DVD Merging for NAS playback

[Conza]

Hi, I've bought a 4TB NAS, and I have two things I want to achieve, firstly I want to rip several DVDs at 1:1 quality, to be used from the NAS natively.

Then, I want to create a file system, using those native folders and files of the DVDs, so that a video player (VLC), would recognise them together as one DVD, even if the files came from say, seven DVDs. Size is not an issue, I have approximately 300 disks, and calculated that I only need between 2-2.2TB of space if I rip all data at 1:1.

The end result, which I'm happy to hear alternatives to achieve, is, I want to be able to access my NAS from any computer on the network, navigate to shows and season, then auto play entire season, or a selected show, without having to select/re-open the specific DVD it came from. So, unless there's a better suggestion, I think I'll need to create custom DVD menus? Unless Is there's any native NAS software that someone has come up with, for this type of solution, would love to know what that is, or any alternative to this problem.

The NAS I bought is an Asustor AS-204TE (4 Bay), I'm using 1 bay to start with, likely to fill the second bay, the other two are spare, possible future redundancy or maybe alternative storage.

Thanks for reading.

[ndjamena]

What are you planning on playing it back WITH? The only reason I see to keep the videos in DVD format is to keep the original menus, which can't be done the way you're asking.

What I do, and what I think most people do, is rip the DVD to MKV (or mp4) using DVDFab, MakeMKV or AnyDVD (with other programs) then sort the files into directories.

f:\videos\TV Shows\TV Show\Season\Episode.mkv

Then you just add metadata to the directories, navigate to whatever directory you'd like to see and hit play. It shouldn't be hard to find a player that will play an entire directory, or even sort all the files in however way you choose and play them continuously.

[Conza]

My hesitation to making MKV files is that they'll be compressed, or suffer a loss in quality, I want 1:1 quality for video and audio, and I'm not convinced .mkv, .avi, .mpeg or anything else won't cause quality losses.

You're also basing this on using a computer only, I may want to play directly from the NAS onto a TV, so I'd want to have VLC on the NAS, as well, to load the video folders, ect.

So, TV and PC (oh an Mac, but VLC in all three cases).

[ndjamena]

You don't NEED to re-encode anything to convert it to an MKV. DVD vob files and MKVs are just containers that hold tracks consisting of various codecs. You can simply take the tracks AS IS from the DVD and shift it into an MKV unchanged. Since Matroska overhead is less than VOB overhead it will even be a bit smaller in the end.

Some TVs CAN play MKVs, in fact, you're more likely to find a TV that can play an MKV than a TV that can play a DVD structure (in ISO or not) from a Hard Drive or NAS. And by player, I mean anything that can play a file, I have a WDTV Live SMP which has nothing to do with computers.

[Conza]

Hmm, I'm skeptical if this will achieve my original result, which program/s would you recommend?

[ndjamena]

Me... well, being me... MakeMKV. Try it on one disc and see for yourself.

[ndjamena]

By the way, my D: drive is called VOB and yet currently contains nothing with a vob extension.

These two front ends for MakeMKV
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7960
http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6556

are designed specifically to undo the kind of thing you're thinking of doing.

Other people have been there... and left the idea behind.