I've got a quick question for the MythTv veterans.

Those of you who rip your DVD's to the hard drive do you play them as ISO's or do you use mplayer to view the video_ts directory. I am told that mplayer will parse vob's is this true?

Thanks,

I know that xine will since it's what I use to check DVD images prepared from OTA recordings before burning them, I would assume that mplayer will too.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm trying to get an idea of what might be the best (easiest) method for viewing ripped DVD's.

There's no direct support for it in Myth, but I've read that some folks have configured it to rip ISOs to the hard disk and then play them will full menu support with Xine. The disk space requirements are highest with this approach, since you are not re-encoding the movie and keeping all of the optional material. But this sounds like the "purest" approach to a DVD changer. I plan to take this approach. Someday. When I have time. (yeah, right!)

_________________
Do you code to live, or live to code?
Search LinHES forum through Google

Well,
I've been trying that myself. This has been my approach:

I don't have a dvd-r drive on my Myth box but I do on my debian box. So I tried ripping dvd's then converting them to iso (I've had a hell of a time just getting that to work using mkisofs or gwisofs, mkisofs will not create the iso with dvd structure if I use the -dvd-video option but if I use just -udf then it seems to work. If I try to use the ripped video_ts directory, I have to choose a vob file and correct me if I'm wrong but xine doesn't parse the vobs so it stops when the vob you selected is finished.

I just want to point-and-click the dvd I want to view and it play with full menu support.

When I try to copy an iso greater than 2GB over to my Mythbox via NFS, I get an I/O error. I guess it doesn't like the size. So I ripped one of my home dvd's (only 1.3GB) and turned it into an iso with mkisofs (without the -dvd-video option) and it worked.

If I could somehow get xine to scan for the beginning vob and parse them for a dvd video_ts dir, it would be nice to just pop a DVD movie in let it rip to the hard drive and then allow me to easily select it.

I just would like to know which method Myth users have had more success with including some pro's and cons.

L8R