[How-to] - My DVD Collection on a hard drive.

[Rob00GT]

Way back in February I posted a question about converting my DVD collection to a hard drive for "on demand" viewing. Didn't find a good way to make it happen with Media Center due to digital rights and all that so I've been playing with some software for Windows XP. Trial and error experimentation has led me to a solution that works.

Please note: I'm not looking to copy DVDs or steal anything. I just want the ability to play a DVD by clicking on an icon instead of digging through a cabinet for the disk. This is the exact same thing I did to my CD collection using Apple iTunes software. My CD collection is packed up in the back of a closet even though I enjoy the music almost daily.

Software used:

DVD Shrink 3.2

WinDVD 4 (Or any DVD playback software that allows you to select the location of the DVD files)

First insert the DVD in the drive and start up DVD Shrink. You don't want to watch the movie so close any other players that open automatically. Click "open disk" and select the correct drive. On my pc this process takes about 2-3 minutes and I usually disable to video preview. Once that's completed you get a listing of all the menus, lauguages, subtitles, etc. that are on the DVD. You can remove some of these if you like, purely a personal preference. I leave them intact. I also make sure "No compression" is selected in the dropdown box. If I need to compress movies later to save space I will, but for now I want the best possible copies. Now just click on "backup", select your region if asked, and on the final screen you want to select your destination as a folder on your hard drive. I name the folder according to movie title but again personal preference. I leave the box checked that says "create audio and video folders". Depending on the amount of data on the DVD and the speed of your computer you can probably take a break now. A fully loaded DVD takes about 30-40 minutes on my pc. When finished, close DVD Shrink.

Now open WinDVD 4 (or player of your choice). In WinDVD 4 the option you want is "open file". Select the folder where your movie is stored, open the "video" folder and select the very first file listed. This should open the root menu on the movie. You can now navigate the screen just like you would if the original disk were in the drive. I haven't verified the 5.1 digital sound works yet (hope to soon) but playback looks great.

I've also taken the next step and saved a couple of movies to my server. I was able to successfully playback two different movies at the same time on two different PC's over my home network. I have the standard 100Mb wired network in my home and bandwidth was not a problem.

Hope this helps someone else.

Title Edited - Please follow new forum rules from now on

-- Martin L

[KamiQuazi]

Or, what I do is after I use DVD Shrink then I convert that folder to a RatDVD file so it is one big file instead of a folder... with RatDVD you can just double click and Windows Media Player will automatically run it... and it works just like a DVD... Menus, Special Features, everything....