[mythtv-users] video formats

[Tim Coote]

Hullo

I've got a separated mythtv frontend/backend based on a couple of acer  
revo boxes + fedora 12 standard packages (mythtv 0.23). These devices  
don't have dvd drives, so I'm ripping on macs and pulling the files  
into the startup directory for mythvideo.  For some dvds I can just  
copy across the VIDEO_TS directory and all's well (once I installed  
the libdvdcss package, which was non-trivial to work out as a  
necessary component). For others this doesn't seem to work, so I'm  
ripping the dvds to mpeg ts encapsulated video stream using vlc,  
ignoring the dvd menu and just playing the video. However, when I rip  
like this, I get a 6GB file (clumsy to move around the house) and the  
forward / backward arrows just crash the internal video player.

Should I be using a different encoding and/or encapsulation?  Or is  
this a known bug (I've seen something that may relate to left/right  
arrow in video playback.

It would help me if I understood how to pull out small segments of a  
dvd, to run tests on, if that's possible, so that I don't spend a  
couple of hours ripping/transferring before I realise that I've got  
the wrong format. Is it possible to pull of bits of a dvd - I cannot  
seem to just transcode the VOB files, for instance, as these do not  
play back reliably.

cheers

Tim