[cgroth]

Thanks Brazen1, I thought I had replied to your post, but it seems my reply has been lost in the cloud or somewhere.. Anyway, I just suffered a harddisk crash on one of the NASes. Fortunately it is set up as a RAID 5 so on a couple of hours it should be OK again. Once again my paranoia and lack of trust in technology pays off...

I am starting my vacation tomorrow and I am hoping for the type of weather that will keep me away from KODI for a few weeks! Although right now it raining and not at all warm, so we'll see. Anyway I have decided to buy a new NAS with 50TB storage (40TB in Raid 5, scaleable to 120TB in Raid5), so after the vacation I will at least have enough room to run different rips of my BluRays, one for KODI and one for MainLobby.

In terms of seat time, I've actually put in so much over the last week that my seat hurts. Really, no kidding!!

[Karellen]

Raid 5 is a bad choice.

You need to reconsider to Raid 6 or mirroring.

--- Edit ---

Some reading... http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-...g-in-2009/

[Powerhouse]

Great, 50TB is nice.

1. Now Convert (not re-rip) your existing BluRay's using MakeMKV with just the main movie, then rip the extras (if you want them).
2. Convert your existing TV Series BluRay's using MakeMKV, and rip each episode as individual.

Here is how you should do it...
http://lifehacker.com/5559007/the-hassle...collection

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rip-dvds-bl...-platform/

[bilgepump]

with just the main movie

He's trying to get it to work with tv shows. That's the thing. There's a heap of titles on each disc.

[Powerhouse]

So here you go...

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/07/...-episodes/

[bilgepump]

I will at least have enough room to run different rips of my BluRays, one for KODI and one for MainLobby.

Try ONE show as Brazen has recommended, with the files, in an .iso container. Then if Kodi has no troubles, try that .iso container with MainLobby. As suggested, I doubt Mainlobby will have the slightest trouble with it. Then you can just convert your files to .iso format and all will be good.

(and then you can use your new NAS for backing up your files....)

[Powerhouse]

And when you think you have a lot, I've converted all my DVD's and BluRays (currently 3500+ Movies, and 722 TV Series with like 50,000+ episodes).

So yes, I know it's a lot of work. Yes it took me a long time (Just over a year and a half, on an off, when I had time, but that also includes 250gigs of Music albums, and 4000+ Music Videos). It takes up most of a 48TB FreeNAS server (can lose 2 disks and the server will still work without issue). But in the end, Kodi with the Skin AeonMQ7 looks awesome, and everyone in the family loves how easy it is to use.

Just try a few movies, with some of the different methods mentioned, and see which one is best for your. Then try TV shows, again see which works best for you.

Oh, and don't forget a good scraper. I suggest MediaElch, but others might have some different solutions.

In the end, it will well be worth it. And you will be all set for any new format that may come out.

[cgroth]

I will at least have enough room to run different rips of my BluRays, one for KODI and one for MainLobby.

Try ONE show as Brazen has recommended, with the files, in an .iso container. Then if Kodi has no troubles, try that .iso container with MainLobby. As suggested, I doubt Mainlobby will have the slightest trouble with it. Then you can just convert your files to .iso format and all will be good.

(and then you can use your new NAS for backing up your files....)

MainLobby doesn't play anything, it just gives ArcSoft the adress til the folder that should be played. So if ArcSoft is OK with the .iso file then that shouldn't be a problem.

[cgroth]

2. Convert your existing TV Series BluRay's using MakeMKV, and rip each episode as individual.

I will not re-rip TV Series (or Movies for that matter). I thought it was possible to somehow convert my existing rips (which basically are identical copies of the discs I have as far as I know) into .iso files?

[cgroth]

Guys, some basic questions before I start experimenting with my BluRay library:

1. What does 'container' mean? Is that another word for an ISO file? Is .mkv a container? Is it an ISO?
2. What does 'encode' mean? Is another word for 'convert' or another word for 'compress'' or neither?
3. What does 'mount' mean?
4. Is .mkv the file format you all recommend? Will this keep subtitles that were available on the original BluRay disc (and on my already ripped copies)?
5. Is there a way to test an .mkv file with kodi? Since my advancedsettings.xml isn't set up to caputure .mkv files I guess updating the library after I have experimented with creating a .mkv file will not result in KODI picking it up? Is there some way of getting the internal KODI player of manually opening/playing a file?

I have successfully moved KODI to my main HTPC, and after some fiddling about have it outputting sound in digital surround. So now the only thing stopping me is getting the TV Shoes from BluRay to play individual episodes with subtitles :-)

[Powerhouse]

Do you not read any of the links I post?

1. Container is a format that holds your data. It does not change it, or alter it. For example, if you use Winzip, to compress a folder, it puts the folder in a .ZIP file. This .Zip file is considered a container. Now you can use Winzip to compress the data, but you don't have to compress it. The choice is yours.

2. Encoding is compressing your data. Which is great, but there are trade off's with image quality. So a 50Gig BluRay rip, can be compressed using the x264 Encoding Method to be around 10-20Gig's in size. While using the x265 Encoding Method you can shrink your rips down to 5-10Gigs in size.

3. If you convert your Movies/TV Shows to .ISO, you have to have a software to Mount the .ISO image, so it looks like a BluRay disc.

4. I personally recommend the .MKV format, but others might like something else.

5. Yes, since you keep bringing up your BluRay TV Shows. follow this link
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/07/...-episodes/
The very first section is about using MakeMKV. So download and install MakeMKV then load one of your TV BluRay rips. Create .MKV files for each of seasons episodes. Then you have to label said rips with what Season and Episode each rip is. Again, follow what is said in the link above.

So if you named the TV shows rips correctly (S01E01, etc). Save these in a test folder called the TV shows Title (Baywatch, for example). Then under that folder, create a season folder (Season 1), then copy all the .MKV files that you labeled Season 1 into that folder. Should look like this...

Baywatch\Season 1\S01E01.MKV

When you import this test folder into Kodi, it should have everything you need to be able to pick which episode you wish to play, and all the artwork and info should be available.

[cgroth]

Thanks Powerhouse! Yes I read the links, but the language (not the English but the technical words are difficult to understand when I have no technical background). Different people tell me I should have iso files, put thing in containers and rip mkv files, and I don't understand whether they are saying different things (and therefore given me different pieces of advice and I need to select the best one) or whether they are all saying the same thing with different words.

I am converting one of my ripped BRs (Big Bang Therory Season 3 Episodes 1 - 12 as we speak, using MakeMKV. So far no problems other than the fact that it estimates it to take 25 minutes. Also, I am not all that happy about having to rename each episode. I have spent 3 years doing it on a disc by disc basis, for maybe 1.600 discs, not, assuming an average of 5 episodes per disc, I have to find, select, play, identify and name 8.0000 titles... Just the ripping will take me approx 833 hours, is there no program that can do this automatically somehow?

I will not encode then.

Why would one chose one format over another? Better picture or sound?

OK, so I will not have to rewrite advanced settings now that the test BluRay files are .mkv and not. bdmv? That means I only need to convert into .mkv those Blurays where the existing rip doesn't accept the Show Blu-ray menu option? That will be an immense time saving I think!!

[cgroth]

Hooray, it worked. It was identified in the scraper, displays with artwork, plays immediately and the subtitle is preserved! That was the good news

The bad news; the output folder contains 12 (originally 14) random named files. Is there a smart way of identifying the titles? Or do I have to watch an episode until I can match it with the description on TV Database?? That cannot be the case....?!

Since I may not have to convert all my BluRay rips, only those where the Show Blu-ray menu options doesn't work, AND because I don't want to take all the trouble of manually linking 8.000 titles in MainLobby, I would prefer to add a subfolder called e.g. KODI or MKSv or something to each existing BluRay-folder where I have done the conversion, and then have KODI scrape/play from that folder, but otherwise use the regular index.bdmv. Do you guys believe that would work? Is that something that would be solved in a more advanced version of my advanced settings?

I am a bit more optimistic now, especially if what I mention in the last paragraph would work.

[Powerhouse]

The different options listed, were just that options for you to try. If you knew about .ISO files, great, give that a try. But there are limitations that were pointed out with .ISO files (one being that you need to Mount the .ISO file using a separate software). Others might prefer .MP4 as their container of choice. Normally people who are in the MAC ecosystem (iPad's, Apple TV, etc), like the .MP4 format. However, I find that .MKV files offer the most flexibility (they play on just about everything).

I agree with you, converting only the BluRay's that are giving you problems are the way to go. And, from this point forward, any new Rips you do, should be straight .MKV. Believe me, I know how long stuff takes to rename. After all, I have 50,000+ TV shows that I hand rename each and every one. I actually use the TVDB (http://thetvdb.com/) for finding the name of each show.

So for Me, The Big Bang Theory... http://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=...8047&lid=7

Gets named like this...

Pilot.S01E01.MKV
The Big Bran Hypothesis.S01E02.MKV
The Fuzzy Boots Corollary.S01E03.MKV
etc...

[Powerhouse]

Unfortunately you will have to watch the first few seconds of the show, and match it with what the episode number is.