I've begun a project of making backup copies of all of my purchased DVD's so that they are accessible on any of my Frontend Only machines by doing a manual recording of each onto the Master Backend. This elimates the need for a DVD player at each viewing point in my LinHES. Storage space is not a critical issue since each archival file is transcoded after recording to a size I have determined as optimal for my needs, and all in all, everything is proceeding along quite nicely.

Here's the heart of this inquiry:

Some of the DVD's in my collection are 'Extended' versions, which require a disc change to continue watching the rest of the feature. The obvious option is to make two separate recordings, one for each disc, and then just move on to the disc two file once the first disc has finished.

Is it possible to combine BOTH files in such a way that playback proceeds without doing this, so that it would appear as if the movie just continued on without a disc change in the recording process?

When doing the original manual recording, the MBE stores the files with a file extension of .mpg, but after transcoding, they are stored with a file extension of .nuv

What I am thinking is to manually edit the end of the disc one recording, and the beginning of the disc two recording so that the movie appears to be seamless, and then merge the second file (or a copy of it) into the first. Afterwards I would delete the second file.

Is this possible, and, if so, how would I accomplish this?

Also, would doing this upset the balance in the database, since the actual running time would be longer than what is stored under the entry for the first file?

Any suggestions, hints, advice would be welcome.

Regards,

DaveJ45

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LinHES - The only SANE Multimedia Option!

As Cecil mentioned, you can simply cat mpeg files together. This does not work for AVI/NUV however.

One question: Why not use the "Import DVD" option for the single DVD videos? Unless the content includes commercials (you mentioned "purchased DVD's", not sure what the content is) you don't need to comm-flag/transcode them. Playing with the various ripping options would probably get you to a comfortable size for each of the rips, and then they are accessible via "Watch Videos".

Thanks for the tip, slowtolearn, about the import DVD options, I'll take a look at that as well for the single DVD archival files.

DaveJ45

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LinHES - The only SANE Multimedia Option!

BTW: Nice sig! Thanks.