as just video files).  

I know that MC can't do the ripping, but I'm pretty sure that I could find an app that can.  I'm wondering, once I do that, is there a way to get MC to recognize a set of files on my hard drive as a DVD and allow me to play it, as if it were a real DVD (with menus, subtitles, etc.)?

[Sundog_AK]

Yes, it will play files if you can get them off the DVD and onto the drive.  You just have to make sure if you are moving as "VOB" files that you have the same "Video_TS" path structure as on the DVD.  The other way is to convert the movie to one ISO file (rather than a bunch of VOB files). I convert to ISO files and mount the ISO file as virtual drive and it works fine within MC 9.1.  ISO files are easier to manage if you want the whole disc intact with all features and are not going to strip out anything.  

However, unless you go to all the bother to strip out portions of movies that you don't need (extra features, foreign language soundtrack), or you compress to reduce size (and quality of picture), you are still looking at around 6 to 8 GIGs a movie.  At around a $1 a GIG for drive space, it is still pricey to do this when you figure you can buy a 400 Disc DVD changer for substantially less.  I have been using DVDLobby which allows you to mix changers with hard drive files but appears from the front end as all one system (user doesn't need to know where the file /disc is located). However, I use ZoomPlayer as the player rather that MC for that purpose.

[Sam]

Thanks Sundog.  I'll try to get a few DVDs on my hard drive... but to do my entire library, getting a DVD changer is a lot smarter.  But then, I guess I can't use MC as the front-end for everything.  I can live with that.  Thanks for the dose of reality.

[xen-uno]

You can cut a typical DVD down from 8 GB to < 4GB if you decide which format to extract (widescreen or fullscreen) and by killing all the non-essential xtras. DVD-Decryptor will tell you everything about the chapters contained within the DVD (such as format). For instance, on the Freaky Friday DVD, there is 19 chapters. VTS_1 (and the sub-chapters VTS_1_x) contain all the widescreen video (highlight the chapter ifo file, right click and select Video Information). Playing around with Decryptor sheds alot of light on DVD structure. I just started playing around with the video end of it today...trying to do the same thing you are, Sam.

10^-27

[Sundog_AK]

DVD Decrypter is a great along with DVD Shrink and other programs to reduce the size down.  For me, I just found that it was more hassle than it was worth in time vs space reduction.  At least for the movies I fiddled around with (only 6 or 7 as a test), I wasn't getting big reductions in size since most were not "dual" wide screen/full screen.  The audio track removals didn't seem to save much.  

I loved getting all my CDs on one central system and MC 9.1 with MusicLobby works great.  I had hoped to do the same for my DVDs too but even at 4 gigs a piece, I was looking at about 700 gigs of space (2 to 3 drives).  I saw a Sony 400 DVD changer for about $350.  The biggest "reasonably priced" hard drive I have seen is a 300 gig Maxstor drive (OEM) for about $270.  But even then,  I would need roughly 1.6 terabytes of drive space to equal one disc changer.      For me, that cost differential coupled with having to get it into a server tower, issues with noise, heat, etc, sort of made me decide to wait until +500 gig drives are the "norm".  Who would have thought that a PC home user would ever need multi terabytes of drive space..haha.       Ahhh... I remember paying $700 for a 70 megabyte (yes meg!) drive in my new Mac SE (college days..some time ago!) and thinking that would be more than I would ever need.