[mythtv-users] DVD library + mythtv, best practices

[Ian Forde]

Paul Phillips wrote:
> I just want the myth frontend to be able to call up a list of the movies I
> have ripped and play one on demand.  For whatever reason this seems to be
> an unusual desire.  I guess everyone else is transcoding their movies into
> a single smaller file of some other format? But I don't want to do that, I
> have plenty of disk.  All I intend to do (eventually) is snip out the FBI
> warnings and other stupidities.

Actually, it's not that unusual.  I'm planning to do this with my DVDs 
when I get the chance, so the DVDs can go into a box in the closet right 
next to the box of audio CDs. ;)

> With vlc I have no trouble playing DVDs from the command line with menus
> and all by using "vlc dvd:/path/to/dvd/directory" but the myth interface
> doesn't seem to like the idea of the directory being the target.  I can
> get a big ugly list of the individual vobs but obviously that's a failure.

Nope - there's an easier way.  Create a text file for each movie 
containing the name of the path holding the vob files.  Then run a 
custom player script that takes the text file as a parameter.  That 
script can then do:

#!/bin/sh

parm=$1
dvddir=`cat ${parm}`
vlc dvd:${dvddir}

or, if you want to use the iso9660 files without having to deal with vob 
files or messy text files:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Using "parm" for the mount point to avoid multiple files being
# mounted on the same dir in a bizarre confluence of events.
#
parm=$1
mkdir "/mnt/${parm}"
mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop "${parm}" /mnt/"${parm}"
vlc dvd:/mnt/${parm}
umount /mnt/${parm}

> Am I overlooking a smarter or easier way to accomplish this? I don't mind
> converting my DVD folders into something else as long as it's lossless.
> What is the standard way to store and serve a library of ripped DVDs?

See above!

	-Ian