A DVD Jukebox Without the DVDs? 53
Malphaedrius asks: "I'm moving into a friends house with limited storage space and small children with curious fingers. I have decided to make a DVR running Linux and MythTV for two reasons. First, I want a DVR (who doesn't). Second, I want to take our collaborative DVD collections and get them out of the living room, away from grabbing hands. The question, after such a long declaration of intent, is can one rip a DVD and compress it without losing the special features and menus? I don't mind losing them but it would be nice to not have to dig out the discs if I want to listen to the director's commentary. Granted special features and multiple tracks will greatly increase the storage space needed and may be a bad idea in retrospect, but it would be nice to have the option. Has anyone built anything remotely similar to this? If so, how well has it worked?"
Never Done this but ... (Score:1)
Of course Id either find or write an Application that could add DVDs, and then play them.
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:2)
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:2)
Now, if you were going to do lossy compression, that's another matter, but you can't do that to an entire ISO, because ISOs contain info other than audiovisual, which wouldn't be decompressed properly, meaning the image won't play.
Instead of going to the hassle of figuring out how to get the same ISO, but with lossy compression of the audiovisual content, you should probably just invest in a couple o
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:2)
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:2)
you could decompress the mpeg to raw AVI or something but that would just be silly and you would lose the ISO
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:1)
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:2)
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:1)
Look at it this way. The idea is to get as much movie on a DVD as possible. The people who invented MPEG2 went through a LOT of trouble to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the format. If it were possible to zip an MPEG2 stream to get better compression, that leads to the conslusion: the MPEG2 format was not very good to begin with.
Of course, it IS possible to get better compression using MPEG4, but that is a special-purpose an
Re:Never Done this but ... (Score:2)
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
I built one... (Score:5, Interesting)
... and it's great.
My main reason for wanting to build a DVD jukebox with MythTV was so my kids could watch movies without them destroying their favorite DVDs. It works very well. Even my three year-old can navigate the menus and find the movies he wants without assistance (he insists on it, actually -- gets mad if you do it for him) and without damaging anything.
As for keeping special features and menus, I don't know. If you have plenty of disk space, just store the raw ISO image and xine and mplayer will do the right thing with it. Theoretically, it shouldn't be too hard to rip all of the titles from the DVD, recompress them all, and then remaster a new, smaller ISO image that still has all of the features. I don't know of anything that does it, though.
In my case, I really don't *want* the menus. I want a list of movies and when I pick the one I want, I want it to play the movie, period. No waiting two minutes for the funky intro to play through so the menu items appear. No previews. No nothing, just the movie. YMMV, of course. On the rare occasions I do want to watch some of the other features, I pull the disk off the shelf. But I have lots of shelves [willden.org], so that may not work as well for you.
BTW, in case you're interested, here are the specs on my system:
I still need to add an IR receiver and an IR transmitter. The receiver so that I can use a remote control (right now I'm using a wireless keyboard. It works fine, but I still want a more "traditional" remote) and the transmitter so that I can configure the MythTV box to automatically power the TV and audio receiver on and off.
Re:I built one... (Score:2)
You know, I've noticed that myself about gig-e. At my last job I was repairing DVRs that had 100b-T and gig-e and I honestly couldn't tell the difference, even with the 100b-T unplugged and the gig-e connected via a 7' crossover cable.
Pretty disappointing. Even through our old, copper based, fibrechannel hub we still got roughly double 100b-T performance, and that was on an old, ISA based system with 5400 rpm scsi dr
Re:I built one... (Score:2)
At my last job I was repairing DVRs that had 100b-T and gig-e and I honestly couldn't tell the difference, even with the 100b-T unplugged and the gig-e connected via a 7' crossover cable.
Oh, I can definitely tell the difference on all of my other Gig-E links. But the one to my Myth box (which is a much longer cable, probably 70'), only runs at 100Mbps -- when the network card driver loads it reports a 100Mbps connection, and the switch also shows a 100Mbps connection (yellow light instead of green ligh
Re:I built one... (Score:1)
Using two Intel EEPro1000MT, a NetGear GA302(?) and an el cheapo Fry's special GigE 8-port switch and single drives (no RAID/LVM) on PATA or SATA.
Re:I built one... (Score:2)
I run GigE between two Win32 platforms and my Linux fileserver. I still manage to get about 20-40MB (megabytes)/s between the systems when reading or writing to disks over the LAN.
Yep, it's kind of funny that your disks are the bottleneck, not the network, isn't it? I realized a while back that with Gig-E (which really is cheap) there's basically no performance difference between local and remote storage. Given that, I'm moving towards centralizing storage as much as possible. I might even make my de
Re:I built one... (Score:1)
I did it and it's really easy!
Dug
try dvd shrink (Score:4, Informative)
Re:try dvd shrink (Score:4, Informative)
It lets you delete or retain menus and components, and do (lossy) compression without transcoding.
Re:try dvd shrink (Score:2, Informative)
one possible method (Score:1)
1. burn each DVD to an ISO image
2. mount each ISO image to the filesystem
3. figure out how to get MythTV to read them and show them in the menu and play them
Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:2)
"Because it's shiny"
As the father of a 1 year old, I can't find out what the modern equivilant of a PB&J-sandwich-in-the-VCR is.
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:3, Funny)
On a semi-related note, the sa
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, I believe my exact words at the time were: "Okay, that's it, we have to give it away..."
Wife: "The whole CD changer?"
Me: "Hell no, the kid. I might be able to fix the changer, but the kid's obviously broken."
Then my daughter, being the comedian she is, climbs into the garbage can in the kitchen and says she wants to ride in the garbage truck, just to make me feel bad.
It could be I use the whole "These children are terrible! How's th
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:1)
Are you familiar with the work of Jeff Vogel [ironycentral.com]?
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:2)
I really hate to say this, but you need to be careful with what you say around her. Those are the kinds of things that kids remember for a very very very long time, usually on a subconscious level.
Obviously you're not a parent, or, at best, you're a new one.
All parents and children occasionally say hurtful things to each other. As long as the balance is heavily tilted to the good, that doesn't cause damage. If parents don't show enough love in general, then kids may have problems, and they will pro
Re:Speaking as a parent geek... (Score:3, Funny)
"Walmart!" says my older daughter;
"Loblaws!" says my younger one.
Teacher looks at me, perplexed. Older daughter adds: "I was on sale!"
Damaged? Sure, but they're cute!
DVD menus from remote ripped images (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DVD menus from remote ripped images (Score:2, Informative)
im doing the same thing...sorda... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.doom9.net/ [doom9.net]
granted most of the software is based for a windows box...but if you go to the forums you can find a section dedicated for mac and *nix users...that should help you alot....
as far as keeping all the spicial features, its possible, the easiest way, rip to iso, and then mount... but if you want to compress them to mp4, you may lose the little extra vidoe bits (unless you rip those seperatly)...but keeping the extra languages audio tracks and the sub tracks isnt that big of a deal.
i know the
I already have a TiVo but... (Score:2)
Good luck!
DVDRemakePro (Score:1, Informative)
Space, the final frontier ... (Score:3, Informative)
I've got DVD Shrink [dvdshrink.org] installed on all my Windows machines so that when I get a new batch of discs in, I can rip them in parallel. I also strip off CSS and Macrovision at that time so that the resulting set of files on the media server is unencumbered. For playback, I use Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net] (again in Windows) to display the shows although I've verified that vlc and mplayer will also play them. I used to be able to use Apple's DVD player software on a mini, but after upgrading to Tiger and getting the latest version of the DVD player software, it won't let me play off the fileserver anymore (damn the MPAA).
Be ready to shell out some serious bucks for storage space as not doing transcoding/trimming puts some serious hurt on a pile of drives. I've ripped just shy of 300 discs (297 to be exact) and have eaten 1.6 TB out of my 1.8 TB array.
My dream is to be able to just pop the disc into a machine and have it rip the contents, decrypt and drop Macrovision and then spit the disc back out but I've not figured out a nice way to do that yet. I also want to add more storage but I've maxed out the current case and cases with lots of drive bays [rackmountpro.com] are quite spendy.
Re:Space, the final frontier ... (Score:2)
extremely low tech but quick solution (Score:2)
It will take weeks to rip a big collection, the wallets might be a good stop-gap solution anyhow.
Re:extremely low tech but quick solution (Score:2)
Quick answer (Score:2)
However, one *can* rip the various video segements of a DVD without any hassle with mythdvd and store them. Eg, the "making of" sections of DVD's.
You can also select which audio track to rip, although I believe you cannot rip multi-track (that is, standard audio and a commentary track) with the mythdvd ripper. You can rip different versions of a movie with (for example) the directors commentary as
dd? (Score:2)
dd if=/dev/hdc of=~/name_of_movie.iso
...should work. Just mount the image instead of the device and use it as you normally would.
Re:dd? (Score:2)
now, if some smart apple was to make a libdvd(?)-aware version of DD, that would so incredibly rock...
Clone dvd2 (Score:1)
Not quite so simple, but here's how: (Score:1)
First, you'll use either vobcopy or dvdbackup to mirror the dvd image to your hard drive decrypting the css. Vobcopy is slightly nicer to use. Ogle can usually play that copied dvd filesystem as is, but I've some trouble with a few dvd's. So, you use 'mkisofs --dvd-video' to create a dvd udf filesystem. Then, you point xine to that udf image as the dvd device, and it works.
It too
Re:Not quite so simple, but here's how: (Score:2)
You don't need to decrypt, either: libdvdread, if it finds libdvdcss will use it to crack the iso image (which, IIRC, has to be an image because the sector number matter in decrypting, thought that might only be the case with a non-brute force decrypt) as necesary at run-time, and cache the resulting keys for next time.
Now, IIRC, one can build libd
Re:Not quite so simple, but here's how: (Score:1)
vobcopy copies DVD
So maybe I misspoke. You don't get a perfect copy. You get a decrypted version of all content on the DVD, which is really what you probably want and is easier to use anyway.
I've backed up my dvd's via this method. It works and without loss from transcoding. And after the initial copy, there's no need to screw with any bs css crap. Thi
Re:Not quite so simple, but here's how: (Score:2)
I actually do/ want to do CSS as late as possible in the copy/playback chain, ideally at the playback client, for the reasons I mentioned. In fact, I'd prefer a stronger cryptosystem for that purpose.
In my case I am concerned about being charged with contributory copyright infringment through neglect by leaving unencrypted copies on a home network that is connected to the internat at large (albeit via a dedicated firewall). If someone hacks in and copies off video with CSS intac
Problems to solve (Score:2)
2. small, inquisitive fingers
Solution:
A couple of 128 CD cases, on a shelf. Cheap, fast access, more secure than a hard drive, portable. Not as geeky as a mythtv solution, but sometimes simple is best.
DVDShrink + DVDDecrypter (get it NOW) can preserve as much or as little of the original as you want. Netflix + DVDShrink is addictive.
Commentary Tracks (Score:1)
I use DVD::Rip, which supports multiple tracks. I use ffmpeg mpeg4 and ogg vorbis for the audio. Sometimes I use the AC3 passthrough for the main audio, and vorbis for commentary, depending on how much space I'm willing to use.
-Peter
I'm late to the party but... (Score:1)
The nice thing many people don't realize about xine is that there is no need to mount images, deal with loop, cloop etc or anything like that. a simple "xine image.iso" will play the movie just as if it was in a drive.
Unfortunately, I have ye
Great Idea, Long Setup Time. (Score:1)