Am I doing something wrong here?

[JustJack]

I've ripped a bunch of my DVDs to my Windows Home Server, running the latest (demo) version of Mezzmo. The file structure is like this:

Root --|
.......|
.......Movie Name --|
.......|............|
.......|............Audio_TS
.......|............Video_TS
.......|
.......Movie Name --|
.......|............|
.......|............Audio_TS
.......|............Video_TS
.......|
.......etc.
(ignore the dots, the forum software doesn't recognize multiple spaces)

The *_TS directories contain the .VOB files.

However, once Mezzmo has gone through and parsed the library, two things are awry:
1 - It never seems to get the hang of what movie is in what directory, it just lumps everything as VTS_01_1 or similar
2 - There's no cover art or anything at all to go with it - it seems to just grab the first frame of a vob file to use in the library.

See the attached .JPG for an example.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

[Paul]

Did you add these files using the "Add Folder" or "Scan drive" command? If the former, then you should have a folder somewhere with the root of your structure and then you could browse using that. If the latter, then folder structure is not preserved (unless you checked the appropriate checkbox in that dialog). Now that the files are already in the database you can easily use the "Add Folder" command and that'll quickly build up the folder structure from disk.

Do you have cover art in some form in those folders that you'd like to use? Mezzmo already has some enhancements in this area that will be available with the next minor update, so if you can tell me what form your albumart is in, I can check whether we support it now or not yet.

[JustJack]

All directories have a number of informational files that were created by the free version of the "MyMovies" movie collection application - folder.jpg (Contains a relatively small front cover only), mymovies-front.jpg and mymovies-back.jpg (larger front and back cover scans of the DVD box) and mymovies.xml, which has the actual information about the movies (year, actors, genre, etc.) in it. I can provide any or all to you upon request.

All files were added via the "Add Folder" command with the "Include subfolders" box checked. Maybe that's why it's saying I have 900+ video files, when I only have 150 DVDs or so ripped.

[Paul]

The Mymovies.xml should've been read in and if it contains links to the album art then it should've been picked up. Can you please send in one of your mymovies.xml files so that we could check if we can parse it properly.

Each DVD contains several files, so that's why the count is such - Mezzmo sees a DVD as individual files, not as a whole disk.

[JustJack]

(Hmmm. Last reply got lost somewhere)

Dennis - Files were sent to the support address.

My thought is that many people probably rip their DVDs to the same (or at last similar) structures, e.g. Subdir-as-title / VOBs-in-sub-subdir, so have y'all considered having the library take that into consideration? That way, it could just read the dirnames, and associate the contained video files to that name.

Is there a more compliant directory structure that Mezzmo prefers (like Title as dirname / everything just at that subdir level?)

Radio buttons would work for this - Select the basic directory structure used (Subdir-Files / Subdir-Subdir-Files / etc)

[Paul]

Well, from Mezzmo's point of view, each file in the VOBs folder is an individual movie - they are not treated like a single movie at the moment. A future version of Mezzmo may support playing ripped DVDs as a whole, but currently it's just a collection of smaller movies (multiple VOBs).

If you browse through the library using the folder structure, then it should be easy to know where you are, but of course if you go to "All Movies" then you won't know which one is which.

[JustJack]

OK, I somehow assumed that Mezzmo would present the DLNA client with a list/display of selectable movies to watch, ala XBMC or Media Center and just know how they were laid out, without the user having to dig through and find the individual .VOBs and select them. Not a dig at Mezzmo, just apparently a misunderstanding on my part about how it works. I'll continue to play with it during the demo and see if it's going to be suitable. At this stage, though, the wife and kids probably aren't going to use it, and that's the primary reason I was looking at it - it keeps the DVDs safely out of harm's way.

[Paul]

Yes, that functionality is not in Mezzmo yet - at the moment it's all about streaming single files.

[JustJack]

Ah. I wasn't drawing the distinction between "a file" and "a movie," then. So what would the recommendation, be, then, for someone like me that wants to keep the DVDs out of the hands of my kids, while still providing the 5.1 and DVD quality they expect? VOBs are apparently not the answer. What type of common video container would require the minimum amount of transcoding for video to support an XBox, Sony Bravia, iPhones and a Samsung Captivate? I'd prefer to keep the DVD menus and whatnot, and am willing to re-rip if necessary, since I haven't finished. A pain in the short term, but would have long term payoff.

[Paul]

I am not aware of any video format that would let you keep the menus and make the movie a single file. As far as most common high-def video formats go, I'd say it'll be DivX or Matroska or AVCHD. However, different devices support different formats, so depending on your exact Bravia model, it may or may not play anything except MPEG2 for example (and none of the Bravias plays Matroska), while the XBox will want WMV or DivX and the iPhone/Captivate an MP4.