How best to setup home recordings on hard drive so I can watch with PowerDVD

IAN

Newbie Joined: Jun 21, 2010 21:18 Messages: 2 Offline

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Jun 21, 2010 21:32

I have hundreds of shows and movies that I have recorded off of TV for the last several years. They are all burned onto DVD's, each with a title and some chapters. I have no problem running them in a DVD player with PowerDVD. But I have recent bought a large hard drive, so that I don't have to locate and shuffle these DVD's any more. I want to be able to view them when they have been copied onto the drive. The question is: how best to do this? I know of two ways:
1) Copy each disk as an ISO file to disk and then use an ISO mounter such as Virtual Clone Drive, and have PowerDVD view it (within Windows Media Center, which is another of my requiremnets). I have set up and installed Media Browser (an add-on to Windows Media Center), and it does this OK after a slight delay.
2) Copy the DVD as a set of VIDEO files to a folder on the drive. I have not been able to get POwerDVD to play the files this way. At most, I can force it to play the files one at a time. Is there a better way of configuring PowerDVD to play DVD files on a hard drive, or does it only work with ISO files??

One other thing about the ISO appoach. I need to be able to view the DVD files from a second PC on my home network, via Windows Media Center. This works for MPG files, but the mounting of the ISO files over the network fails! So, unless there is another way to manage the ISO problem, that way won't work either.

Does anyone know how to set up my home DVD collection on a hard drive so that I can do what I want?
Thanks in advance.

RONALD

Newbie Joined: Jun 21, 2010 22:27 Messages: 4 Offline

Jun 22, 2010 22:25

If it were me, I would rip your shows back to mpg format. If they're just recorded TV shows, the menu structure is not really that important. I've done this with ALL of my DVD's as trying to mount ISO's over a network just isn't worth the hassle (and doesn't work with extenders anyway). Use a program like Magic DVD Ripper to get your titles back in mpg format and then set those up in a folder structure that Media Browser likes (once you use MB, you'll wonder what you ever did without it!) and you're good to go.

I have 3TB of TV and movies done like this and my wife LOVES it!

IAN

Newbie Joined: Jun 21, 2010 21:18 Messages: 2 Offline

Jun 22, 2010 23:17

A quick question: My home-made DVD's all have a title page which dynamically leads to a series of chapters (click on an arrow on the title page, and it leads you to another screen or series of screens that have chapter heading icons. If you click on one of these icons, it leads you to that chapter). I don't mind losing this structure at all. My worry is that if I convert everything to mpegs, it sounds like the display might be frozen at the opening screen, which is definitely what I don't want!!!. Thanks.

RAC

Newbie Joined: Dec 04, 2009 13:34 Messages: 9 Offline

Jun 27, 2010 13:30

If these are true DVD format you should have an VIDEO_TS.IFO file and several .VOB files in VIDEO_TS folder .

If you double click on VIDEO_TS.IFO file Power DVD should open and play the directed .VOB files.

You can create a shortcut of the VIDEO_TS.IFO file and rename it for the movie/program you made.

Most TV tuner cards create .mpg or .ts files both of which are playable by PowerDVD.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jun 27. 2010 13:59