Specific DVD player emulation software question

[reddye5]

Hi Guys,

I am new here. I worked for quite awhile in the DVD and Blu-ray Authoring business back in the early 2000s. Through the years my passion for DVD and Blu-ray has led to 12 huge containers of DVDs.

I have always wondered if anyone has ever created a DVD player emulator, where a person can have a bunch of DVD images loaded on a hard drive, and you can pick one from a menu and it will run the DVD just as a player would, and you can escape back to the images menu at any time? Like a video game emulator setup, but with DVD images.

I'm hoping to create images of all my DVDs and then play them from a hard drive through a software like the above.

Has anyone ever created something like this? Or am I just dreaming something like this exists?
Any info is truly appreciated.
Thanks.

[betwixt]

There are several programs for doing that. My favorite is UMS (Universal Media Server) which is linked from this web site.
The problem with DVD video is the file structure, it is divided into 1Gb files and information files, you will probably find it easier to use, if a little tedious to do, if you convert them into single file per video. For example I convert the whole disk (Blu-Ray or DVD) to a single MP4 file so it can be selected from the UMS menu. You generally loose the chapters but keep all the other functions doing it that way.

It should play back through any PC, mobile device or TV supporting DLNA (most modern ones do), complete with menus.

Brian.

[reddye5]

Hi Brian,
thanks for gettting back to me. I checked out the UMS program. It looks very cool, but isn't exactly what I was hoping for.
I was hoping for complete DVD playback with special features and all.
I used to make complete DVD back ups with Toast back in the day and those images were mountable and included everything on the disc.
I guess I'm looking for a program that can pull up, mount, and play images like that from a drive.
Maybe that doesn't exist?

Or would the single MP4 method you mention contain the special features too?

Thanks again for the reply.

[usually_quiet]

The Windows version of VLC can play DVD ISO files via network shares (folders/drives on one of my networked Windows computers that has been marked as "shared").

[Edit]I just tested VLC on my Android phone to be certain my memory has not failed me. VLC for Android can also play DVD ISO files including menus via network shares.

[Cornucopia]

And one can always mount ISOs and treat them as discs, playing them with standard DVD/BD player software, like PowerDVD.


Scott

[lingyi]

Are you on Mac or Windows? Some of these instructions are for PC. Don't know anything about Mac.

Browse though this software list: https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/htpc KODI may do what you want. Forget about streaming as most streaming programs either don't support streaming ISO at all (e.g. Plex) or poorly (e.g. Mezzmo).

If you haven't already ripped your discs, you need to rip to ISO, which is the only container that retains the Video-DVD menu(s). An ISO is an exact image of the disc contents and ad Cornucopia stated, can be automatically mounted and played by many software media players like VLC and Potplayer. Associate ISO with your player and when you click on the filename, it will automatically open in the player. You can even create a playlist with all your filenames. I recommend DVDFab for ripping to ISO. It's 30 day trialware and the Blu-Ray ripping portion ends after the trial, but the DVD ripping portion remains free. The catch is that if your disc has a new copy protection scheme, you'll need to wait until the program is updated. Which lags behind months for the free version. AFAIK, there are a handful of discs that you can't rip to ISO because of some non-standard copy protection.

If you don't see what you like in the link above, search for video organizer. There are many, but most don't do a good job with ISO, because AFAIK, there's no metadata to automatically find a thumbnail or image for the disc. You'll probably have to do that manually.

Also, Video-DVD (as opposed to a Data-DVD) has a very strict disc naming convention, all caps and no spaces. So when you rip your disc you may get DVD_VIDEO_DISC_1 as the filename. You can rename the file to anything you want.

If you still don't find anything that suits you need, you can create your own database with images with say, Excel. Other than the automatic searching the 'net for a matching thumbnail or image, this is the core of any type of organizer. Link directly to the file, cover it with an image and when you click on it, it opens the file with your associated media player.

Personally, though I find boxart helpful for videogames, I don't like it for videos. I have my thousands of videos organized in folders that make sense to me (e.g. TV show, Directors, Actresses, etc.) and use Everything as my search. As long as I know something about what I'm looking for, I can find any video within seconds. For things like variety shows where I'm looking for someone that appeared on it, I do a Google search and quickly find the episode(s) they appeared in.

[reddye5]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.
And thanks for the awesome detailed response lingyi. Probably looking at using Windows, but Linux on a raspberry pi 3 sounds like a possible option too if will play the full DVD ISOs without issues.

KODI looks very interesting. It seems to be able to play ISO files and it seems to work with certain kinds of remotes.
Just wondering if it with work with complete DVD ISO files.But I can test that fairly easily.

DVDFab sounds great toofor backing up my DVDs.
Will be fun to start testing and working it out.
Thanks again.

[lingyi]

Glad to be of help.

Note that Blu-Ray and UHD .ISO support is very limited because it requires a paid license from the Blu-Association and it's rarely given to software [media player] developers. There's only a handful of software media players, PowerDVD that Cornucopia [recommended] is one, that support Blu-Ray and UHD .ISO playback. DVDFab has/had a software player that claims to be able to play Blu-Ray and UHD .ISOs, but it's no secret that it's unlicensed.