Archiving DVD's with Linux? 45
Ramses0 asks: "Now that I've got my Linux box 100% functional with full DVD support, I want to archive all my media to it's 60gb hard drive. Since I don't have 60gb's of OGGable CD's, I started looking with a lustful eye at ripping and encoding my DVD collection to the hard drive as well. Most of the guides out today are targetted towards windows software, which is not an option for me. The only reference I could find to encoding under Linux is about ffmpeg on the DivX website. What is the best file format to target? DivX? VCD? What tools are available under Linux to encode DVDs? Why isn't there the equivalent of abcde for DVDs?"
Re:IANAL (Score:1)
What I find interesting is that US courts have confirmed one's right to make personal archival copies of copyrighted materials however, circumvention of copy protection required to make the archive copy (in the case of DVDs) is a violation of the DMCA.
A nasty catch-22.
Re:IANAL (Score:1)
In other words, you can make backup copies of any copyrighted works you own, provided you don't violate the DMCA or other laws in the process.
mencoder (Score:4, Informative)
Re:mencoder (Score:3, Informative)
mencoder -dvd 1 -o dvdrip.avi
Automatic decss, dvd rip, and encoding with the algorithm of your choice, including three different divx codecs (windows, libavcodec/ffmpeg, and divx4linux.) They have a shitload of other codecs. I can use mplayer to play
Re:mencoder (Score:1)
nah, the mac people need it more, they actualy think that quicktime is worth a shit, heh.
transcode & dvdrip (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty tough to get right on the commandline, so grab dvd::rip [exit1.org], a nice perl/gtk frontend. Most useful, dvd::rip has a nice gui for using transcode's cluster encoding. That's right, you can build a dvd-ripping cluster. I have a 4-node setup, and it only takes a few hours to rip a dvd, using two-pass DivX 4.02. Careful with the newer prereleases, there are some nasty A/V sync issues. 0.6.0pre1 & 2 seem to work best for me.
I would suggest using one of the MPEG-4 variants (DivX 4.x, or XviD) in two-pass mode. In my experience, this produces very good quality. I rip my movies to one 1.4gb file, which I then split onto two CDs. You might be able to afford slightly larger file sizes, to do AC3 audio pass-through, for example.
If you double or triple your storage capacity, consider just storing the unencrypted VOB files - you'll get superior audio & video, as well as all the alternate audio & subtitle tracks.
DD? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:dd? (Score:1)
Re:DD? (Score:2)
Re:DD? (Score:2)
Don't bother... (Score:2, Interesting)
Spend you money on a good hardware MPEG Decoder that works under linux. And as for a choice in format, OGG Tarkin will probably be the way to go in the future (once the format is defined).
Re:Don't bother... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Don't bother... (Score:2)
But, there is still the problem that all of the current codecs have major quality problems when compared to DVD. The reason why DVD is so "clean" in the first place is because of the extremely high datarate...
Re:Don't bother... (Score:1)
What have you been smoking?!? Ripping a DVD to ~700MB DivX (MPEG-4) results in a quality that is better than rental VHS! Check out Doom9 [doom9.org] for more info (like this example [doom9.org] of DVD ripping).
Re:Don't bother... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Don't bother... (Score:2)
Define "quality". Lines of resolution? Color accuracy? Motion artifacting? Sound? With one exception (motion artifacting, which VHS obviously doesn't have, being an analog format), even a just decent DVD will trounce the best VHS material. If you had said laser disc, you could have had a point. But VHS, and not even SVHS? I don't think so.
Re:Don't bother... (Score:2)
Haha...that does not strengthen your argument at all.
My equipment isn't touched by rental media...talk about asking for trouble...
And let me see...you have DVD for what reason? Action films are specifically bad about artifacts and the only way the studios get the DeeVeeDee to look decent is by throwing their best ppl at it...even then, some films can't be fixed even with the most expensive equipment.
Even Columbia's Air Force One: SuperBit [dvdfile.com] DVD has problems with artifacts.
Re:Don't bother... (Score:1)
My equipment isn't touched by rental media...talk about asking for trouble...
And how common do you think that view is? Most people still don't mind renting movies on VHS.
So if you don't like DVD's that's fine by me, but you made it sound like DVD->DivX conversion isn't acceptable by any standard.
I seem to remember a similar discussion when MP3's became popular 5 years ago. I guess some people still won't use MP3 (or even CD's!), but if you do, you'll probably be happy with DivX. It is pretty nice to have all my favourite movies on a hard-drive so that I can view bits of them without swapping discs in the DVD player.
Re:Don't bother... (Score:2)
Because most ppl are watching their rentals on a 27inch TV...not what I'ld call movie buffs...
So if you don't like DVD's that's fine by me, but you made it sound like DVD->DivX conversion isn't acceptable by any standard.
Did I say that I don't like DVDs? No, it's still the best consumer format currently supported by the movie studios.
The point is, you are converting a 9GB or larger video that is compressed using MPEG2 (lossy) and you are shrinking it to a fraction of the origonal size (700 MB in one case)
There are ALWAYS trade offs when compressing data using lossy compression.
The point I was making is that you are using 2 lossy compression methods in this case, and what will result is a video that shows the worse of the 2 combined. Detail will be lost to some degree, halos that were not a problem before will now be noticable, certain objects and textures will become blocky, etc...
Re:Don't bother... (Score:1)
Star Wars:TPM though was much smaller, at about 700MB and it has some problems during the action sequences. Interestingly enough, the DiVX SW:TPE is lower definition (it was mastered from VHS) and thus much smaller (300MB or so), but it still compares well to video.
Re:A Few Questions and Comments (Score:3, Interesting)
Question 1: How long did it take you to get your linux box to play DVDs?
Buy DVD-ROM, install it in computer, download xine+plugins,
Question 2: How many times did you have to reboot?
Once, when I installed the DVD-ROM in the computer.
Question 3: How many kernels did you compile in the process?
None. Why would I recompile it? The DVD-ROM was already recognized, I use iso9660 on the DVDs if I ever mount them.
Question 4: How many CDs do you actually own?
If you count audio CDs, around 4. Data CDs, OTOH,
Don't think of that as if I have a shitload of MP3s: it's not my fault if I prefer TV to music!
Question 5: How many DVDs do you actually own?
One. Blockbuster is your friend. And your friends are your friends, too.
Question 6: Who are you going to sell your DVDs to when you have copied them to your hard disk?
Listen, I got my DVD in a cereal box. A Disney thing. Don't recall the title, and if you want to buy it, drop me a line.
Comment 1: What happened to the copy of windows that came conveniently bundled with your PC?
That's more a question than a comment. Anyway, there was none. It's not easy to have an OS bundled when all the parts come from different places. Should it come with the motherboard? Processor? Processors?
Comment 2: As a Linux Zealot, you will know that DivX is not standardised and therefore you cannot use it, as it is against everything you stand for.
Zealot? Nope. Just a user. Although I wouldn't use it because it usually relies on win32 dlls to work, and it usually means less stability for me.
Comment 3: There are no tools available that are legal for this purpose.
Depends on where you live. You're entitled to backup copies in some jurisdictions.
Now, I want a tool to do the backup for me rather than do it by hand with a hand calculator for the IDCT. Can I?
Comment 4: As you will know, the production of a tool like abcde for DVDs is against the DMCA, and so anyone who creates such a tool is likely to go to prison like Dimitry did.
If he didn't come to the US, he wouldn't have been arrested. As I said, there are some other juridictions with different laws than the US. Jon shouldn't have been arrested for something he did in Norway. A swastika is legal out of Germany and France. A pdf viewer for the disabled is legal in Russia.
What does all this leaves? I don't know. I'll continue to watch rented and lended DVDs on my Linux box, and you'll probably continue to think it is difficult/illegal to do so. Have a good day!
An excellent (Score:2)
It's not very difficult at all, actually... (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, my process was: Bootable Debian 2.2 CD installation. apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-k7; vim
I have 200+ CD's. I had most of them MP3'd before at 192 bitrate, but now I'm using abcde with oggenc -q7 for VBR OGGfiles averaging 200-250kbps since the quality is better. I own 20-40 DVD's. I want to stuff my DVD's to my harddrive because I'm basically a geek with too much hard-drive space.
I bought all my PC parts in pieces following the specifications given by those nifty Spindl3top [archive.org] people (hi lucas
As a technology pragmatist, I recognize that there are a multitude of competing video container formats (mov, avi, mpg) with multiple supported codecs. I don't know which tools are mature on which platform, and what quality/stability issues remain to be ironed out, which is why I asked slashdot in the first place.
Looks like I came to the right place since there are a bunch of high-quality responses and no "check google you dumbass" postings.
--Robert
qrpff-fast.pl? (Score:2, Interesting)
this was posted some months ago:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w$ t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=(f ((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h$ h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$
# 531-byte qrpff-fast, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz
# MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout
# arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
$m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])$t^ =(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16
-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);i
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--
d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])>8^($f=$t&($d&g t;>12^$d>>4^
$d^$d/8))>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8 ^$q (($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print +x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
Drip and dvd::rip (Score:4, Informative)
Skimming Freshmeat.net is a good idea whenever you need an app.
Mencoder or Transcode. (Score:4, Informative)
Mencoder is easier, transcode is more versatile (I think).
Mencoder is the "encoding" project that goes along with Mplayer [mplayerhq.hu], which in my opinion is probably the best-performing media player with the widest support for files and codecs (including Windows Media codecs, using the 'native' Windows DLL's) for linux at the moment, though not necessarily the easiest to use (not difficult, in my opinion, either, just not "clicky-pointy" simple like, say, Xine [sourceforge.net]).
Trans code [uni-goettingen.de], on the other hand, has a bewildering variety of options to work through, but has a ton of functionality to go with it.
In both cases, the software handles reading DVD's, and can convert them to other formats. Transcode handles a bunch of different formats and codecs. Mencoder is limited to .avi file format at the moment, but can put a variety of codecs into this avi (including vorbis audio, as I recall). I've also found that you can even use mencoder to "capture" mms:// files for offline perusing or conversion, which is nice, since otherwise I wouldn't get anything but the Microsoft "Download Media Player for Mac or Windows" page whenever I tried to view such things...
For MPlayer/Mencoder, I strongly recommend reading the documentation (the software is great, but the impatience of the people on the mplayer mailing lists with people asking questions that are answered in the documentation are well known) and using a recent set of CVS sources.
Re:Mencoder or Transcode - additional note (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know how far along they are yet, but it APPEARS, from lurking on the mailing list, that there is some support for .ogg format media files (i.e. .ogg file with vorbis audio and, say, XVid video), and I BELIEVE they will be adding support for the format for mencoder as well, at some point. Depending on how soon this takes place, this may be an option for people wanting to archive their DVD collections...
(I wouldn't be surprised to see support for the vp3 codec soon as well, since according to a blurb on this weeks' Linux Weekly News [lwn.net], they (that is, the guys the made vp3) apparently posted to one of the ogg development lists about getting a 'vp3 in .ogg' project going. It'll be nice to see some more semi-official work on video in .ogg...)
Why are you bothering? (Score:2)
Hell, I'd be more interested in backing your hard drive up to a DVD-R (or something sane, like DLT or DDS-3) if I were you.
- A.P.
Questions concerning DVD's Region Encoding (Score:2)
Is the region encoding a matter of hardware or software? I'm an international traveler, and if I get a DVD drive for my machine I would want it to be able to read different region codes.
If this is software based, then I'm certain that the OpenSource decoders already ignore this little detail.
Bob-
Re:Questions concerning DVD's Region Encoding (Score:1)
However, it is still readable in raw format, you can usually do the decode yourself in software.
In any case, it is better to get a drive that can be moded to be region free with a firmware upgrade.
A waste of time. (Score:2)
2) Get a Windows friend to RIP it for you.
3) If you are a pirate, and want to distribute, then, chances are you can just install your pirated version of Windows and do it with that.
Besides, you only need to rip it the first time.
And DivX, of course... What's the point of VCD anyway.
This topic sucks.
Look at DivX 5 (Score:1, Informative)
Doom9 Linux ripping Guide (Score:2)
Since it's a Doom9 Guide the quality has to be good...
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