dvdbackup

Related articles
Optical disc drive
Rip Audio CDs
There are several ways to backup DVD videos. The quickest and simplest is to
copy the ISO image
as is. Many other methods are slow, and require several steps to accomplish.
dvdbackup
provides one of the simpler methods to rip a DVD (with some help from
dvdauthor
). It is elegant because it does not demux/remux/transcode/reformat the movie. This means the backup process is done in one step. But it can be tricked into copying much more than necessary by a DVD reporting incorrect size data.
Installation
Install
the
dvdbackup
package.
libdvdcss
is required to read encrypted DVDs.
dvdauthor
is only required if backing up specific titles or title sets.
Examining the DVD
First, determine which title to backup. The following command retrieves information about the DVD:
$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -I
/dev/dvd can be /dev/sr0
Optical disc drive#Troubleshooting
:
After some less useful information,
dvdbackup
will display something similar to the following:
$ dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I
[...]

Main feature:
	Title set containing the main feature is  1
	The aspect ratio of the main feature is 16:9
	The main feature has 1 angle(s)
	The main feature has 1 audio_track(s)
	The main feature has 2 subpicture channel(s)
	The main feature has a maximum of 28 chapter(s) in on of it's titles
	The main feature has a maximum of 6 audio channel(s) in on of it's titles
This indicates that the main feature is in title set 1. Next a list of title sets is displayed:
$ dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I
[...]

Title Sets:

	Title set 1
		The aspect ratio of title set 1 is 16:9
		Title set 1 has 1 angle(s)
		Title set 1 has 1 audio_track(s)
		Title set 1 has 2 subpicture channel(s)

		Titles included in title set 1 is/are
			Title 1:
				Title 1 has 28 chapter(s)
				Title 1 has 6 audio channle(s)
The main feature in this example is title 1. Sometimes a title set will include more than one title, sometimes not. Title sets can also include menus, which will no longer work if not backing up the entire DVD.
Ripping the DVD
Tip
dvdbackup
reads the name of the DVD and creates a working directory for it. If
dvdbackup
decides the name of the DVD is too generic (like "MOVIE", for instance), the user must specify a name, as it will refuse to run otherwise. Just use
-n
movie_name
to specify.
Note
If you receive an error such as "
ERR:  no video format specified for VMGM
" you must set the video format variable. An easy way to do this is to add
export VIDEO_FORMAT=NTSC
(for NTSC regions) to your
shell startup file
.
A single title
The
-t
option allows you to extract a specific title:
$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~ -t 1 -p
You will now see a number of VOB files on the hard drive (in
~/
movie_name
/VIDEO_TS
). These files can be played in
MPlayer
or
VLC
, but are insufficient to create a DVD copy. This is where
dvdauthor
is useful.
A title set must now be created (e.g.
VTS_01_0.IFO
and
VTS_01_0.BUP
). Be aware that the following command will make a copy of the entire movie. The original can be deleted right afterwards.
$ mkdir ~/dvd
$ cd ~/
movie_name
/VIDEO_TS
$ dvdauthor -t -o ~/dvd *.VOB
dvdauthor
will create a copy of the movie. If it outputs anything like "SCR moves backwards, remultiplex input" there might be trouble. Before deleting any files, check the file sizes of the original VOB files compared to the copied ones. If all roughly the same size, you may be alright. You can use
mplayer
to test the affected VOB files to see if anything is missing.
Now, table of contents files must be created (e.g.
VIDEO_TS.IFO
and
VIDEO_TS.BUP
). This is much less time-consuming, and does not waste hard drive space:
$ cd ~/dvd/VIDEO_TS
$ dvdauthor -o ~/dvd -T
The main feature
The
-F
option automatically detects the main feature (though not always correctly) and copies the entire title set:
$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~ -F -p
Now, table of contents files must be created (e.g.
VIDEO_TS.IFO
and
VIDEO_TS.BUP
):
$ cd ~/
movie_name
/VIDEO_TS
$ dvdauthor -o ~/
movie_name
-T
The whole DVD
The
-M
option will backup the entire DVD structure, including menus, special features, etc. to the current directory. This requires approximately 7 GB of disk space for most DVDs:
$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -p
Shrinking the DVD
If the movie needs to fit on a 4.7 GB single layer DVD,
vamps
can be used to shrink it down to size. First, rip the main title and concatenate the VOBs into one file.
$ dvdbackup -t 1 
$ cat ./movie/VIDEO_TS/*.VOB > ./movie.vob
Calculate the shrink factor for
vamps
. Divide the size of your VOB file by the size of your writable media and round up.
$ du -BMB movie.vob
5376MB movie.vob
$ echo '5376 / 4707' | bc -l
Run
vamps
,
-a
selects the audio stream. Running
ffprobe movie.vob
beforehand might help determine which stream to select.
$ vamps -E 1.15 -a 1 < movie.vob > movie.dvd5.vob
Author the dvd with
dvdauthor
:
$ dvdauthor -t -o ./author movie.dvd5.vob
$ dvdauthor -T -o ./author
Writing to disc
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Optical disc drive
.
Notes:
Redundant. (Discuss in
Talk:Dvdbackup#Writing to disc
)
See
Optical disc drive#Burning
.
Creating an ISO
The advantage of creating the ISO file is that you can test that everything works fine with
mplayer
before continuing. The disadvantage is that the ISO consumes hard drive space.
$ mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o ~/dvd.iso ~/dvd # if a single title was extracted
or the following if the whole DVD was extracted:
$ mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o ~/dvd.iso ~/
movie_name
To test the image:
$ mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device ~/dvd.iso
If everything seems fine, burn the image:
$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=~/dvd.iso
Tip
growisofs
is part of the
dvd+rw-tools
package.
Burning straight to DVD
Creating and testing an image is a waste of time and hard drive space! Basically, we can merge the
mkisofs
with the
growisofs
command:
$ growisofs -dvd-video -udf -Z /dev/dvd ~/dvd # if a single title was extracted
or
$ growisofs -dvd-video -udf -Z /dev/dvd ~/
movie_name