Best way to handle TV-Shows

[RayBe]

Hi,
after reading a lot in the wiki's and forums,
ripping dvd's and tagging them is awesome in LMCE and very clear to use,
but for tv-shows i am a bit puzzled to say the least.

what is at the moment the best way to rip my tv-shows in LMCE?

1- must i do the same as movies, just rip the whole disk or just rip the separated episodes?
2- if i must rip to episodes, what program is best for this (i want NO compression, just a 1 on 1 copy, hdd-size doesn't matter)?
3- how do u properly tag tv-shows?
3- i would like to be able select a show (friends for example), then select the season and then select the episode by name, can this be done or must handling and searching tv-shows be done differently?
4- what is the best place to rip them to? the video folder?

i just wanna get things clear before i start ripping a whole bunch of dvd's.
also i hope to help others clarifying things, by me asking
any help is much appreciated,

br,
Raymond

[RayBe]

nobody any suggestions?

i was hoping somebody had:
- a quick-guide or,
- a pros and cons towards ripping entire dvd or episodes or,
- an example how he or she did manage tv-series from dvd or,
- a personal story about his/her struggles or,
- a suggestion about ripping software

again, i am not only asking this for myself but also for future reference, for people who want to begin using the system, as guidelines.

hope to hear from you,

br,
Raymond

[golgoj4]

Hello

Sorry it took me so long to respond, been distracted playing with new toys.
Tagging stuff has been a slight obsession of mine and this is what i've found / done.

I would recommend ripping episodes one by one to individual files. Otherwise they will contain metadata for everything on the disc as opposed to a more specific metadata tagging. Meaning:

Rip and tag Disc 1 of xx discs. It contains 4 episodes of the series. That .iso now is tagged with the data for those 4 shows, making it confusing to find just the one. Also, you cant view this over upnp to your dnla compatibles devices like connected televisions, video game consoles and other devices which implement this protocol.

as opposed to

Rip each episode to the video format of your choice, and be able to tag the video files more accurately. Be able to utilize the dnla spec. Im a big proponent of using this because a world of other devices can utilize the linuxmce system without need to invest in a media director. For example. Its common for me to use my ipaq in conjunction with my ps3 in a room that doesn't have a media director in it. Just a network connection and an IR repeater.

Managing the series is a work in progress (and 90% complete)
Finding that tagging individually was slow, i wrote an addon that utilizes an external source to tag television shows. Should be available very soon.

as far as ripping software, ive had different experiences across the board, someone may know one that is generally the best to use. I have to work all kinds of magic just to get quality with proper lip sync.

And lastly, please name your media in a sane way. We hope to add automatic tagging of media at some point but in the mean time, the interface i mentioned that works from the web admin basically tries to brute force match through a given set of patterns.

So something like
<showname><season><episode>.<fileextension>
is ideal.
For movies, something like
<moviename><year>.<fileextension>
is ideal. Anything else is just more work to parse out.

-golgoj4

[RayBe]

thanks golgoj4 for your reply

just got a few new questions reading your responce:

Rip and tag Disc 1 of xx discs. It contains 4 episodes of the series. That .iso now is tagged with the data for those 4 shows, making it confusing to find just the one.

isn't it posible to assign episode tags to the .iso so u can view the episodes names in the orbiter?

could u name a few ripping software, so i can try some out, i want the best possible quality, hdd-space is not a problem.

Managing the series is a work in progress (and 90% complete)

do u mean ticket 778, i read about it in the svn-pages, last comment is about some bugs being there,
i asume they are being worked on? (just a question, please do not be offended by it, just want to point it out and certenly do not want to stress somebody out )
again big thanks,

br,
Raymond

[golgoj4]

thanks golgoj4 for your reply

just got a few new questions reading your responce:

Rip and tag Disc 1 of xx discs. It contains 4 episodes of the series. That .iso now is tagged with the data for those 4 shows, making it confusing to find just the one.

isn't it posible to assign episode tags to the .iso so u can view the episodes names in the orbiter?

could u name a few ripping software, so i can try some out, i want the best possible quality, hdd-space is not a problem.

Managing the series is a work in progress (and 90% complete)

do u mean ticket 778, i read about it in the svn-pages, last comment is about some bugs being there,
i asume they are being worked on? (just a question, please do not be offended by it, just want to point it out and certenly do not want to stress somebody out )
again big thanks,

br,
Raymond

Dvd Ripping software is kind of a pain. I find that lip sync is a big issue when I rip the discs. Ive used handbrake (not happy), xillsoft dvd ripper (also not so great), anydvd (ok), and so i generally use dvd decrypter to remove the encryption and then basically try and tweak the rip to where its acceptable. I still have yet to find one end-all be all ripper.

It is possible to assign episode tags to the .iso. If you rip each episode from the disc to its own .iso, you could label each episode individually and tag them that way. When viewing by 'title' in orbiter, it will show you <showname>-<title>-<episode> after they are tagged. Just keep in mind, these shows currently cant be viewed in .iso format over upnp (dlna).

Yes i am referring to ticket 778. The bugs are minor in that some debug information is show, but it otherwise works fine. And no offense taken

hth
golgoj4

[RayBe]

It is possible to assign episode tags to the .iso. If you rip each episode from the disc to its own .iso,

so it isn't possible to assign 4 episode-tags to a full dvd-iso (dvd rip as 1 disk)?
that way u could use the standard dvd-ripper built in LMCE and do the tagging after that.

for rip-software i am, as you puzzled, i used makemkv and was very happy about it because it can rip 1 dvd in 1 go to the seperate episodes.
sadly if u rip to mkv, audio and subtitle can't be chosen in the orbiter from my experience (i tried a movie-dvd)
or do u know how to get the .mkv files to work?

br,
Raymond

[golgoj4]

It is possible to assign episode tags to the .iso. If you rip each episode from the disc to its own .iso,

so it isn't possible to assign 4 episode-tags to a full dvd-iso (dvd rip as 1 disk)?
that way u could use the standard dvd-ripper built in LinuxMCE and do the tagging after that.

for rip-software i am, as you puzzled, i used makemkv and was very happy about it because it can rip 1 dvd in 1 go to the seperate episodes.
sadly if u rip to mkv, audio and subtitle can't be chosen in the orbiter from my experience (i tried a movie-dvd)
or do u know how to get the .mkv files to work?

br,
Raymond

Sorry for being so confusing. You can in fact do that (though i didnt program the tv tagger to take that into account so some adjustments would need to be made)

As far as mkv's im not sure as i dont really use that file format.

[RayBe]

Sorry for being so confusing. You can in fact do that (though i didnt program the tv tagger to take that into account so some adjustments would need to be made)

I do not want to give orders, please don't get me wrong, i just want the best and easiest way to rip tv-show dvd's.
If you could make those adjustments, that would be great, as far as i see it there would be a bunch of improvements:
- you can still use the buildin ripper wich is great and fast
- you still have acces to all of the dvd extra's

The tagging of tv-shows has to be done either-way, when u rip into episodes you have to tagg them and if you rip into dvd-iso you also have to tagg them, i personelly think ripping the totall dvd and tagging afterwards is easier.

Br,
Raymond

[golgoj4]

Sorry for being so confusing. You can in fact do that (though i didnt program the tv tagger to take that into account so some adjustments would need to be made)

I do not want to give orders, please don't get me wrong, i just want the best and easiest way to rip tv-show dvd's.
If you could make those adjustments, that would be great, as far as i see it there would be a bunch of improvements:
- you can still use the buildin ripper wich is great and fast
- you still have acces to all of the dvd extra's

The tagging of tv-shows has to be done either-way, when u rip into episodes you have to tagg them and if you rip into dvd-iso you also have to tagg them, i personelly think ripping the totall dvd and tagging afterwards is easier.

Br,
Raymond

entirely do-able all though i need to examine how thetvdb.com deals with discs. i know they have that as part of the api, just need to look into it.

golgoj4

[RayBe]

entirely do-able all though i need to examine how thetvdb.com deals with discs. i know they have that as part of the api, just need to look into it.

that would be great, thanks a lot for your effort and contribution to this great system! 
looking forward to using it.

br,
Raymond