@katemines: There are many legitimate reasons for one to want to rip his or her DVD collection. Here's just one. My brother is physically disabled, and physically cannot walk to his DVD player to change DVDs. So I ripped all of his DVDs (each of which was legally purchased from Wal-Mart) on to a computer harddrive. And now he accesses his ENTIRE dvd collection through the interface of his Xbox. Voila...

One more example for prosperity's sake. I rip all of my DVDs, and shrink them so that I can watch them from my Treo telephone while I'm on the subway.

So. No one's trying to take the food off of your table; but why are ya'll trying to take our write as consumers away from us?

voxstin

There is also the always venerable Handbrake. It's CLI but easy to understand, just run it with "--help" and you'll be on your way.

My one complaint is that it's multi-threading seems to stop at two cores for the video and one core for the audio, though that may be a limitation of the transcoding going on.

OctaneZ

Also, if you just want a backup copy of the movies themselves on your computer (I know I do), take a look at Thoggen: [thoggen.net] Very simple, does its job well.

Also, on Ubuntu, you can just install 'ubuntu-restricted-extras', described here: [help.ubuntu.com] I believe it'll automatically set up the repositories for you.

Andrewski

I actually found myself doing precisely this yesterday morning (and, to our actor friend KATEMINES, I was not making illegal copies. I was extracting clips of individual scenes to show in one of my lecture courses.)

I had a question, though, that I might as well ask here. The default settings for K9Copy specify a width of 640 pixels. Am I right in thinking that most DVDs are 720 pixels wide and that I should change that value to get a true DVD-quality video?

ecpepper

Well I've jsut gotten back into full Dvd backing up craze again, and I've found that dvd:rip works great! Simply back it up first, then transcode to avi with the same program. It can save sessions too, so you don't have to do it in one sitting! Works GREAT. DEVEDE i've foudn works great for bruning those avi files to dvd.

-emory-

"Since Linux lacks (to my knowledge) a licensed DVD player,"

If you buy Mandriva, Xandros, etc., you'll pay your ransom to the DVD licensors and get a fully licensed player.

massysett

Thanks Adam! The link didn't work but a quick yahoo search : and I'm downloading now!

jbravo188

@ADM: Thanks, ADM! I was hoping somebody would share their command line tips. In researching this, I found a lot of instructions, but yours is much more straight-forward. I'll have to give it a try.

Therevan

you can also use dvd::rip, which is simple after you use it once.

or if you want to use the command line, the easiest is dvd-backup:

apt-get install dvdbackup

then:

dvdbackup -M -i/dev/dvd -o/mnt/mydrive/movies/

where /dev/dvd is your DVD drive and /mnt/myrdrive/movies is the directory you want a directory for that movie to be created in.

DVD backup leaves you with a VIDEO_TS folder; dvd::rip leaves you with de-CSS'd .vob files. So it's not transcoding it like your solution, but it does only take 20 minutes and the results from either program are viewable in VLC.

ADM

I love k9copy. It's incredibly simple, and it just plain works.

SuperChuck

I am a big fan of your website but am a little frusterated by this posting. There is a strike going on in Hollywood right now because people aren't being paid for their work. I am an actor not a writer and I dont make very much money doing it. When you rip a DVD its money taken out of the pockets of the people who put in time and effort to do good work and they are not being reimbursed for that. Please remember that every time you rip a DVD.

katemines

@jbravo188: any one know of any free non-trial software out there (windows)? Try this on for size:

[lifehacker.com]

Good luck!

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

i know this is for Linux but i'm having the damdest time burning an .avi movie onto a watchable dvd, any one know of any free non-trial software out there, i was using intervideo windvd, it doesn't like me anymore. Thanks

jbravo188

Kate, the money parade may just be over for the huge chain of distributors and other parasites that value-add for themselves on top of the work that you and other media producers do. They are the reason movies cost $8 in the theatre. Time and tech wait for no man, and if media companies don't think fast and smart to find a new distribution model, it'll be the dustbin of history for them.

Can anyone come up with a commandline that automatically rips DVDs as soon as they're put in the drive?

Jason

@katemines: "When you rip a DVD its money taken out of the pockets of the people who put in time and effort to do good work and they are not being reimbursed for that."

I think you have confused ripping a DVD with pirating a movie. It is not legal to pirate a movie, however it is perfectly legal to rip a DVD to a different format, which is explained in this post. Personally though, if I didn't get paid enough for what I did, I would find a new job.

Will

for those who'd rather 'wine' about it (such a bad pun, but obligatory it seems) DVD Dectripter, DVD Shrink, and Ripit4me all work fairly well in linux.

It's also good to note that many DVDs won't work with K9 copy since newer copy protections evolve faster than K9 copy is updated to circumvent them. I've had good luck with Ripit4me under Debian etch wine 9.49

download links:
[www.softpedia.com]
[www.dvddecrypter.org.uk]
[www.filehippo.com]

BackDoorAngel

How about the region code?

wildeny

@katemines: Notice nowhere was it ever mentioned that he was going to share the ripped files. All he is doing is showing us how to make a back-up of our DVDs, which last time I checked was still perfectly legal.

Adam Chernow

@Jason:

i don't know of any tools per se, but a simple bash script should do it.

here's what you would need to do:

1. tell it to monitor for when a disc is inserted
(my guess is that it shows up in dmesg).

2. test to see if the disc is blank or not (not sure how one would do this; anyone else? maybe mounting it, trying to do an ls -a on it and if the # of files is >1, then initiate the rest of the script, else spit an error message back... maybe something with MIME or encoding types?)

3. call one of the above CLI dvd utils to initiate the rip (optional: prompt the user for where they want to save the image to).

4. (optional) prompt user to insert blank DVD to burn image to.

4b. (optional) when done, prompt user if they want to burn another copy or if they're finished.

i wish i knew more about BASHing to help you out more specifically, but if you give that list to some of the script gurus in ##linux on irc.freenode.net, i'm sure they'll whip something together for you (because it'd be something the whole community could benefit from). just remember to ask nice and politely, and be generous with detailed info (preferrably in a pastebin such as www.pastebin.ca).

bts3685

aciudrip works! and it's in the ubuntu repositories!

emmetp

@katemines: When you want to protect your own investment against the wear and tear of using it constantly (say, that LazyTown or Barney DVD won't last much if you leave it to your kids, but they have to learn to play their own movies), you make a copy of it, granted you won't be showing both copies at the same time, you will keep said DVD on it's case, only bringing it back once your backup has been effectively destroyed...

The Writers Guild of America struggle has nothing to do with creating perfectly legal backups of your own stuff, (and that is why it says do not make ILLEGAL copies of this material), it has to do with TV corps not sharing fairly the benefits of placing and selling content online with the writers.

whiskey

@wildeny: I didn't find that to be a problem, nor did it come up. In fact, this method has rescued an Australian copy of "Dark City" my mom accidentally bought for me for Christmas a year ago from the garbage.

Therevan

@JASON
If you're using Ubuntu 7.10, it's quite easy to rip. First install a command-line transcoder like ffmpeg (sudo aptitude install ffmpeg). In the menu, go to
System -> Preferences -> Removable Drives and Media
In the Multimedia tab, choose to play video DVD disks and insert the following command:
ffmpeg -i dvd://1 ~/Desktop/movie.avi
This should work fo all movies where dvd://1 is the main feature. Look up more on ffmpeg to get options like language and subtitles.

daengbo

@KateMines,

There is a strike going on in Hollywood right now because writers aren't being paid fairly for their work. Specifically, because they aren't being paid a fair rate for their work when it's released on video and digital formats; the people who make DVD cases are paid a bigger share of the DVD sales than the screenwriters of a film sold on DVD. The share they get for downloads is even less, and as digital download starts eating into televisions' market share (ie. they get paid for TV-on-demand at the same negligible rate that they are paid for digital downloads), this could get much worse for them in the very near future.

I live in the UK, so most US-only download services aren't available to me, I don't actually have the option of supporting the studios who have created this situation and forced the writers guild into a strike, but I would argue that copying your own DVDs for your own use is hardly hurting the writers guild's cause.

somerandomnerd

I ripped my entire DVD collection to my hard drive (over 300 discs), and wrote a script to help automate the process. At its core, it uses dvdbackup, but it eliminates all unnecessary interaction with you by:
- Automatically starts ripping as soon as the DVD is inserted
- Automatically names the subdirectory using the DVD label.
- Ejects the DVD when done, so you just have to pop in the next disc.

The only time you have to interact with it, is when the DVD label is blank, or it's a duplicate name with a DVD you already ripped.

0) Before starting, install dvdbackup
1) Download the script from here, and save it somewhere (like ~/ripdvd)
[cct-public.s3.amazonaws.com]
2) Make sure it is executable with 'chmod a+x ~/ripdvd'
3) Open it up in an editor, and change the 'backup_dir=' line to specify the directory where you want it to place all your DVD subdirectories.
4) In GNOME, go to System->Preferences->Removable Drives/Media->Multimedia, and set the "Play DVD when inserted" command to "/home//ripdvd %d" (I don't know how to do this in other types of desktop environments)

Then, insert a DVD. A Terminal window (primitive, isn't it?) will pop up with the script output. If it doesn't like the default name, it will beep, and ask you to enter a different one. After ripping, it will eject, and you can put in another disc, and the process will start over. Meanwhile, back in the terminal window, it will have asked you if you want to rename it from the default name. If not, just press ENTER.

Hope folks find this helpful.

youkai

Oh, and as for converting an AVI into DVD in Linux; I just use Ubuntu, WINE and ConvertXtoDVD. It won't burn to DVD, but it converts like a charm and I can burn with K3b

clownsoup

@ VOXSTIN: There are many legitimate reasons for one to want to rip his or her DVD collection.

And another one is that my young children have damaged many expensive Disney DVDs beyond repair. ALAS! If only I had some means to legally archive content that I purchased! Then I could buy the DVD and archive it on cheap media and not pay $25 every time my 5yo scratched a dvd beyond repair!

Seriously tho; Thanks to DVD Shrink I have saved boatloads of money by archiving my purchased content. Young children can be rough on media.

clownsoup

You can also just run the perfect combination under Wine: DVD Decryptor and DVD Shrink.

And in most cases, DVD Shrink is all that you need to copy a DVD to an .ISO image.

As far as the speeds, copying DVDs in DVD Shrink take about the same time as they do on my Windows machines...

Jaymoon

I agree with VOXSTIN. I have also digitized almost all of my DVDs so I can access any of them from any computer/set-top-box on my home network using MythVideo (a MythTV plugin). I can also watch these DVD rips on my archos media player.

I prefer mplayer and mencoder for ripping and transcoding myself because they are scriptable and fast.

Ripping (Dump the whole movie into one de-CSS'ed VOB file):

mplayer dvd://$TITLE -dvd-device /dev/dvd -v -v -dumpstream -dumpfile out.vob

Transcoding (3 passes):

CACHE=out.vob
OUT=final_output.avi
A_ID=128
A_BITRATE=192
V_BITRATE=1200

mencoder "$CACHE" -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=$A_BITRATE:mode=0 -aid $A_ID -af volume=15:sc -ovc frameno -o frameno.avi
mencoder "$CACHE" -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:v4mv:vqmin=2:vbitrate=${V_BITRATE}:vpass=1 -vf pp=de -aid $A_ID -o "/dev/null"
mencoder "$CACHE" -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:v4mv:vqmin=2:vbitrate=${V_BITRATE}:vpass=2 -vf pp=de -aid $A_ID -o "$OUT"

jhckr

I like acidrip. The default settings are a little low (made for DVD 2 CD rips) so just a few default changes is needed, but it's a simple 1 click rip and you're done. I have my entire library backed up. A good 1 click ripping software for those redmond users out there... dvdshrink or the open source (multiplatform) handbreak.

spr0k3t

My situation is a little different ...

I'd like to rip a couple of my DVDs to audio-only CDs to listen to during my hour-long commute (creating TRUE soundtracks).

Of all the possible solutions folks have provided, which would work for this task and be the simplest (to setup and/or to execute)?

Thanks for any help you can give,

Sunny

SoSaysSunny