somehtin I fanally got around to testing, Which I think solves the question post in a recent thread about displaying DVD titles when playing DVDs stored on PC HD:
there is no need to preserve the VIDEO-TS folder name - that's only needed when writing an optical disc.
so having that folder in side a DVDfab ripped movie is a redundant later which in fact stops some program features form working i.e. you can't use resume from last played position in powerdvd or WinDVD because both programs think that the movie is called video_ts and save the last played position data under that name.

so what i'm doing now which seems to be working is to rip as nomal, then move the video_ts folder out from where dvdfab put it & remane it as movietitle. I can dow delete dvdfab's folder which just now contains an enpty audio_ts folder.

thsu I now have a folder called movietitle which is what used to be the video_ts folder. I can now launch the movieby selecting that foldername in Windvd or Powerdvd withtout having to go to a video_TS subfolder & I reckon the resume from last porision option should now track every movie on the HD separately. It will take more time to check that last point but I reckon I'm on the right track.

Actually, I have a feeling that Ting & co thought of this ages ago and that's what the "create subfolders in output directory" option in common settings controls - I'll have to test that also.

A Data DVD is a disc not having a VIDEO_TS folder with the necessary ifo/bup/vob files....
Aside from that every VideoDVD is also a DataDVD.
AUDIO_TS folders are only there for compatiblity reasons.

I knew that stuff, thanks.

My point is that if all you want to do is watch movies on a PC hard drive, then all you need is the contents of the video_TS folder, and those contents don't have to be in a folder called Video_TS

They can be in something with a meaningful name which is quicker to select, and then your PC software will hopefully know which movie it's playing and not get confused when you want to resume from that folder later on, after watching something else.

e.g. I renamed a VIDEO_TS folder to TEST & then selected that folder with powerDVD, & it opened it & played the movie, without me having to open a subfolder.

updates:
1. the above trick actually only works with powerdvd - not with WinDVD 7. the latter insists on finding a correctly named folder. I tested it with one program then jsut assumed that it woudl work with both - but no.
2. the remove subfolders option in current settings of v4 does not do what I thought it would , it just stops the creation of full disc, customise, main movie etc subfolders.