[tridentinecanon]

First post!

I've been in the process of ripping my entire DVD library (into TS_FOLDERs) with MTR. I'm ordering a couple of Drobos, I'm organizing/cataloging it all with a young and buggy, but nifty, little app called "Private Screening."

What can I say? I like Apple's DVD Player. It is definitely slower and buggier than VLC, but I prefer the interface and it works with Private Screening, so it's what's for me.

My dilemma: I hate UOPs. (Who doesn't, right?) In ripping thousands of DVDs, the task of actively removing UOPs during the ripping process seems daunting, especially since it doesn't always work (I just don't want to have to "check" each DVD after ripping it). So, I'm looking for an after-the-fact solution.

Can I disable UOPs in Apple's DVD Player???

[mduell]

Just a suggestion: Order a pair of 4 or 5 drive RAID0 enclosures and store a copy of the DVDs on each. It's slightly cheaper than Drobos for most capacity points, supports more capacity, avoids the days-long rebuilding process if the Drobo sneezes, and can be much faster if you're connecting them to a Mac Pro via eSATA.

[tridentinecanon]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Just a suggestion: Order a pair of 4 or 5 drive RAID0 enclosures and store a copy of the DVDs on each. It's slightly cheaper than Drobos for most capacity points, supports more capacity, avoids the days-long rebuilding process if the Drobo sneezes, and can be much faster if you're connecting them to a Mac Pro via eSATA.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep it in mind. Did you have any specific models to recommend?

I'm still leaning towards Drobo just so that everything is backed up. (I know it sounds silly to keep a second backup of data that I already have on DVD, but I'm actually taking out an "insurance policy" on the the long and tedious process of ripping all these DVDs.) Also, I noticed that a Drobo with 4 1TB drives actually yields 2.7TB of storage space (under the standard Drobo mirrored setup--check out the "Drobolator" on their website). I'm not sure how this works, but it's appealing.

Any comments about the UOPs in DVD Player?

[mduell]

I'm very familiar with Drobo. Four 1TB drives yields 3TB (base 10) or 2.7TiB (base 2). With what I proposed, everything is backed up; you keep a complete second copy of the data instead of just some parity information to reconstruct the data.

I doubt Apple would let you bypass the UOP limitations on DVDs; they're too buddy-buddy with the media industry.

Personally I just rip and concatenate the main title VOBs, so I end up with a single playable file (with VLC) that contains just the movie and nothing more.

[tridentinecanon]

Originally Posted by mduell 

With what I proposed, everything is backed up; you keep a complete second copy of the data instead of just some parity information to reconstruct the data.

I'm with you. Two RAID0 enclosures it is. Appreciate the help.

It's too bad that the UOP thing seems unavoidable. I seem to remember that back in the days of Jaguar/Panther there was a DVD Player "patch" that could work around UOPs, but alas, the patch is no longer current.