Final word on DVD .ISO support?

[rusten]

I've been running XBMC for the longest time, considering the switch to SageTV. I've been watching the forums waiting until .ISO support is implemented.

Recently, I read one post in this forum, suggesting that .ISO support is now working. However, the longer post which veered off into demuxing, indicates that it will not work.

I was wondering if someone could help clarify definitively: Running the SageTV software on Windows (v6.5.?), without using an external tool like daemon/virtualCD, can SageTV play standard DVD .ISO files?

If so, are there special steps required to get this to work?

Thank you in advance!

[scat]

rusten

Take a look at this post: Mount and Unmount an ISO file all from within the Sage UI

Scat

[PredatorVI]

There seems to be enough interest in native ISO support that it would be nice to know if SageTV developers are considering it as an option.

Most every DVD backup program I have seen supports ISO creation.

It is a nice format for managing a large library (one file). Not only is it nice, for me it makes more sense conceptually (one DVD = one ISO).

The SageTV HD Theater supports ISO natively in stand-alone mode, but if I want DVR capabilities with the HD Theater, I have to give up the ISO feature. That is why I have NOT purchased one yet. I just got a used NetGear EVA8000 (which SUPPORTS ISO) to try since my 4 XBMC XBOX systems can't playback 1080i content without stuttering. I'm moving to try XBMC for windows also.

What can we do to push the issue to get ISO playback natively supported in the SageTV server?

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by PredatorVI

There seems to be enough interest in native ISO support that it would be nice to know if SageTV developers are considering it as an option.

Most every DVD backup program I have seen supports ISO creation.

It is a nice format for managing a large library (one file). Not only is it nice, for me it makes more sense conceptually (one DVD = one ISO).

The SageTV HD Theater supports ISO natively in stand-alone mode, but if I want DVR capabilities with the HD Theater, I have to give up the ISO feature. That is why I have NOT purchased one yet. I just got a used NetGear EVA8000 (which SUPPORTS ISO) to try since my 4 XBMC XBOX systems can't playback 1080i content without stuttering. I'm moving to try XBMC for windows also.

What can we do to push the issue to get ISO playback natively supported in the SageTV server?

I have played with XBMC in the past. Those guys put together a great package - very professional looking, easy to setup, works well and FREE. Too bad they don't support TV or at least somehow use SageTV's TV innerds to support TV.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PredatorVI

There seems to be enough interest in native ISO support that it would be nice to know if SageTV developers are considering it as an option.

Most every DVD backup program I have seen supports ISO creation.

It is a nice format for managing a large library (one file). Not only is it nice, for me it makes more sense conceptually (one DVD = one ISO).

one ISO != one Folder

[rusten]

@Scat- I was asking about the native option because the virtual-cd-style workarounds are a nightmare. I've used this in MS Media Center, and Media Portal both. It's slow and a source for problems.

Regarding the ease of using .ISO's for a DVD lirbary, it's the same argument in just about any MC/DVR forum. People that don't use them (in this case Stanger) will frown on the idea and mention that there is no benefit. People who do use them, would rather find a new media center than change.

In simplest terms, neither side is budging.

With that said, when my movie library got up to 200 DVD's, I switched and ran both for awhile (.ISO and Folders with VOB's/etc). There really is no comparison, IMHO. I run just under 600 movies on my NAS, and I would never switch away from .ISO. It's easier to quickly rip back to a DVD when you need the ability, it's easier to manage, it doesn't require folders (which is extra overhead in itself), and with XBMC it just works like a dream with full DVD menu'ing support.

I've considered switching to the new HD Theater from XBMC, because I had also read that it supports .ISO's. It just does not make sense that SageTV would not support them as well.

BTW - As far as TV on XBMC, it is supported. It's not a native tuner, but you can use the network-tuner (the name escapes me now) and there are a few other options as well. I'm not looking to get into a discussion about the benefits of XBMC v. SageTV (Sage looks great IMHO); rather, I'm simply looking to find out if/when SageTV will natively support .ISO, so that I can one day decide to use Sage.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by rusten

In simplest terms, neither side is budging.

With that said, when my movie library got up to 200 DVD's, I switched and ran both for awhile (.ISO and Folders with VOB's/etc). There really is no comparison, IMHO.

OK, I do try to make an effort to have a serious discussion of the pros/cons of each from time to time, and for some reason, I fell like it now. You seem like you might be able to lay out some good reasons why ISO is "no comparison" better, so please do if you would.

I run just under 600 movies on my NAS, and I would never switch away from .ISO.

I think I've got about 550 in folders and I feel the same way, I'm unlikely to change.

It's easier to quickly rip back to a DVD when you need the ability,

Why would you ever need it? You've got the DVD sitting on a shelf/drawer already anyway. And if you ever get rid of the disc you delete the rip, so...

it's easier to manage,

This I fundamentally don't understand. A folder is a file system object that contains other files and folders. An ISO is a file system object that contains other files and folders. I can't wrap my head around what's easier with one file vs one folder. The difference I see is folders can be accessed without special software, but ISOs can't. ISOs seem to me a lot like storing everything in zip files.

...it doesn't require folders (which is extra overhead in itself),

I don't follow, you save one folder for an ISO container. You may gain a few bytes on the filesystem... Well let's find out. Rip a 5.6 GB DVD to ISO and Folder using AnyDVD:

Size On Disk (so that includes cluster waste):
ISO: 6,092,396,544 bytes
VTS: 6,091,501,569 bytes

So the ISO is 894,975 bytes (0.85MB) larger than the folder, or about 0.15%

...and with XBMC it just works like a dream with full DVD menu'ing support.

Now here, I fully understand using the format your player supports, but almost everything (including Windows Media Center) supports "VIDEO_TS" rips with full support of menus and special features. There are still very few apps/solutions that support ISO.

I've considered switching to the new HD Theater from XBMC, because I had also read that it supports .ISO's. It just does not make sense that SageTV would not support them as well.

I really don't know why the extenders support ISO, my guess is it was easy to do given the tools that came with the SDK for the Sigma board. The same is not true in Windows.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I don't follow, you save one folder for an ISO container. You may gain a few bytes on the filesystem... Well let's find out. Rip a 5.6 GB DVD to ISO and Folder using AnyDVD:

Size On Disk (so that includes cluster waste):
ISO: 6,092,396,544 bytes
VTS: 6,091,501,569 bytes

So the ISO is 894,975 bytes (0.85MB) larger than the folder, or about 0.15%

When I started putting my Blu-rays onto HDD I did the same comparison - folder vs ts vs m2ts vs mkv with no compression. With all of the folders in a Blu-ray structure (aux data, backup etc - lots of redundancy) the size on disk was only about 500k at the extreme (largest to smallest). 500k against a 25,000,000k average movie size is a drop in the bucket.

Folders work well and have broad support. I used to prefer single file myself. Not any more.

As stanger89 indicates, an object is an object.

[ghostlobster]

I'll chime in...
I've never really seen the attraction for .ISO files. I understand the perception regarding ease of use and ease of management, but in my experience, a foilder is as easy to manage as an .iso. Again, personal preferences.

Very recently, however, I've started messing around with encoding to files. .mkv for HD-DVDs and DivX for DVDs. Granted, you don't get the menus, but I've been pretty impressed so far. The encoding time is a bit of an issue, and I certainly would not want to go through 500 of them, but for a smaller library, it's well worth it. Particularly with HD-DVDs and BluRays. A 20GB HD-DVD shrinks down to an .mkv that is under 5 GB and looks and sounds perfect. I wrote up a batch file the handles all of the leg work and I kick it off on 3 PCs each night, encoding 3 movies overnight. It seems to be working OK.

To each his/her own, though!

[HelenWeathers]

I do tend to be set in my ways. All my music is in wav format, for example.

But with DVDs and Blu-rays, I discovered that the choices that I had made were limiting me. So I decided instead to limit my choices.

[tmiranda]

This is a strange discussion. To me it's not a matter of which way is "better", it's a matter of which way do you "prefer" and which way is more widely supported. If you have 500 .ISOs sitting on your NAS you're going to prefer .ISO and vice versa if you have .VOBs.

Personally, I'd like to see both supported because sometime the movies I want to watch are in.VOB format and soemtimes they are in .ISO format. If they are .ISO I need to convert them and that's a pain.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

This is a strange discussion. To me it's not a matter of which way is "better", it's a matter of which way do you "prefer" and which way is more widely supported.

I added the emphasis there, but that's entirely the point. I know my argument for why folders are better are specifically because of that, support. Almost everything supports folder DVD rips. Support for ISOs is comparatively miniscule.

ISOs are a hold over from the very early days of DVD ripping where players needed to see a "drive" to play a DVD right, but that limitation has long since beein overcome.

If you have 500 .ISOs sitting on your NAS you're going to prefer .ISO and vice versa if you have .VOBs.

I completely understand innertia, it's a powerful "force". But it just seems like at some point you've got to admit the world has moved on, and move with it.

I had my entire music collection in Monkey's Audio for some time. At some point I realized that wasn't well supported, rather than run around complaining that the apps I wanted to use didn't support it, I bit the bullet and converted it to WMA Lossless. I've since converted again to FLAC. Yeah, it's sort of a pain, and it would be nice if everything supported everything, but that's not the case. You just end up limiting your options if you stick, unmovable to a specific format.

And FWIW, the conversion from ISO to folder is trivial, something like winrar or 7zip can extract all your ISOs to their own folder (same name as the ISO minus the extension). Just select all and right click on them and select "extract to /*" or "extract each to it's own folder". Might take a while with a lot of data, and if you don't have a ton of free space you'd have to do it a few at a time....

[PredatorVI]

There is always the issue of inertia and since I do have all my movies ripped as ISO files, I really do want ISO support.

I find the whole argument against ISO is as crazy as those who argue for VOB/VIDEO_TS.

In my experience, ISO is much nicer because everything related to a movie is in one bundle/container/file, maintains original quality, can keep/use all DVD menus/content if desired (I have a lot of TV shows that work nicely as ISO with the menus without the extra work of trying to rip each episode separately), and it is much easier to organize. Let me explain.

I started my quest for digital media and home theater a couple of years ago. I initially started with the VIDEO_TS/VOB structure. I found that there were dozens of files and additional folders to deal with. Because it was JUST a file/folder structure, many of the programs or servers made browsing and launching content very awkward. You had to either know which VOB to launch or the system had to understand where the root folder was and treat everything below it as a single "bundle" of files/folders. XBMC for example has the concept of "stacking".

In addition, it made it difficult to organize in a way that made sense to me because you couldn't easily nest multiple sub-folders of content. You might argue that I should just do it another way, but then I have to conform to some best practice that ends up being a series of trials and errors based on the system I happen to be using.

Today, support for ISO is still fairly strong and so is support for a file/folder structure. However, none of the file/folder issues exist at all if ISO is supported. I can organized them however I want and it is clear (aka - non-ambiguous) for media servers to know where the start of content is compared to the organizational structure.

If there is another way to bundle things into a single file that is just as easy to create and manage as ISO, then help me understand. However, with ISO, I don't have to care. I dont' have to understand any issues relating to vob, video_ts, mksfolder, m2ts, mkv, etc. It is bundled in the original format and I don't have to see it.

I DON'T WANT to have to care about how it all works, how it is structured. Just give me a single entity that I can put anywhere, that will play with it's original quality and content, without any specialized knowledge requirements or need for conversion. ISO gives me that.

[PredatorVI]

I forgot to comment on stranger89's comment of support.

Better support for folders could be because it was easier for the developers, not necessarily better for the end-user.

As an end-user, who doesn't find it frustrating to have to conform to someone else's idea of how something should be when it may not make as much sense for the users situation or knowledge base.

That's why many of us want support added in SageTV MC for ISO. It's very nice for the end user. If someone prefers all the folders/files, then by all means keep doing it that way, but don't tell me your way is the best way for me.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PredatorVI

There is always the issue of inertia and since I do have all my movies ripped as ISO files, I really do want ISO support.

I find the whole argument against ISO is as crazy as those who argue for VOB/VIDEO_TS.

In my experience, ISO is much nicer because everything related to a movie is in one bundle/container/file,

A folder is not "one bundle/container"?

...maintains original quality,

So do folders.

...can keep/use all DVD menus/content if desired (I have a lot of TV shows that work nicely as ISO with the menus without the extra work of trying to rip each episode separately),

So do folders.

I started my quest for digital media and home theater a couple of years ago. I initially started with the VIDEO_TS/VOB structure. I found that there were dozens of files and additional folders to deal with. Because it was JUST a file/folder structure, many of the programs or servers made browsing and launching content very awkward. You had to either know which VOB to launch or the system had to understand where the root folder was and treat everything below it as a single "bundle" of files/folders. XBMC for example has the concept of "stacking".

That's a limitation of the "frontend", no different than the limitation of frontends not understanding how to mount an ISO.

In addition, it made it difficult to organize in a way that made sense to me because you couldn't easily nest multiple sub-folders of content.

Why not? I've got a folder "DVDs" with all my DVD rips in it. In that folder I've got all my movies directly under it. But I've also got a few TV shows. For some of them, I have a "Show" folder, which holds the rips for that show.

Unless I'm missunderstanding you, that's exactly what you describe. Only difference is where I've got a folder for a DVD rip, you've got an ISO.

Today, support for ISO is still fairly strong and so is support for a file/folder structure.

That's not really the way I see it. VLC, and maybe XBMC are the only apps that natively support ISOs. There's a number of frontends that can mount them, but that's about it.

In contrast pretty much every player I've ever used can play Folder rips directly.

However, none of the file/folder issues exist at all if ISO is supported.

I haven't run into your file/folder issues. But then, I've never been that impressed with XBMC to use it. Sage and VMC and I don't know how many other apps all work find with file/folder rips.

I can organized them however I want and it is clear (aka - non-ambiguous) for media servers to know where the start of content is compared to the organizational structure.

If there is another way to bundle things into a single file that is just as easy to create and manage as ISO, then help me understand. However, with ISO, I don't have to care. I dont' have to understand any issues relating to vob, video_ts, mksfolder, m2ts, mkv, etc. It is bundled in the original format and I don't have to see it.

I never bother with what's in my rip either, I just tell AnyDVD to rip to HDD and it makes a folder, where I want it, which I rename as I see fit, and that's it.

Or I use DVD Shrink and grab the main movie and tell it where to put it and what to call it, and that's it.

Sage show all my DVDs, no matter where I put them, how many subfolders they're burried under. I can browse them flattened or in the structure on the drive.

I DON'T WANT to have to care about how it all works, how it is structured. Just give me a single entity that I can put anywhere, that will play with it's original quality and content, without any specialized knowledge requirements or need for conversion. ISO gives me that.

So do folders. That's all I've ever done. All ISOs do for me is cause a headache trying to figure out how to play them becuase nothing supports ISOs natively.

It sounds like you've not really tried folders since you had a bad experience with them long ago. I think things have changed a lot since you had problems with folders. Heck, I think even XBMC recognizes a folder DVD as a single object and not a stack of files, but I didn't really play with it much. I know when you browse the filesystem in TheaterTek it treats a DVD folder as a single object (but doesn't know what to do with an ISO).

Sage has supported folder DVDs for ages, importing the whole folder structure as one "mediafile" inside Sage.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by PredatorVI

That's why many of us want support added in SageTV MC for ISO. It's very nice for the end user. If someone prefers all the folders/files, then by all means keep doing it that way, but don't tell me your way is the best way for me.

I'm mainly trying to say folders aren't as bad as you think, that you don't "lose" anything by using them. All the functionality and simplicity of use is there, but without the complexity of requiring virtual drives, or the limited player support.

[mtyme]

Maybe I'm wrong but it sounds like your biggest problem with using the folder structure method is that XBMC doesn't handle it well so you decided to use ISO.

But you're wanting to use SageTV now, which does support folder structure well.....so what's the problem with using the folder structure method? If it's the conversion issue - a very simple way to extract them was listed above.

It seems like there's a very simple solution here - If you want to use SageTV, extract your ISOs to the DVD folder structure. If you want to continue to use XBMC, keep doing what you're doing. Those are the options.

[morikaweb]

This entire argument seems completely pointless to me. The fact is half the customer base wants it and half the customer base does not. Now why should half the customer base have to go without simply because the other half would not use it?

Also it seems, as stanger89 has gone to lengths to prove, very easy to support ISO. All an ISO is in essence a compressed/packaged file structure like a .rar/.zip file. It should be even easer to support since the code must already be written as the HD-200 supports it in stand alone.

[PredatorVI]

This thread is a REQUEST FOR ENHANCEMENT for SageTV MC. If you don't want that enhancement, then don't request it and don't use it if it gets added.

With that, it is true that I haven't played with folder support and it might be better handled today but does it really matter? I have ISO's and like them, I don't have to navigate or see the mess of files for any reason.

Yes, folders are technically a container, but from a user perspective they are really a heirarchy that must be seen and dealt with. I don't find them elegant or desired if I have the ISO option. If you like file and folder proliferation, then keep using it. I like the ISO format and so do many others. If I have to convert everything to file/folder when I get an HDTheater in order to use it as a SageTV MC extender/client (with DVR functionality) I will, but I'm not there yet.

SageTV HD Theater supports ISO as do other extenders (Netgear, Ziova, among others), stand-alone media appliances (TViX, etc.) and software solutions (XBMC, MythTV) and most software solutions that don't support ISO natively have attempts at plug-ins to add that support. Again...I'm not alone in my desire for ISO support.

The point...since SageTV MC doesn't support ISO but SageTV HD Theater does, it would be nice if SageTV had native support so as to not lose functionality from the HD Theater when switching from stand-alone mode to client mode.

[PredatorVI]

Originally Posted by morikaweb

This entire argument seems completely pointless to me. The fact is half the customer base wants it and half the customer base does not. Now why should half the customer base have to go without simply because the other half would not use it?

Also it seems, as stanger89 has gone to lengths to prove, very easy to support ISO. All an ISO is in essence a compressed/packaged file structure like a .rar/.zip file. It should be even easer to support since the code must already be written as the HD-200 supports it in stand alone.

Exactly!!