A Video Server Frontend?!

[firewallman]

Hi Guys,

I pretty new to the whole DVD ripping, playback, etc. scene. If this is not the proper place to post this question, please point me to the right place.

I have used DVD Decrypter to write DVD images to my hard disk, Daemon Tools to mount the image, and Power DVD to play these movies back. These are all truly great tools that seem to work very well and very consistently.

It seems to me that the next step in this process, at least for me, is to try to find out how to automate this process using Windows menus. That is, I would like to be able to create a menu with all of my stored move images listed and be able to click on a movie title and have that movie mount and play from one menu item click. Now having wished for the world , I have a lot of questions concerning being able to do this. I don’t know enough about Daemon Tools to know if it can be called from another program and if it can be passed an argument (movie name, path), etc. Has anyone written a program, script, etc that will do what is described above that anyone knows about? If so, where can it be found? Or where can information about this type of program be found?

Also it would be nice to automate the front end of this process as well. That is, have the computer read a DVD into an ISO image using DVD Decrypter and place that image into the folder of your choice automatically with a single mouse click. See, now I have also asked for the moon as well as the world. I guess, in a nut shell, what I’m looking for is a windows based Video/Movie Server.

It seems that we have all of the essential tools to accomplish this. We just need a program that will pull together all of the pieces. Maybe it has already been done? Maybe I am over simplifying this whole thing?

Does this forum deal with these types of questions? Remember, be gentle, I’m new here!

Thanks!!!

[int 21h]

I know you specifically asked for a Windows based solution, but this exact thing already exists within Linux...

[dvd_maniac]

I have almost 1000 dvds ripped on my server but instaed of leaving them in dvd format, I encoded them to AVC files (about 500MB each) and I use SageTV as my frontend

[mg262]

Daemon Tools and Decrypter both have commandline interfaces... I have batch files that do some of the steps you are interested in; I'll try and dig them out tomorrow. (If I forget, poke me...)

[firewallman]

The reason I asked about this in Windows obviously is because that's what I know. I can spell Linux and that's about it.

DVD_Maniac, when you rip your DVD's to an AVC file what kind of loss do you experience as far as video quality? Sound quality?

MG262, I would be very interested in seeing your batch files. I was going to start messing around with that tonight, but if you've done some of it already there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel.

I've pretty much got the playback portion of this working. I was really looking for improved picture quality. Something close to HD from my DVD's. I have been experimenting with TheaterTeks DVD player. I chose that because I wanted to do post processing on the output before sending it to the DVI input of the TV. This program allows for the easy integration of video post processing. I've been experimenting with ffdShow as the post processing software which gives me a 1440X960 output from a 720X480 input and I can tweek the other features until my hearts content.

What I would like to do with the input side of this is to have an interface that requests the name of the movie you want to rip, creates a directory with that name and then rips the movie into that directory with DVD Decrypter or whatever. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult. I guess my question is, what kind of paramenters can be passed to the command line usage of DVD Decrypter.

Thanks for all of your input on this project.

[mg262]

Sorry I've taken so long to dig these out -- real life suddenly became very busy!

So, the context is that I'm working on (dubbing) an episodic cartoon series split over many DVDs, which I have ripped as ISOs on my hard drive. Here are the batch files I use:

Decrypt.bat

"C:\Capture\DVD Decrypter\DVDDecrypter.exe" /mode ifo /SRC G: /dest "E:\dub\dvd\[DISC_LABEL]\" /VTS 1 /PGC %1 /start /close /OVERWRITE YES /SPLIT NONE /naming pgc

Decrypt all.bat

"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0,"E:\ISOs\B&S_1.ISO"
call decrypt 3
call decrypt 4
call decrypt 5
call decrypt 6
call decrypt 10
call decrypt 7
"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0,"E:\ISOs\B&S_2.ISO"
call decrypt 3
call decrypt 4
call decrypt 5
call decrypt 6
call decrypt 7
"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0,"E:\ISOs\B&S_3.ISO"
call decrypt 3
call decrypt 4
call decrypt 5
call decrypt 6
call decrypt 7

Index.bat

C:\Capture\dgmpgdec144rc1\DGIndex.exe -OM 0 -IF=[E:\dub\dvd\BS_%2\VTS_01_PGC_%3_1.VOB] -OF=[%1 dvd] -EXIT

index all.bat
call index 1 1 03
call index 2 1 04
call index 3 1 05
call index 4 1 06
call index 5 1 10
call index 6 1 07

call index 7 2 03
call index 8 2 04
call index 9 2 05
call index 10 2 06
call index 11 2 07

call index 12 3 03
call index 13 3 04
call index 14 3 05
call index 15 3 06
call index 16 3 07

The basic idea is to rip each episode as a separate VOB, and create one directory of VOBs for each DVD worth of content.

So all of these batchfiles live in the directory \dub\DVD, and after running the decrypt batchfiles we have sub directories \dub\DVD\BS_1, \dub\DVD\BS_2, etc (the DVDs are labelled BS_1, etc). These directories contain files like VTS_01_PGC_03_1.VOB, VTS_01_PGC_04_1.VOB, etc. We then index each one, creating a d2v file in the directory \dub\DVD.

Decrypt.bat simply takes the number of the PGC to decrypt. Index.bat takes the episode number, the number of the DVD, and the PGC number.

Hope that helps... don't hesitate to ask if anything is unclear.

Something close to HD from my DVD's.I doubt you'll manage that in real time. If you don't mind waiting, will probably need to use AVISynth to get that effect; I would recommend the AVISynth script iip.

Edit: I've gone back and read your first post and it looks like some of what I said to you is unnecessary (sorry!) unless you do want to go down the AVISynth road.

This is the key line to mount a DVD:
"C:\Program Files\D-Tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0,"E:\ISOs\B&S_3.ISO"

If you wanted to decrypt using a batch file, you would probably use the command line as above, but with /mode iso, with /VTS 1 /PGC %1 removed, and with a more sensible /naming argument.