best way to save using vista

VIDEO_TS and DVD Library (easy registry edit to enable). You'll find plenty of information on how to do it, you may search here on those keywords. Some prefer MyMovies, so you'd want to check that out as well. There's also an open source media library project (Open Media Library, I believe)... It's all explained in detail, just do a search.

I use DVD Fab and DVD Shrink. Both are equal.

Just make sure you don't allow any compression.

I use VMC with DVD Library hack, but I use MyMovies for the XML info. I also use MyMovies for BD/HD, so I just delete the DVD's from the MyMovies collection management AFTER I put them in once. Once the XML is created, they dont need to be in collection management. The data still shows in the VMC dvd library.

This way I use VMC for DVD's, and MyMovies only lists my BD/HD movies. Much easier for organization.

AFAIK, with an external hard drive, you need to mount and map the drive directory to a folder for the movies to show up in VMC.

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type compmgmt.msc in the Open box.
2. In the left pane, click Disk Management.
3. Right-click the partition or volume that you want to mount, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
4. Click Add.
5. Click Mount in the following empty NTFS folder (if it is not already selected), and then use one of the following steps:• Type the path to an empty folder on an NTFS volume, and then click OK.
• Click Browse, locate the empty NTFS folder, click OK, and then click OK.
• If you have not yet created an empty folder, click Browse, click New Folder to create an empty folder on an NTFS volume, type a name for the new folder, click OK, and then click OK.

You can skip loading/unloading DVDs in MyMovies just to get XML data. All you have to do is download the XML file from www.dvdxml.com and place it in the folder that contains VIDEO_TS. You can also easily create the file yourself, just look for the disc id in the DVDCacheInfo folder.

The drive will be listed as a drive, but (I believe) for the movies to show up in VMC's dvd library, the external hard drive needs to be mounted to an (empty) folder.

There may be other options though.

The path would be pointed to the mounted folder.

As long as it was mounted to an empty folder, everything should work fine.

Let us know how it goes after you test it out.

Yes. The mapped drive (folder) on the local disk is basically like a shortcut to the actual drive. Any actions performed on the mapped drive would be the same as if it was being done from the external drive directory.

If you click on the mapped drive, and have access to the external drive via this directory, and see its contents, everything is fine.

Did you use DVD Fab?

Video_TS files work fine in Vista. What does your folder structure look like?