External HD as a sort of BIIIIG DVD (Western Digital My Passport Essential 250GB, Blue)

Software & Apps
#1

[qanda]This thread is about the Western Digital My Passport Essential 250GB, Blue. Click here to see full specs[/qanda]Hi everyone!

The “problem” is that I have whole Friends series (40 DVD5) which I want to put on an external HD (WD Passport).

I don’t really care about the animations and transitions and other beauty addons… I’d make those myself (simple season list -> episode list).

But so far I haven’t found any software that would allow me to make the compilation more than DVD9 size

Sorry for bothering you here about it, but I couldn’t find an answer on other forums…
Can anyone here please help?

#2

Why not transcode them all to Divx then via DVDFabHDDecrypter, or make iso’s out of them and then play them with VLC Media Player?

#3

Thanks Mr. Belvedere but DVDFab I have won’t let me make anything bigger than DVD9 :frowning:

The thing is that I can normally play all DVD’s (on PC and on DVD player), but I wish to put them all to WD because it gets annoying swithing DVD’s every 6 episodes and searching the right one I want.
I think it would be much eaiser to just plug the WD into PC and have very simple menu with all seasons and episodes on one place.

Any idea how to do that?

#4

[QUOTE=zedin7077;2270523]Thanks Mr. Belvedere but DVDFab I have won’t let me make anything bigger than DVD9 :([[/quote] If you buy the software you can do so much more. :slight_smile:

The thing is that I can normally play all DVD’s (on PC and on DVD player), but I wish to put them all to WD because it gets annoying swithing DVD’s every 6 episodes and searching the right one I want.
Rip them, make isos and play them with VLC player then.

I think it would be much eaiser to just plug the WD into PC and have very simple menu with all seasons and episodes on one place.
That would mean you have to transform a lot of menu’s to a nice big menu. It’s feasible but you’ll need to edit a lot with a professional dvd authoring tool.

Any idea how to do that?
No, but i got a another idea:

  • Rip all the dvd’s to your wd.
  • Start up dvd shrink
  • Choose reauthor mode and put in ALL the episodes. You’ll get a big huge dvd without any menu’s.
  • Make the backup (probably giving out an enormous dvd)
  • Now you can play that “dvd” and use chapter skips to skip to your desired episode.

All in all a lot of time. If you buy DVDFab you can transcode all episodes to seperate divx files (batch processing for each episode).

#5

Well, so far this is what I’ve done:

I coppied all episodes from all DVDs to the WD (without any menus or extras… just episodes)
And I haven’t changed files format - it’s .vob because I’m not sure if I have to.

Btw, the menu wouldn’t be nice and big as you mentioned. It would be as simple as it can be:

  • one “page”: Season 1, Season 2, etc. (imagine it written vertically)
  • when I choose the season -> Episode 1, Episode 2, wtc. (also vertically)

So, the next step would be:

  • Rip all the dvd’s to your wd.
  • Start up dvd shrink
  • Choose reauthor mode and put in ALL the episodes. You’ll get a big huge dvd without any menu’s.
  • Make the backup (probably giving out an enormous dvd)
  • Now you can play that “dvd” and use chapter skips to skip to your desired episode.

?

Thank you so much for helping me.

#6

You have ripped all the vob files of all dvd’s, except the menu’s. So you could use dvd shrinks reauthor mode to connect them all in a huge dvd “movie” with no menu (but chapters).

You could also put them all in Nero Vision and start making your menu. I don’t know for sure if Vision is compatible with adding a lot of vob files to the project.

There’s also professional authoring software like Adobe Premiere. Try http://club.cdfreaks.com/f32/programs-making-own-dvd-menu-69676/ as well. Perhaps you see a product you like.

#7

Thanks for helping.

I’ll try Nero Vision and if it doesn’t work I’ll try that “dvd shrinks”.
I don’t have that much money to buy Adobe stuff :wink:

have fun!