How do I save my DVDs and VHS to external hd to be viewed on TV with WD TV?

[NielsenC]

For a Christmas present, I'm trying to upload my Dad's DVD and VHS collection onto an external hard drive (Seagate Free Agent Desk 2 TB) so he can view them with the Western Digital "WD TV". My dad is not very high tech, so I need very simple, straight forward files for him to choose from when he pulls it up using the WD TV. I would REALLY like it if the DVD cover came up as the picture for the file.

So far I've tried DVD Shrink and Nero 9. The DVD Shrink was very fast but gave me lots of files, which looked crazy when I pulled them up on the WD TV. Nero 9 gave me more than one file, too. (I'm sure I could use some tutorials for Nero 9, so if it would work, I'd be happy to use it!) So the dilemma is: How do I get ONE file that will be DVD quality and can be read by the WD TV? And, it would be nice if the steps were simple since I'm not a video guru. Please also keep in mind I want to capture VHS stuff, too.

Files WD TV can read/display: MPEG 1/2/4, WMV9, AVI (MPEG4, Xvid, AVC), H.264, MKV, MOV (MPEG4, H.264).

(I've been capturing the VHS files with Plextools Pro XL. I tried to see what type of files it creates, but I can't see the extension. All I see is "video clip" under "type".)

Thank you in advance!!

[cal_tony]

I have a number of external hard drives for video files and DVDs. My method is to use shrink for most DVDs. For Episode disks I use a separate title for each episode. For movies you can use the option in Shrink not to split Vobs into 1gb sections. However, if the movie is greater than 4gb and you are using Fat32 it will not copy to the hard disk so you would have to actually have to split the movie into separate titles in shrink that are less than 4gb.
Another very old program 'Smart ripper' has the ability to split Vobs into 4 gb sections (very useful for the WD device)

The above is dependent on if your going to leave the DVDs in Vob form.You didn't mention Vobs but the WD will read Vobs as if they were mpegs.

Something else that I do is store movies on disks according to their type.
Disks for TV programs. Disks for Animation..etc.

If you don't need more than 1 disk you can just store the movies in separate folders.

Also if your using Fat32 you will need FolderSort or DriveSort to keep everything in alphabetical order.
Also, The WD will play a folder in order if you select play all in the set up menu press the pause/play button when selecting a file and not the Enter button.

Tony

Tony

[Ziz]

Pick up 123CopyDVD Gold. It comes with a supplementary app, 123Movies2Portable, that I've been using to rip movies to MP4 for my nephew's iTouch. The only problem I've found so far is that it will lose the sound sync on some discs. Of the two dozen-odd I've done, X-Men 1.5 and 1933 King Kong from the 2 disc Collectors Edition have been the only culprits so far. It does have a control to correct for that but I haven't gotten into fooling with it yet.

[lowellriggsiam]

For DVD's DVDdecrypter -> ISO
For episode DVD's you can DVDdecrypter ->ISO ->Fairusewizard (to seperate the episodes and convert to avi's). With the WDWD media player this is helpful as it reads DVDiso's and plays them without the menu.
The new seagate media player does play them menu and all.
VHS to DVD, or AVI requires dubbing, or video capturing to pc, and for for the purpose of disk space convert using your favorite video conversion software.

[NielsenC]

Thank you for all the suggestions! I'll try them out.