I’ve moved from a Windows Media Centre system to the WD TV Live, previously I used “My Movies” to manage my movie database, and it handled boxed sets well.
I’m trying to work out the best way to burn/rip boxed set (I.e. TV series) so that the “My Media Library” within the WD TV Live displays/handles them correctly. The way I currently have the folders setup isn’t compatable with the automated media info scrape, therefore it doesn’t retrieve any content.
The format I currently use is:
//Southland - Season 1/Disc 1
//Southland - Season 1/Disc 2
The above format would continue as is until all discs within the boxed set had been ripped/burned.
This format was a legacy from my WMC days when I ripped DVDs as a VIDEO_TS folder with. VOB files in it and also the way that a set of. VOBs could contain multiple episodes, as there isn’t a nice logical relationship of 1 VOB file to 1 episode.
How should I manage my series/boxed set folders so that WD TV Live understands the folder contents correctly?
The WD uses TVDB.com for its automated media scrape and since they only list individual episode and not DVD discs that’s why it’s not returning any info.
You can either convert individual episodes using Handbrake to get automatic info for each episode.
Or you can do what I did and use an XML editor like the WDTV Live Hub XML-Editor to create your own XML’s for each disc:
When you say convert individual episodes, do you mean split apart the VOBs into individual MKV or similar format, so that you have an MKV for each individual episode?
If that is the case, I might go with your second suggestion and make a custom XML for each disc in the boxed set, it won’t be as neatly displayed within the My Media Library as one entry, but rather 8 entries if a season has 8 discs say, then I’m going to need a entry in My Media Library for each disc, so:
Southland - Season 1 - Disc 1
Southland - Season 1 - Disc 2 …etc.
If each disc is ripped as a single VOB file than that should work. If they are ripped as multiple VOB’s then you will need to do it for each VOB file within that disc.
I personally rip all my TV series DVD’s as ISO files so that I only have one file and still retain all the menus and special features but that"s just me
No, unfortunately I have multiple VOBs per disc, I could merge them if required.
I use Slysofts Clone DVD for the ripping, I usually forgo the extras and features, and only burn the movie with the menus intact. I can convert the folders into ISO image if this will help, but I don’t see how that we help me have a single entry for a complete boxed set in the My Media Library, surely (don’t call me sherly) I will still need as many entries within My Media Library as there are discs within a particular boxed set?
It depends on what you’re after. If you want metadata per episode, then you’ll need one “file” per episode. If you want one entry per disc, then you’ll need to write specific XML that has whatever info you want.
I went with the one-file-per-episode route so that all the scraper tools work as-is.
So I gather you are using ISO images of each ripped disc within the boxed set? How will a linked file, as you suggested, allow me to have one entry within My Media Library for a complete boxed set instead of an entry per disc?
My movies are all stored on a WHS2011 so I would have thought the file system would be able to cope with it.
sorry if i worded that last post wrong but i did mean having 1 image file per disc not 1 single file for the whole set.
If you have multiple VOBs you could always just create the XML for the first VOB then copy and paste the XML in windows explorer to the other files for that disc and change the name to mirror the name of each particular VOB.
I just use ISO’s for the simplicity of having one file.
It would be nice to have metadata per episode, but I gather that’s going to be a lot of work to retrospectively amend all my currently ripped DVDs
As you are no doubt aware, a boxed set DVD might have 5 individual VOB files under the VIDEO_TS folder but they combine to make only 3 episodes. I’ve played the individual VOB files through VLC and noticed that episodes can start and finish in the middle of a VOB, how would you go about splitting & merging VOBs to make individual VOBs that contain only one episode? Or have I completely got the wrong end of the stick?
If you want to have a file for each episode, which I gather is what most people have, and the way the WD expects things, you can use a tool like Handbrake, as already suggested. You feed Handbrake the VIDEO_TS folder that contains all the VOB files and others from one disk. Then you have it convert from and to the times corresponding to a given episode. That would be a chore though if you have many series/seasons.
Thanks all for the suggestions, I will experiment with a few and see how I get on.
I think I’m leaning towards ripping each disk within the boxed set as an ISO the using the DVD menu to navigate to the desired episode. I think I’ll name the each ripped disc/folder as.
The Wire - Season 1 - Episodes 1-3
The Wire - Season 1 - Episodes 4-6
The Wire - Season 1 - Episodes 7-9
Although metadata for each episode would be nice, I’d be increasing greatly the number of entries within My Media Library especially when you’ve got something like the entire series boxed set of The Wire and it would also exponentially increase my workflow to get them onto the server.
