DVD Ripping and Burning

Linux Administration

I have no idea how up to date this still is. I don't really rip DVDs anymore.

Update: I've started to use OGMRip and it's been okay so far.

First things first, you'll want to add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main non-free

Getting the Stuff Off the DVD

I use dvdbackup to dump DVDs to disk. If you were to install libdvdcss (not that I do this), it would also decrypt the DVD for you, with no extra options given on the command line.

dvdbackup -M -i /dev/hdc -o ~/dvds/my_dvd

The -M means backup the whole DVD. The -o tells it where to put the files. The -i tells it where to get the DVD.

Encoding the Videos

I use HandBrake to encode the videos once they're dumped to disk. Generally, Handbrake requires you to supply a title. To figure out which title to encode, you'll need to peruse the DVD and make some judgement calls. You can look over the whole DVD like this:

dvdbackup -I -i /dev/hdc

And play titles like this:

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdc

Once you have your title, you can use HandBrakeCLI:

HandBrakeCLI -b 2100 -t 2 -i ~/dvds/my_dvd/DISC01 -o ~/encoded_movies/my_dvd.avi

There are alot more options than this, just run the help:

HandBrakeCLI --help

Another good combination:

HandBrakeCLI -e xvid -S 400 -E lame -t 1 -i ~/mydvds/D1 -o ~/mydvds/video.avi

Burning the Files

There a good web page on this topic: http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/

I just use growisofs:

growisofs -Z /dev/scd0 -R -J /more/files
growisofs -M /dev/scd0 -R -J /more/files

It's -Z to burn an initial session, and -M to merge new data into the existing session. The -R and -J options signal the use of Rock-Ridge and Joliet extensions.