[mythtv-users] Can mythtv play VOBs?

[Pamela J. Ashworth (thunderbird)]

I promised to answer this, so...

Ryan Steffes wrote:
> On 10/25/07, Kevin Kuphal <kuphal at dls.net> wrote:
>> On 10/25/07, Pamela J. Ashworth (webmail) <pashworth at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> I'm not home now, or I'd check.
>>> I know it plays avi's - actually avi's renamed .mpg and stuck into the database by hand - I lost a few Grey's, Brothers & Sisters, Journeyman eps in the 10pm crashes I may have finally stopped having, and had to wedge in some avi's. (it works a whole lot better than it did in .18 or whatever we were using last, btw)
>>>
>>> MythRip isn't working
>>> MythVideo, does not, as far as I know, do playlists.
>>>
>>> Playing the commercial DVDs mythDVD - when it cycles thru all the eps on a disc, it goes back to the menu, with a music loop that tends to wake me up
>>>
>>> all my old Grey's avi's were saved on the hard drive that is currently broken.
>>>
>>> I could use my homemade DVDs with no menu music but you can't be all that selective about which eps you want - and train wrecks and bomb threats at 3am just don't do it for me.
>>>
>>> I have the eps on recorded-to-DVD-analog-from-myth-with-dubbing-cables-and-a-DVD-recorder which I could stuff in (to the directory and database), if I thought that would work.
>>>
>>> TMI, I know. (also I could have looked it up, but why would someone document such a redundant "feature")
>> The short answer is, Yes.
> 
> Long answer, Yeeeeeees.
> 
> Ok, no really, long answer, there's a variety of ways to accomplish
> what you may want, but I'm not sure I'm following exactly what it is
> you are actually asking.
> 
> It sounds to me like you have the following options:
> 
> 1) A commercially made DVD

yes

> 2) A cloned copy of that DVD (with menus and such)

nope, it's a home-made DVD, made by playing from mythtv via dubbing 
cables to a DVD Recorder (cause MythArchive doesn't work here either)

> 3) A DVD containing recorded episodes in some format?

um... no, but I have avi's and nubs on the hard drive that doesn't work

> 4) A hard drive that doesn't work

bingo. but Jay explained that. (I actually have two *other* hard drives 
and an external drive that also don't work, but that's beside the point)
> 
> 1) Commercially made DVDs you have multiple options, the easiest being
> to play the DVDs straight from the dvd using either MythDVD or ogle.

tried that. got woken up by endlessly repeating menu music loop. It did 
work, though.

> The next easiest probably being to mirror the dvd to a directory under
> you MythVideo and play the episodes that way.

no playlists in mythvideo

   Following that,
> depending on your patience and hard drive space, my preferred option
> is to rip and transcode each episode and make yourself a nice shiny
> new AVI to watch at your convenience.

oh how I would love to do that :-)

> 
> 2) A cloned copy should essentially have the same options, the odds
> are good on you just popping it in and having it Just Work in MythDVD.
> 
> 3) A dvd containing episodes as mpgs or avis,

at the time I had the avi's,  the machine wouldn't even recognize it had 
a DVD burner attached to it (it does now, though I don't know if what 
it's burning is playable - we also had a problem with that. but you were 
talking about data files) So they all got backed up to... the drive that 
died

  you can just mount the
> dvd and copy them into a folder recognized by MythVideo, or add your
> dvd mount (eg /mnt/dvd/ or /media/cdrom) as a folder for MythVideo,

that's something to keep in my mind.


  or
> create a symlink from your MythVideo and watch them that way.

or that.

> 
> 4) Recover the data from the hard drive!

Jay's still in NJ. (and, you know, it's only been dead since March...)

> Playing episodic DVDs is always annoying because they tend to be not
> too polite about helping you figure out which titles you actually want
> to watch without the help of their menus.

no kidding. last night I was guessing. and counting. and that was on the 
homemade ones. would the commercial ones have worked?  they all have 
nice filenames now which vaguely resemble the episode titles (okay, the 
first half of season 1. it was all I had the energy for.)

   My personal strategy
> (bearing in mind I buy TV-on-DVDs, rip them, and toss them in a dark
> closet never to be seen again)

sounds lovely. as soon as I get my drives back.
what do you do about the subtitles and commentary tracks, btw?


  is to rip all the available tracks then
> figure out how they match up afterwards; once you've got them all
> converted it's usually pretty easy to tell which are real and which
> aren't.
> 
> The easiest, non-gui method I'm aware of to watch episodes on a DVD is
> to use the following command:

i'll save this somewhere. in case i can't avoid being non-gui. last 
night I was copying from DVD to my mythTV directory with konqueror (and 
I'll note that I wanted them in mythTV not mythvideo. I *am* having 
trouble remembering how to put a timeline into them -if that's even 
possible.

> 
> mplayer dvd://1 -alang en
> 
> It's important to note commercial VOBs tend to have multiple
> languages, so you'll likely need to get to know the alang or aid flags
> to get the best results.

from here it gets a little Greek, but I'm sure someone here or later 
will find it helpful.
> 
> Here's an example command of how I used mplayer to conveniently rip
> each title of an episodic DVD I mirrored to a directory:

note to self - learn linux....

> 
> for((i=1; i<12;i=$i+1)); do mplayer dvd://$i -dvd-device
> /home/MythVideo/temp/ -dumpstream -dumpfile /mnt/video/30-3.$i.vob
> -aid 129 ; done; && for ((i=1;i<12;i=$i+1)); do sh ~/trans.sh -i
> /mnt/video/30-3.$i.vob -o /home/MythVideo/tv/30rock/S1-3-E$i.avi -a;
> done;
> 
> The trans.sh file is a simple script I whipped up a while back to
> transcode DVDs with the common options I use. 

i'm just pleased with myself that I managed to back up the script Jay 
wrote last year, to watch the recordings directory. okay, so I ruined it 
with carriage returns and he had to fix it, but it's working now. and it 
tells me when the machine Just Plain Stops. (and also what the load 
average is)

  It doesn't produce
> optimal results by any stretch, but it's convenient and good enough
> for my purposes.  I can post it if you'd like.
> 
> Hopefully this was helpful, or at least may help you figure out what
> question might get you better answers.

Thanks :-)

if anyone thinks that there is a way to get a timeline (counter, 
whatever) into a vob for mythtv (Jay, translate that to what I actually 
mean) let me know. it used to work with my avi's - for the most part. 
right now mythTV is registering all my vobs as 51 seconds long. (though 
they play thru for about 42 minutes - i'm guessing that fast forwarding 
thru them is out of the question. not that it's desperately important.)

-- 
Pam from Boston
http://www.bakulanews.com
Latest Scott Bakula Appearances and News