Hello I hope i have come to the right forum, some basics on what im trying to do is- I purchased a 2 tarabyte hard drive, my intent is to backup movies i own to that hard drive then plug it into my ps3 and play them, what im using to rip the dvd is dvd shrink, i unclicked the section that says to leave the files in 1 gig byte chunks, so what i am getting is the main movie (VOB) file then the ifo and bup files, my question is if i am only going to use this for the purpose of watching the movie on the ps3 and not making a dvd(because i already own the original dvd) can i just leave the VOB file and delete the ifo and bup files, i have tested this and the movie plays good on my ps3 without these other files, but i am not 100% on this so im trying to get some advice /input on this from you guys who are much more knowledgeable on this subject than i am, thanks everyone for your time. :)
You can delete them as you can always remake an ifo with ifoedit,the bup file is a backup of the ifo,tho considering they take up no space i have to wonder why bother,you may also want to think about using vidcoder or handbrake & create mp4 files instead to reduce space requirements a 2tb drive fills up pretty quick
here's a better explanation
The DVD-Video and DVD-Audio specifications (see 6.1 ) define how audio and video data are stored in specialized files. The .IFO files contain menus and other information about the video and audio. The .BUP files are backup copies of the .IFO file. The .VOB file (for DVD-Video) and .AOB file (for DVD-Audio) are MPEG-2 program streams with additional packets containing navigation and search information.
Since a .VOB file is just a specialized MPEG-2 file, most MPEG-2 decoders and players can play them. You may need to change the extension from .VOB to .MPG. However, any special features such as angles or branching will cause strange effects. The best way to play a .VOB file is to use a DVD player application to play the entire volume (or to open the VIDEO_TS.IFO file), since this will make sure all the DVD-Video features are used properly
are the ifo files and bup files only used in making a dvd, when i plug in my external hard drive and keep all the files ( the VOB and IFO and BUP) the files are seperate from the main movie and are basically there as a bunch of loose files so my ps3 sees them as all seperate , it isnt a matter of saving space but of not having all those loose files if they are not needed to play the movie on the ps3:)thankyou again for your help.
a simple way of putting it is the ifo is nothing more than a file telling a dvd player what to play first much how you computer starts up from boot to windows
Originally posted by tomstr65: Hello I hope i have come to the right forum, some basics on what im trying to do is- I purchased a 2 tarabyte hard drive, my intent is to backup movies i own to that hard drive then plug it into my ps3 and play them, what im using to rip the dvd is dvd shrink, i unclicked the section that says to leave the files in 1 gig byte chunks, so what i am getting is the main movie (VOB) file then the ifo and bup files, my question is if i am only going to use this for the purpose of watching the movie on the ps3 and not making a dvd(because i already own the original dvd) can i just leave the VOB file and delete the ifo and bup files, i have tested this and the movie plays good on my ps3 without these other files, but i am not 100% on this so im trying to get some advice /input on this from you guys who are much more knowledgeable on this subject than i am, thanks everyone for your time. :)
Buy and use DVDFab. It's much, much easier and you'll end up with one .mp4 file that the PS3 will play. DVDFab even has a PS3 option built into it.
Otherwise, just burn your files to a disc and do it that way it's so much easier. I would just keep all the .iso's on the external HDD if you wanna use DVDShrink. Keep in mind, DVDShrink it's kind of outdated software. It'll break some encryption and it won't break some others.
Another thing I would suggest is Freemake Video Converter. It's free and you can drag/drop all those .vob files into it, create an .mp4 that will play in the PS3 and you can join them all into one single file that way.
thankyou for the advice and i have thought of purchasing the dvd fab , i have used it in the past and am familiar with it, does it give you the option in the free version also to back up and only have the one file ?
No & what you want is conversion to a single container format of avi,mp4,mkv etc etc,like i said before use vidcoder or handbrake,read some guides & for testing cut a 500mb piece out with dvdshrink & practice converting using the presets tho you'll find you'll need to tweak them to get a decent picture like all presets,rule of thumb the higher the bitrate the better the quality
