Hi folks.
I have a bunch of folders on my hard drive containing a DVD videos. Family videos from Christmas, Weddings, Baptisms and other occasions recorded with my Camcorder in DVD format and then backed up to my HDD. I could rip them into .avi files just to make it easier to play them but then I am risking loosing the quality. It would be pointless really – recording in DVD quality just to encode it to avi… If not the waste of quality then definitely a waste of time and cpu power / electric energy.
Anyway as You probably know DVD video content is a whole structure. It’s not just one file so it’s not as easy as going into the file’s folder and clicking on it to make it playable. There are .vob files inside that could be played one after another… sure but it’s a waste of time again plus each DVD has at least 2 – 4 of those .vob files you would have to click on each of them to watch the entire video and sometimes the rewinding or fast forwarding won’t work when You do that… Nah… That won’t work for me.
When You right click on something in KDE4 You get right click menu and one of the items in this menu is ‘Actions’. I have decided to add ‘Play content of this folder as DVD video in Kaffeine.’ entry to this menu in my Arch Linux. It took me a while but I have succeeded. Here is how:
First make sure You have Kaffeine installed. After You install Kaffeine open terminal and run those commands:
mkdir -p ~/.kde4/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/
and then:
kwrite ~/.kde4/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/playwithkaffeine.desktop
and then paste this into the text editor:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
Version=1.0
Actions=PlayWithKaffeine;
Name=Play content of this folder as DVD video in Kaffeine.
GenericName=Play content of this folder as DVD video in Kaffeine.
ServiceTypes=ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,inode/directory
[Desktop Action PlayWithKaffeine]
Name=Play folder content as DVD video in Kaffeine.
Exec=kaffeine 'dvd:%U'
Icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/kaffeine.png
Now save the file. There… You’re all done…
Right click on any folder containing DVD structure and choose Actions > Play content of this folder as DVD video in Kaffeine from the menu. Kaffeine will start and will start playing DVD from the folder that You have chosen.
Sometimes You will have to log out and then log back in for the menu item to appear for the first time.
Hope someone will find it useful.
Regards.
Andrzej
