STV feature idea

[evilpenguin]

All of these custom menu STV's are really awesome. I just love the expandablility and customizability I get from playing with them. Recently I have been toying around with what I think is a really great idea.

When I get my netflix DVD's I rip them down to ISO's right away so I can send them back really fast and watch them at my leisure. Ever since I started doing this i've been looking for a way to mount and unmount DVD's from inside Sage. Now that we have the awsome menu.xml files it got me thinking that I can write a java or C++ program to scan my ISO directory, generate the mount and unmount scripts, and generate a menu inside sage that will launch the scripts.

This will work and the programming wouldn't be to difficult, however this seems really kludgish. I was wondering if there is any simple way to add some type of basic support for this in the STV's.

What I mean is,
-Have a submenu type that will scan a folder and generate a menu containing the contents of that folder.
-Then have the ability to run command line arguements that will substitute in the name and location of the file you selected, like "delete c:/%directory path/%file".

Then you could have handy modifiers like
-Scan in only files with a specified extention
-Run this script before you scan the folder
-When you execute the commands replace the file's extention with anther extention.
-etc.

I think this would be a really powerful addition to the already powerful menu system. I'm curious if,
a) anyone else thinks this would be useful
b) this is even possible
c) someone wants to impliment it, if so can I help?

Edit: Oh, and if this is already possible in an STV tell me i'm and idiot and that need to read documentation better.

-Scott

[Opus4]

See Appendix I in the SageTV manual. It doesn't read ISOs, but I've used DVD Shrink a couple times to store a DVD on my HD. SageTV can then display the DVD as an imported video & hey play just fine as a DVD.

- Andy

[evilpenguin]

Ehh, not really what i'm looking for. I'm shooting for a "never leave sage" solution. I can already rip DVD's in sage, now I want to mount em using Daemon tools so I can just play them like a regular DVD, with menu's and everything.

[nielm]

Ripped DVDs (ripped to VOB files, not ripped as ISO's) are playable as a real DVD directly in sage with menus ete from the imported video files screen...

[evilpenguin]

Ok, no one digs the ISO example, but imagine if you had a folder full of snes, nes, n64, etc. roms... which no one does cause that would be wrong... but if you did, you could scan it and launch individual games straight from sage.

[stanger89]

Well if you look back at when 2.0 came out the OriginalV2 STV had support to launch mame stuff, maybe exactly the type of thing you're looking for.

OT, how do you rip DVDs from Sage?

[abasu2003]

i'm pretty sure 2.1 also has support for mame....is that a secret?

[stanger89]

Probably, but I haven't seen it mentioned since the 2.0 release so I don't have a clue if it's still in the default STV or not. As for a secret, I think it's one of those unsupported things, it's there if you want to try it.

[Narflex]

The MAME menus are still there for 2.1.

[evilpenguin]

DVD decrypter has really nice command line parameters you can use. So just use Neilms interface and have a button that...

C:/Program Files/DVD Decrypter/DVDdecrypter.exe /MODE ISOREAD /SRC E: /DEST D:/DVD_ISOs /Start /Close

Fill in the details with your own.

As for the Mame stuff, that stuff was specifically for MAME, (it works great btw), there is no support for other emulators.

[mogrinz]

For MAME (and especially if you're using other emulators: N64, SNES, VPin, etc), if you're using neilm's STV, you can have it launch a custom frontend. I use MAMEWAH, because it supports any emulators you want. You can also skin it to match however you have Sage set up

First, I "sleep" Sage, then launch Mamewah, then "wake up" Sage when Mamewah exits.

[wbarber69]

you could just load up all your iso's in alcohol120% which makes the computer think that they are all mounted up in their own drive and you could browse through them like that

[stanger89]

But how do you mount a couple hundred ISOs?

[wbarber69]

please lets be reasonable


or someone could code a plugin that interfaces with alcohol and mounts isos when the user prompts

[sleonard]

I believe this will be in the next version of Cayars' STV. I'm guessing he is using command line parameters sent to Daemon tools to mount and unmount a particular DVD.iso and then starting the built-in DVD player.

[Cayars]

Quite the deductions there sleonard!

That's exactly what I'm doing. The only difference is that I'lm calling an "ImageMount.cmd" file which has all the commands in it. I just pass the name of the ISO file to the cmd script.

I was playing with a couple of different programs and the command line options are to different to program (filename, then options), (options then filename), (options, filename, options). By using a script file the user can change it at will to use any mount program they want with any command line options needed.

Out of the "box" it will be setup to use Daemon Tools which is the most popular I'd think.