DVD / Bluray ISO Support

[JimmyG 5]

I realize this has been discussed before but I wanted to add how useful this would be.  I ripped my collection of BluRay/DVDAudio music to ISO and I would like to be able to stream with menus.  Yes I could start ripping every song from every disc but that would be a ton of work and it wouldn't be easy to navigate.  Especially with a blend of audio/video on these music discs.  For the time being I'm just using Kodi, which actually works quite well.  It even scrapes the artwork for all my discs.  But I'd really love to keep everything within the Emby ecosystem.  Maybe it doesn't make much sense for regular movies, but for music releases it's a completely different situation.  These discs are still being released all the time.  Any chance this might be supported at some point?  Please? 

[Luke 42077]

HI, you can import dvd folders and iso's into Emby Server but we don't support presentation of dvd menus. You'd have to use external players in the Emby apps that support that.

[Tormentor667 16]

Out of curiosity: Why isn't there support for DVD Menus anyway? Players like VLC can easily play the ISOs.

[Spaceboy 2573]

5 minutes ago, Tormentor667 said:

Out of curiosity: Why isn't there support for DVD Menus anyway? Players like VLC can easily play the ISOs.

the fact that no-one has asked that question in the 15 months since the first post should indicate - hardly anyone uses iso's anymore

[Tormentor667 16]

I can understand that this is not relevant for movies. But what about Special Edition DVDs with bonus content? For example the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions have these "Making of" DVDs which simply cannot be ripped in a way to make it work in Emby.

[ebr 16169]

5 hours ago, Tormentor667 said:

Out of curiosity: Why isn't there support for DVD Menus anyway? Players like VLC can easily play the ISOs.

Hi.  The answer is because the industry has moved completely away from optical storage formats in favor of streaming-friendly ones.  Therefore, all the more modern players and hardware have no support for or knowledge of those formats.  And, thus, there is very little demand for them anymore.

[roaku 842]

3 hours ago, Tormentor667 said:

I can understand that this is not relevant for movies. But what about Special Edition DVDs with bonus content? For example the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions have these "Making of" DVDs which simply cannot be ripped in a way to make it work in Emby.

Just addressing the bonus content in Emby part... Have you looked at the Extras functionality in Emby?

https://emby.media/support/articles/Movie-Naming.html#movie-extras

It allows you to have the bonus content for a movie appear in a row underneath that movie.

[Tormentor667 16]

2 hours ago, roaku said:

Just addressing the bonus content in Emby part... Have you looked at the Extras functionality in Emby?

https://emby.media/support/articles/Movie-Naming.html#movie-extras

It allows you to have the bonus content for a movie appear in a row underneath that movie.

Yes, I am aware of this, but for the Extended Edition stuff from Lord of the Rings, how would you do that? The videos are not with names, so I would have to watch and backtrack the menue title to even sort it in a way that makes sense. There are so many single videos on the disc.

[roaku 842]

7 minutes ago, Tormentor667 said:

Yes, I am aware of this, but for the Extended Edition stuff from Lord of the Rings, how would you do that? The videos are not with names, so I would have to watch and backtrack the menue title to even sort it in a way that makes sense. There are so many single videos on the disc.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I use mkvtoolnix when I want to combine multiple extra videos together into one longer video file.

It's free, cross platform and fast.

And dvdcompare is a great resource for identifying which file is which extra.

http://dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=15985

[Tormentor667 16]

Okay... so understanding this: The best way to do it would be to rip the entire disc and then check for what each part of the making of is by comparing the runtimes (minutes and seconds) and then naming them that way? Does MKVTOOLNIX also extract subtitles?

[roaku 842]

26 minutes ago, Tormentor667 said:

Okay... so understanding this: The best way to do it would be to rip the entire disc and then check for what each part of the making of is by comparing the runtimes (minutes and seconds) and then naming them that way? Does MKVTOOLNIX also extract subtitles?

Correct on the ripping and naming.

I'm not sure what you mean by extract subtitles. I think of that as happening during the ripping phase, which mkvtoolnix doesn't do. Makemkv is great for that though.

mkvtoolnix will let you add or remove any component of a ripped video file, subtitles included. I only brought it up in case you were wanting to combine several short ripped extras into one longer one. I do this pretty regularly with extras.

I've also written a plugin that will auto generate art for the extras using the parent item's art. It's available here:

 

Edited January 7, 2024 by roaku

[Tormentor667 16]

Thanks for all the hints. I guess I need to try it with the first Lord of the Rings extra discs now. I will let you know here how well I got it working (and also try the plugin)

[Houfino 41]

I have a lot of DVDs at home...Does ISO really work??? 2 years ago I burned from DVD to ISO..I have a lot of ISOs...I don't want to delete to trash...Emby can play ISO? Thank you

 

 

 

[rbjtech 5284]

25 minutes ago, Houfino said:

I have a lot of DVDs at home...Does ISO really work??? 2 years ago I burned from DVD to ISO..I have a lot of ISOs...I don't want to delete to trash...Emby can play ISO? Thank you

 

 

 

Same answer as above - but rather than re-rip the DVD's, you can just feed makemkv the ISO directly.

[Houfino 41]

13 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

Same answer as above - but rather than re-rip the DVD's, you can just feed makemkv the ISO directly.

I understand correctly that I have a conversion to MKV with subtitles? Or not? Please explain me..Thank you

[Luke 42077]

2 minutes ago, Houfino said:

I understand correctly that I have a conversion to MKV with subtitles? Or not? Please explain me..Thank you

MakeMKV can preserve everything.

[rbjtech 5284]

2 minutes ago, Houfino said:

I understand correctly that I have a conversion to MKV with subtitles? Or not? Please explain me..Thank you

Yes, when you use makemkv - ALL the track information is copied across (or you can select just the tracks/languages you want if you prefer) to a single MKV file and emby will show these as audio selections or subtitle selections.  If there are extra's etc - then these are copied as seperate MKV files.

The best thing to do is get a free copy of makemkv - and play with it - you always have the original ISO to go back to if it does not work out for you. 

[mediauno 0]

Hello ,

id be glad to be able to playback .iso files via emby (premiere) since have quite a few backups in this format.

 

Thanks.

[Luke 42077]

On 1/1/2026 at 2:31 PM, mediauno said:

Hello ,

id be glad to be able to playback .iso files via emby (premiere) since have quite a few backups in this format.

 

Thanks.

Hi, there is an iso mounting plugin in the emby server plugin catalog.