I’m coming from Windows Media Center (Win 7) where I had my DVDs all ripped in their original format. I liked having everything ripped in the original format so I could access all menus and special features without finding the physical disc, I liked having the full quality of the original disc, and I liked having an actual “backup” of my DVD.
I’ve heard many great things about Plex and about “ripping DVDs” and “backing up DVDs” as part of the process. Now that I’ve installed it, I see Plex won’t touch the DVD files, Plex requires more than just ripping, and it will not appropriately access a backup of the DVD files (as noted here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201426506).
Is there any project that is leading to DVD file and menu capability, or is the above article definitive?
While I can see the allure for people to want their DVDs ripped in that manner the number of such folks is most probably extremely low because most people want to save space as well as play their DVDs, Also one of the things many people complain about is DVD menus intrusiveness into the playback and having it as a simple file avoids that.
I have a 400 disk DVD changer and I do not think I have even used it once in the last two years because it is just too cumbersome to navigate through the DVD menus just to play a movie.
While some people like the DVD menus, like you seem to, I believe most people want to avoid them. I think Plex would not want to spend the time and energy to serve a very small minority of their users.
But you never know, Plex has changed their mind before, however I very much doubt they will in this case.
I’m finally looking back into this issue, and I figured I’d use my own thread.
For me, the main point of ripping the DVD is to actually have the menu. I want the directors commentary and interviews and such available. [I imagine if someone is going through the trouble of ripping a DVD, they are expecting to watch all the parts of it, not just the main movie over and over, but perhaps that is short-sighted.]
Also, when I rip my DVDs, I’m treating that like my backup of my DVD, so I’m picturing keeping all of the data.
Has there been any change or development with handling DVD file structures in the past few years?
If not, are there any other media servers that support native file structures like Windows Media Center did?
Do you remember actual DVD menus – particularly operating them?
They were often slow, and sometimes hard to figure out.
It is actually possible, to rip DVD extras – as long as it is subtitles, additional audio tracks and “video content” in general. More about that below.
It is not really possible to rip ‘games’ (well, what they sold back then as ‘games’ on DVDs) or picture slide shows.
And it is certainly not possible to play these menus and games on a different device type than a DVD player. But Plex does serve its content to anything but DVD players. Imagine trying to operate a DVD menu on your mobile phone…
And nowadays, you’ll almost certainly not try to burn a DVD from your backup to use on a real DVD player…
That’s why the decision was made very early on, to not support dvd menus or data structures. And that’s why there was no reversal of this decision.
As mentioned above, director’s comments and other alternate subtitle or audio streams are no problem to have in Plex. Chapters too.
I preserve them routinely when ripping discs, since I prepare content in 2 languages and I am also interested to have commentary tracks and extras in my library.
no dvd/bluray menu or iso support was one of the most stupid things plex ever decided. especially since xbmc supported them natively.
I had thousands of ripped movie and tv dvd’s in iso, specifically to save the menus and extra features.
No matter what plex says or decided, having one simple iso container was all that was needed to be ripped, and not having to separate out and/or convert into compatible files was far more admin and family friendly than plex still inferior interface and separate file based interface.
Sad but true.
Of course I’ve since gone through the vast time and effort to convert them, but not without a lot of hate and bitterness from having to do so.
This issue was the single biggest obstacle that took forever for me to accept plex.
I like plex, but as you might see I am still pretty upset at this even after these years.
If something like VOB support is important, you may have to go back in time and get something like a Western Digital WD TV Live box and stream your stuff through that.
I think the problem is the opposite. If you have a DVD, you want the maximum amount of detail possible from it… and probably shouldn’t compress it since the resolution is already relatively low. It may not be the ideal use of an HD display, but good upscaling of a 480 resolution to 1080, is going to look better than 480 on a native 480 display.
Windows Media Center handled VOB files just fine, and I still have all of my DVDs ripped that way. I don’t want to have to go through the process again, just so I can eliminate the small burden of navigating a menu.
For now, I just watch the separate VOB files in VLC over my network when I want to watch an old DVD.
Kodi can direct play vob or iso files, so if you want to maintain your existing collection, that is a suitable app if it is available on your client(s) of choice.
There is also a plex plugin for kodi, so you can have both the playback features of kodi and the centralization of plex.
that said, I haven’t used kodi myself in a while, so but seems that plenty of people here still use it along with plex.
