[Eiolon]

A little background of my setup:


I have a computer that has 7 external DVD players. I use PowerDVD 8. The goal was to create a system where DVD's could be played without human intervention.


Using PowerDVD I have created a playlist. I then point to the .vob files for the movie only. This way I would not have previews or have to worry about pressing play. All the DVD's now play back to back all day.


The problem:


Once in awhile I will have a DVD drive freeze during transition. Or perhaps it's the PowerDVD software freezing. I am not sure which one really but it happens randomly. I am thinking it's the DVD because if I put a different DVD in the drive it works fine. If I put the suspected DVD back in the drive it freezes during transition.


So my question, do you think it's the DVD? If so, do you know of a reason why the DVD would not start? Is it because of some protection on the DVD? Any way of telling what DVD's would play and not play?


Thanks for your time!

 

[TruthBringR]

you're going about it the wrong way - i would rip all of them to harddrive and sequence the order that way, stream-ripping them to single individual MPEG2 files with audio and then creating a playlist..

 

[Eiolon]

Yes, I understand that would be the way to do it, ideally.


However, we are a business and do not have license from the production companies to rip to the hard drive. We are also frequently audited by Warner Bros., Disney, etc. to make sure we are within guidelines to display the video in public so there is no way around it.


The only license we have is to play it directly off of the disc from a DVD player.


Now, as a little update, I may have found another problem. It appears that if the DVD drive has been idle for sometime and the playlist pulls from it PowerDVD will freeze and the transition to the new DVD will not be made.

 

[Eiolon]

Just a small update here. I have found that turning off the power save feature for the USB ports have stopped the drives from falling asleep and they can now go from drive to drive without problem.


The next issue is a DVD technical thing. On the DVD's, there are VOB files. I am putting the VOB files of the movie only in the playlist to skip the menu's, etc. However, when one of the VOB files transitions to the next there is a black screen for a second or so until the next one starts.


When the DVD is played in a normal DVD player, does it use a file that makes the transition from each VOB file seamless or is there a buffer or sorts that does this? This is the only thing standing in my way at this point.


Thanks!

 

[Eiolon]

Okay, for those interested, I finally have my own Blu-ray tower created with success.


It has 14 lite-on external blu-ray drives connected to a PC.


I use PowerDVD BD+ for video playback. I use AnyDVD to bypass menus and previews and to remove subtitles if they are on by default. I then set Windows Task Scheduler up to start the next movie once one has finished.


So I essentially scratched my older method in the posts above and this has worked with success.