Dvd on Michael’s Domain

Backing up DVDs

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

DVD ripping is one thing (and Handbrake is the tool I have been mostly using for that). But sometimes you want to just copy the whole DVD to your hard drive. On Ubuntu Linux, my preferred software for this is dvdbackup .

Handbrake and protected DVDs

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Ripping DVDs is a thing of the past, but occasionally I still need to do it. However, it happens so rarely that evertime I have either a new computer or a new Linux distribution and I need to install the necessary software. This time I am on Ubuntu 16.04. I usually use Handbrake and it is very comfortable, but handbrake sometimes fails to do the job. This time, I had to resort to MakeMKV . However MakeMKV only rips the video to an MKV container but it does not compress it. If you need the space reduction you should still push the file through a compressor. Here’s the whole chain of commands:I only have an Apple USB-Superdrive. Apple doesn’t want me to use it with any other computer but Macs. Therefore, in order to make it work under Linux, you needs to sens it a “Magic cookie” (see here: ):sg_raw /dev/sr0 EA 00 00 00 00 00 01If you have Handbrake installed from the default Ubuntu repository, you need to remove it (it’s crippled and you want to be able to use it also with encrypted DVDs):(sudo apt remove handbrake && sudo apt autoremove)Install this version:sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releasessudo apt updatesudo apt install handbrake-gtk handbrake-cliInstall software to read encrypted DVDs:sudo apt-get install libdvd-pkgHowever, you have to execute some manual commands after the install is ready, but the installer instructs you during installation.Select as source the TS_Audio folder on the DVD. If the scan never finishes or you do not see any tracks after the scan finishes, you might need something like MakeMKV. I didn’t find any PPA or deb file, so I compiled it from source, which succeeded without any problems following the isntructions from here: http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224 . Here the short version:wget http://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-bin-1.10.4.tar.gzwget http://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-oss-1.10.4.tar.gztar -xvzf makemkv-bin-1.10.4.tar.gztar -xvzf makemkv-oss-1.10.4.tar.gz cd makemkv-oss-1.10.4/./configuremakesudo make installcd ../makemkv-bin-1.10.4/makesudo make installThe executable is /usr/bin/makemkv

Watching, ripping and converting DVDs (xine, mplayer, mencoder, dvd, iso image)

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Both xine and MPlayer can play DVDs directly, but xine has a DVD navigation. In Mplayer you need to specify which movie (VOB file) you want to play:xine dvd:// mplayer dvd://3 If you just want to temporarily store the DVD on your hard disk it might be sufficient to create a DVD image:dd if=/dev/dvd of=rosenstrasse.iso The image can be mounted as follows:sudo mount -o loop rosenstrasse.iso /media/temp/ Xine can play a DVD from an iso image directly (without mouting the image):xine dvd://media/isos/movie.iso Note that you need to specify always the complete path even if the movie is in the current directory! Mplayer can play the individual VOB files from the image (however without subtitle support). I couldn’t make Mplayer to accept the iso image as dvd.For conversion to e.g. DivX/XviD the easiest is to use Mplayer/mencoder. First I extracted audio:mencoder dvd://1 -ovc frameno -o frameno.avi -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 Then the 1. pass encoding:mencoder dvd://1 -nosound -oac copy -o /dev/null -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:vhq:vpass=1:vqmin=1:vqmax=31 -vop scale -zoom -xy 640 -vf pp lb Then the 2. pass encoding:mencoder dvd://1 -oac copy -o file.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:vhq:vpass=2:vqmin=1:vqmax=31 -vop scale -zoom -xy 640 -vf pp lbIt is more difficult to extract the subtitles. You can either extract them as images (easier but bigger filesize) or then convert these images into textfiles (requires an OCR step).Extract subtitle images (from mounted iso image in this case):cat /media/temp/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_?.VOB | tcextract -x ps1 -t vob -a 0x20 > movie.ps1 Convert subtitle images:subtitle2vobsub -i /media/temp/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO -p movie.ps1 -o movie_name Copy metadata:cp /media/temp/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO movie_name.ifo Play from VOB file directly:mplayer /media/temp/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB -vobsub movie_name -vobsubid 0 Play from avi file:mplayer movie.avi -vobsub movie_name -vobsubid 0