I have ripped my DVD collection to my computer’s hard drive. I’m looking for a program that will allow me to browse my collection of DVDs and perhaps even view the DVD cover and information such as actors and director. I don’t care for Windows Media Player or Media Center. Ideally I would be able to browse through my collection and search for movie title or even actor, director or year. I would be able to select the movie that I want to watch and it would start playing it. The program that would allow me to browse my collection does not even have to play the movie; if it would just allow me to select the movie and then play in another program such as Media Player or Power DVD that would be fine. I have even thought of just creating a PDF list of my movies and then hyperlinking the DVD cover image to the file, which would then play once clicked on. I think there has to be a better way than this. Does anyone know of a great program for this? NOTE: I have ripped my movies as a single VOB file, changing the extension to mpg allows my to play the files in any program that plays video.
...but the subtitles will probably only work correctly with VLC, and most programs will not be able to play the alternate audio streams. The correct method of going to a single file from a DVD is to use a MKV container.
Thanks for the advice. I will look into the MKV format. I have removed all but the main audio stream from all of my movies and Power DVD is able to play any forced subtitles. Can MKV files be played in any standard media player such as windows Media Player, Media Center or Power DVD? Thanks
Update: I have looked into the following programs for borwsing and playing my movie collection from my computer. ANT Movie Catalog http://www.antp.be/software/moviecatalog Media Browser http://www.mediabrowser.tv/ Movie Collector http://www.collectorz.com/movie/ My Movies http://www.mymovies.dk/ These programs allow for cataloging your collection. You are able to search for the title of each movie and then upload all of its info and DVD covers from an online database. All of them except for ANT have a Media Center plugin that allows browsing of your collection once it has been added to the catalog program. The Media Center plugins all look really great except only “My Movies” has a plugin for Windows XP and when I installed it, it crashed my computer. If anyone knows of a program compatible with XP Media Center or Power DVD please let me know. Thanks
As previously mentioned, movie collector will allow you to link to your dvd file, and play with powerdvd. This is how i currently do it. I link the movie to the vob file and when i click on it, it opens up power dvd and plays the movie.
I use xbmc. It's a great 10 foot user interface and allows for integration of tv shows, movies, music videos and pictures all in one place. It also has regular updates.
Ditto on xbmc it uses media player classic as it's player,apart from actor info & a text thingy beside bitmap of movie telling the basics about said movie,you can also download the ahhhhh what the hecks that thing.....ok got it "apple trailers" a-z..lol.. vlc media player it can catalogue if creaky is around he'd be better to tell you since he uses it so would assume mpc home cinema would be able to catalogue tho no sure on the actor info n stuff Checkout the article round here on movie catalogue software,ummm would think it's under reviews there's a part two to come as well so hold on to your money for now if you decide to go with a commercial product
Also take a look at www.imediaman.com. It will use the default player you have set for that file type on your PC, and you can link your entry with the file so when you click on it, it plays. Pulls all title/actor/release date/etc...info from all of the Amamzon's with an "auto import" feature!
