I just got my WD Live Hub today and was wondering what a good file format is for my DVDs to be saved as. I had done one movie as vob files but when I look at them via the WD Live Hub, they, of course, just look like VOB files which means nothing to me, so I have to guess which one to select to start the movie and skip the ads or the menu. Should I be making my movies as a single file rather than each chapter being its own VOB? Or better yet, is there a way to save my DVDs so that on the Live Hub they display as an image to select and then when selected, the actual Dvd menu will start and be usable to select scenes of extras or play all, etc?
I haven’t been able to test an ISO on my Live Hub device yet (will be doing it later) but I do see that Windows Media Player can’t play the ISO files without having to mount them as virtual drives. Is there any other way to use an ISO file with Windows Media Player? I’d like to be able to just have 1 copy of each DVD to use with both my WD TV Live Hub and my Windows computers.
Is there a good resource you know of which explains this sort of stuff and, more so the WD TV Live Hub since the “instructions” that came with the hub are almost non-existant. In fact, I feel I lost some of the little knowledge I had of the WD TV Live Hub after reading the “instructions”.
The stuff I currently own are: iPad2, a few Windows machines (win 7 and vista), my new WD TV Live Hub and my new WD 2TB My Book Live.
I’d like for all my movies to be stored on the My Book Live (I’ll need a couple more My Book Live drives eventually) and I want to be able to watch those movies on my TV, PCs and, lastly if possible, my iPad. Do you have a recommendation to how I should go about this? What sort of file format I should use? While I would like to keep the full DVD experience (special stuff as well as workable menus) however if that is not possible to do with just one file format, then I don’t mind just grabbing the movies/tv shows themselves.
I’d also like to make sure that in the WD TV Live Hub that the movies/tv shows appear as a single selectable file with an image (if possible).
Am I expecting too much or is this doable?
PS: I’ll also be wanting to do this to Blu-Ray movies/shows.
I put an ISO file on my WD My Book and the WD TV LIVE HUB does not see it or the folder it’s in.
If I put a VOB version of the same show into the same directory on the WD MY BOOK drive, the WD TV LIVE HUB does see it and can play it.
So the original suggestion to use ISO files doesn’t seem to work. Either that or I’m misunderstanding something. I really wish there was some better instructions for these devices.
Almost all of my rips are of BD media, so I stick with MKV format for all. They play on all my PCs and the Hub and when I convert them for play on my tablet or phone they maintain much of their quality. Menus and file structure are only supported for standard DVD, not BD, regardless of format.
After talking with tech support, it seems MP4 or MKV (like you mention Miami Son) are the formats I should use. What **bleep** is I had just bought a DVD cloner software thinking it is what I need but it doesn’t do those formats. Guess I’ll have to find something else.
Tony - as I mentioned prior, the “instructions” that came with the device were almost non-existant. Just a few pictures on how to plug the WD TV LIVE HUB in. Tech support did however, earlier today, get me to the user manual online so I’ll be looking through that for future configuration problems.
You make the DVD into an iso. You play the iso via network shares and you get the chapters etc. To play the iso on your computer you download something like VLC which will play an iso. It will work because that’s the way a lot of us do it.
richUK wrote:
You make the DVD into an iso. You play the iso via network shares and you get the chapters etc. To play the iso on your computer you download something like VLC which will play an iso. It will work because that’s the way a lot of us do it.
Agree with you and Tony. ISO files are the starting point to turn a plastic disc into a digital file. From there, one can make other files for special situations; e.g. if I want a movie to play on my iPad, I can convert an ISO into an Mp4 that doesn’t talke up a lot of bytes and runs great on the little screen.
A good and FREE program to have is Virtual Clone Drive to mount the ISO on the PC (like a DVD) and play via a few different players. Get it here: www.slysoft.com/
Dang.
