Backing up DVDs to a Media Server

[philsmack]

First, let me state my overall goal. I no longer want to play my movies from a dvd changer. I am trying to copy all my dvds onto a central server and stream the movies to a media player. Currently I am using Twonky for my media server and I am streaming the movies to my PS3 to play them. Since memory is cheap, I do not want to compress the movie. The goal is to keep all the original information (minus the extraneous menus and audio tracks) and place it into one mpeg2 file.

After looking through the threads over the last week, I have come to use the following process to backup my DVDs.

AnyDVD to strip protections
DVD Decrypter to demux the audio and video streams
ImagoMPEG-Muxer to mux the streams

My questions center around a couple of areas:

First, is this the most up to date method?

Second, I would like to upgrade the procedure so I could add chapter information to the mpeg2 file and, for certain cases, add a subtitle. The only subtitles I would want would be for movies like Apocalypto or Passion of Christ, where the subtitles are necessary.

Last, is that my PS3 seems to have trouble playing a couple of my movies. For example, The Count of Monte Cristo has bad "frame jumping". It seems in parts of the movie that it will display a frame from earlier in the movie. I believe it is a problem in the PS3 because the movie plays fine in WMP on my PC. Not sure if anyone has seen this.

Sorry for the dump truck of information. I'm hoping someone is trying to do something similar and can help me out.

Thanks,
Phil

[CWR03]

Last, is that my PS3 seems to have trouble playing a couple of my movies. For example, The Count of Monte Cristo has bad "frame jumping". It seems in parts of the movie that it will display a frame from earlier in the movie. I believe it is a problem in the PS3 because the movie plays fine in WMP on my PC. Not sure if anyone has seen this.
This part is likely due to the ripping method - since you're only interested in keeling the main movie anyway, try ripping the same movie with DVD Decrypter in IFO mode, which will select only the angle you want. Often the disl contains multiple angles, such as titles in more than one language, and file mode will rip them all into the file. WMP, since it's now more of a DVD player, will play them properly, but other players will include the angles as part of the movie.

[philsmack]

For ripping the DVD I do the following steps with DVD Decrypter:

Set to IFO mode
Enable Stream Processing
Check the video stream I want
Click the Demux radio button
Check the audio stream I want
Click the Demux radio button
Uncheck all other streams in the list

From your reply, are you suggesting I just check the two streams I want, uncheck the rest, and leave the "Direct Stream Copy" radio button selected? I haven't tried that yet. I will give it a try.

[philsmack]

I tried ripping with DVD Decryptor into 1 VOB file with little worse results. I still see the same periodic frame jumping, and I couldn't rewind and fast forward the movie.

It seems the demuxing the video and audio streams seperately out of the DVD and then muxing together, works the best. Maybe it is the muxer. Are they're better muxers out there?

[philsmack]

So the real question really remains, is there an application, or procedure involving multiple applications, that can backup a DVD to one mpeg2 file? All that without losing quality by compressing, and keeping the chapter information.

[CWR03]

I tried ripping with DVD Decryptor into 1 VOB file with little worse results. I still see the same periodic frame jumping, and I couldn't rewind and fast forward the movie.
Did you use IFO mode?
What player are you using?

[foxyshadis]

Seems like backing up to an ISO would be by far the most compatible method of achieving this single-file backup solution. Many media players can play ISOs directly, and for those that can't you can mount them as a virtual drive. There's a tool for creating menus and chapters for MP4, and you can mux multiple video streams (I don't know if the issues with matching audio to video streams is fixed yet), but it's a significant amount of work, compared to an ISO. And using DVD authoring tools will always leave you with multiple files.

There just doesn't seem to be much interest in single-file full disc backups, though I'd like it.

[philsmack]

Yes. I did use IFO mode in DVD Decryptor. It just seems to lose the timing or something where it can't fast forward or rewind. It also doesn't display the total time of the movie. I'm using Windows Media Player 11 and see that problem. The end goal, however, is to use the PS3 as the media player.

I completely agree foxyshadis. It has been pretty hard to find posts on a procedure to do a full backup of the dvd to a server. I'm quite surprise since I figure that is the way to go. You can serve your movies to the whole house from one location quite easily. Well, I guess it isn't quite easy just yet. :)

[philsmack]

Maybe the problem is I should wait for the PS3 to support watching an ISO file. :)