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  1. Member
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    I use Plex media server and I am trying to convert all my DVDs to individual files (mp4) that Plex can natively play back without encoding on the fly.
    I have 6 box sets of Battlestar Galactica which contain several discs which in turn each contain numerous episodes. To date I have been using Handbrake to rip the discs to MP4 but this is rather laborious as the software dies not pick up the chapter title to use as the file name and I have to read this off the sleeve and type it in every time. Are there any pieces software, (preferably free but happy to purchase if it does the job) that use an online database to scape the info about the rack name etc and automatically name the episode file. This was quite common with CD's which used to query Grace note which downloaded the track name. There was also a function in MyMovies that did this by querying IMDB or other online databases but I have moved away from this to Plex.
    Please not i bought and own this DVD collection and they are for my own private consumption.
    Any advice would be appreciated.
    Fozzie
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  2. Member DB83's Avatar
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    Generally, chapters are not named. What you see is a menu which is edited to show a name. I do not know of any program that can parse the vob that contains the menu.

    CD's were easier since each song was a separate track.
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    Many thanks for your reply. In that case MyMovies built in ripper must just try and match the episode from the DVD title possibly from TVDB?
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    Pet peeve. You're not ripping to .mp4. You're ripping and encoding. *Sigh, better*

    As stated above, unlike CDs where each track may contain metadata that can be scraped, most .vobs (the format your videos are stored in on the DVD) don't have any metadata to reference.

    FYI, if you just rip (not rip and encode to something like MP3), the tracks from a CD, they'll be named track 01.wav, track 02.wav, etc. If you rip a DVD, it will be VTS_01.vob, VTS_02.vob, etc.
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  5. Member DB83's Avatar
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    I know the above sounds a little pedantic but in these parts a rip of a dvd is a byte for byte transfer of the contents of a disk with all the original filenames but with just any encryption/region code removed.

    And the yuppie definition of 'dvd-rip' is what you are doing - transcoding to a different format/bitrate etc.

    Some rippers will let you select chapters or even individual titles. However there is no guarantee that each episode is a single chapter. It comes down to how the disk was authored in the first place.
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    Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    Pet peeve. You're not ripping to .mp4. You're ripping and encoding. *Sigh, better*

    As stated above, unlike CDs where each track may contain metadata that can be scraped, most .vobs (the format your videos are stored in on the DVD) don't have any metadata to reference.

    FYI, if you just rip (not rip and encode to something like MP3), the tracks from a CD, they'll be named track 01.wav, track 02.wav, etc. If you rip a DVD, it will be VTS_01.vob, VTS_02.vob, etc.
    Agreed that you are transcoding when changing from Mpeg2(Vob) to MP4. However I don't understand your second paragraph. If I rip an audio CD in Windows Media Player or iTunes, the software identities the disc content from the name and queries a database like Gracenote. It then downloads that metadata and names the track from the metadata. What I am looking for is a piece of software that queries TVDB or similar and downloads the chapter/episode information and pre-populates the file name. As I understand it this is exactly what MyMovies does with its built in ripper function. Both Plex and Kodi do something similar but rely on the file being named correctly and dont have a built in ripper function.
    Fozzie
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    Originally Posted by Fozzie_Bear View Post
    Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    Pet peeve. You're not ripping to .mp4. You're ripping and encoding. *Sigh, better*

    As stated above, unlike CDs where each track may contain metadata that can be scraped, most .vobs (the format your videos are stored in on the DVD) don't have any metadata to reference.

    FYI, if you just rip (not rip and encode to something like MP3), the tracks from a CD, they'll be named track 01.wav, track 02.wav, etc. If you rip a DVD, it will be VTS_01.vob, VTS_02.vob, etc.
    Agreed that you are transcoding when changing from Mpeg2(Vob) to MP4. However I don't understand your second paragraph. If I rip an audio CD in Windows Media Player or iTunes, the software identities the disc content from the name and queries a database like Gracenote. It then downloads that metadata and names the track from the metadata. What I am looking for is a piece of software that queries TVDB or similar and downloads the chapter/episode information and pre-populates the file name. As I understand it this is exactly what MyMovies does with its built in ripper function. Both Plex and Kodi do something similar but rely on the file being named correctly and dont have a built in ripper function.
    Fozzie
    First, you're far from the first to ask about automatically scraping info for episodic DVDs and the answer is almost always, you have to fill in the info yourself.

    Someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong, but metadata isn't pulled from online sources, it's embedded in the CD and pulled by the software while playing or ripping. If it's not there, some software does a best guess and gives you info based on that. When I play or rip my Asian CDs, jacket covers and track names are sometimes given, but more often than not completely wrong.

    Keeping with CDs, while software can often do a good job of guessing what an individual CD track is, if instead of individual tracks, it's one single tracks with chapter marks, it much harder to get the correct info. The key being that whether the data is embedded in the CD or drawn from a database of data, it has to have been entered by someone at some time.

    Moving on to DVDs. Like CDs, the metadata info has to be embedded on the DVD or software has to make a best guess a to what the episode is. Again, if each episode is in it's own "track" (.vob, the container used for DVDs), it may be possible for the software to figure out what the correct info for it may be. However, if multiple episodes are contained in a single track (actually on DVDs, each .vob can only only be max 1GB), it's much harder for an automated solution. Add in variable file sizes (especially since you're shrinking your files with Handbrake) and running time, especially on unofficial releases and the automation gets even harder.

    Bottom line as stated above, you can try different software, but the likelihood of getting your episodes automatically named are very slim.
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  8. Shrug.
    Didn't find anything automatic when doing BSG myself.
    Simply used Handbrake queuing of each encode to keep things going, two dvd drives, and Intel Quicksync for the video encoder.
    Typically, Quicksync set to quality, high, 5.2, qs18 resulted in sufficient quality off dvds to be happy with the encodes.
    About 3 discs per drive per hour. Wasn't that hard or long.

    (And nowadays, thinking of doing it all again when I come across a cheap set of bsg blurays. Used Dvd sets are already locally $2.50-5 each in CA bookoff shops, but blurays have yet to drop.)

    Only way around it is to switch to a media server program like Kodi that support native iso rips, which retain the full quality and menu of the original discs.

    (Or go digital and buy the bsg collection on vudu etc when on sale.)
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    I agree with someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong, but metadata isn't pulled from online sources, it's embedded in the CD and pulled by the software while playing or ripping. If it's not there, some software does a best guess and gives you info based on that. When I play or rip my Asian CDs, jacket covers and track names are sometimes given, but more often than not completely wrong.
    All is possible in this web
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  10. Rip with MakeMKV. See if you can find the chapter names on ChapterDB and import it to the MKV file.

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