Can K3b Rip, Convert, and Burn DVDs?
 

I am running openSuSE 10.2 which is bundled with K3b 0.12.17. Can this version of K3b be used to:

(1) Rip a standard movie DVD (usually encrypted)
(2) Convert and compress the data to fit on a 4.7GB DVD +/- R
(3) Burn the data to the 4.7GB DVD +/- R for viewing on a DVD player

I have looked at the help section on K3b and it wasn't very informative. I was just wondering if someone else has been able to perform the functions above using Linux and how. I would rather not resort to my Windoze drive to do all of this and would like to be able to rip, convert, and burn DVDs in Linux.

First of all, version 0.12? K3b is now at version 1.03. If your number is correct, then it's seriously out of date. I have no idea what it can or can't do.

Second, the video ripping in K3b is very simple. It can rip titles and compress them to other formats such as xvid, or rip the unaltered vobs to disk, but that's about it. You'd have to reauthor any ripped videos with an authoring program like dvdstyler or qdvdauthor before you could burn them back.

What you're asking for is a dedicated ripping tool like dvdrip or k9copy. Check them out.

Firstly, after doing some reading at the SUSE website and the various SUSE forums you'll see how you can keep your distro upgraded with the latest versions of things, such as k3b.

I burn the finished DVD with k3b, but use various other tools for what you're talking about. K3b can be used for an unencrypted DVD9 direct to DVD9 Dual-layer, but of course that's not what we're talking about.

You could use k9copy for this most of the time. Once you activate the Packman and Suser-Guru repo's you'll have access to an easy installation of stuff like k9copy through YaST software management.

There are some that k9copy couldn't do well for me. One of them left out the audio on a few of the extras I copied. Plus, only the very latest k9copy is fully compatible with the newer cdr-toolkit (wodim and friends). So the older one would fail at the last point of actually making the ISO that I would then be able to burn with k3b. Had to end task on it, but the temp files are there so do the following:

While I still had that version, I solved the problem by changing the temp folder location in k9copy's options to a folder that I could access within my home folder. This way, when it failed I could just burn the contents of the temp folder, which is the full finished VIDEO_TS folder, with k3b.

What I really do mostly now, as the quality is better and it hasn't failed me yet, is use RipIt4Me, DVDDecrypter, and DVDShrink running through the use of the latest version of Wine. Slower, but as good quality as anything Windows software can do.

You can get the latest Wine packaged for OpenSUSE by installing it with YaST from the Build Service Wine repo. Look and read and you'll find out how to accomplish that.

As for the rest, forums such as at club.cdfreaks.com and afterdawn have some nice threads with links to the things you need and guides. You need mfc42.dll and msvcp60.dll placed in the hidden Wine fake Windows drive's System32 folder for the stuff to work. I just made it easy by installing vcredist.exe for Visual Basic 6, but the 2 dll files should work by themselves as well. Ubuntu's website wiki has a guide for DVDDecrytper and DVDShrink but the blanking and fixvts stuff built in to RipIt4Me helps fix even older DVD's so they play properly on stand alone's.

Set DVDDecrypter to run in NT4.0 mode and DVDShrink to run in XP mode within winecfg. And have winecfg auto-detect your drives and then in advanced change the cd drives from hard drives to cd-rom (duh, it doesn't do that automatically like it should).

They no longer work perfectly. RipIt4Me run on the newer versions of Wine cannot create a PSL file. But you can set its ini settings file to not do that automatically. You need to uncheck the enable burning with Nero in DVDShrink to stop SOME of its crashing. You should also check the option within RipIt4Me's options window to always start DVDShrink in Deep Analysis mode (maybe it was also in the ini). That fixes most later Sony stuff that isn't fixed by RipIt4Me's built in FixVTS process. Oh yeah, always run that. When DVDShrink crashes everytime it returns to its GUI after completing an action, reopen it from RipIt4Me so it uses that info to continue with, and simply reload the files.

When the PSL creation fails, choose to skip and then rip with DVDDecrypter. Then click from that file menu to Select All. Then hit the big rip pictures and it'll rip the whole DVD. When done just continue on with RipIt4Me.

If you don't change the ini for RipIt4Me to not create the PSL automatically then you will not be able to get to the point that DVDDecrypter will rip your files. It'll just complain about no psl file found. It can't find it because RipIt4Me cannot make it for some weird reason.

If you're wondering, DVDFabHDDecrypter or the Platinum version will not decrypt copy protected DVD's within Wine so don't even bother. AnyDVD looks like it will never have a version for Linux either.

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/255980

and

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/260734

might help using IFOEdit if a real new movie doesn't rip correctly, if it's REALLY important to you. Seems complicated, never tried those but there you are!

Thanx for all of your information. I really appreciate the time and effort that went into your responses for this thread. Perhaps my version of K3b isn't 0.12.17. It is the version that comes bundled with openSuSE 10.2. The way I came to that number (0.12.17) was by going to the Help menu in K3b and clicking on About or something similar.

Within Windoze I used DVDShrink and this program works very well for freeware. I was impressed. I already had Nero installed on my Windows machine for quite some time and just recently installed DVDShrink. I burn the DVDs using the Nero option in DVDShrink. This may sound like a silly question, but:

Does DVDShrink use the Nero I have installed on my machine to burn the DVD or does it have some modules or some Nero functionality that allows it to burn the DVD?

The reason I am asking, is because I told a friend of mine about DVDShrink and he doesn't have Nero installed on his machine.

As far as the Linux side of it goes, I will look into getting Wine so that I am able to perform encrypted DVD burning functions without having to resort to Windoze.

When using DVDShrink in Windows you have an option to Burn With Nero. There is a 3rd party update that allows burning with IMGBURN as well. Make sure you uncheck that when running it in Wine using RipIt4Me or RipIt4Me will crash just trying to rip the DVD! Weird but true. It crashes right when you try either the 1 click or wizard mode way before it even deals with DVDShrink unless you uncheck that option in DVDShrink.

But it doesn't matter what burning program you use. DVDShrink can output to a VIDEO_TS folder that you can use burning software compatible with the DVD VIDEO format to burn to a DVD.

Nero, on Windows is. K3b on Linux is as well.

So, easy way: Just install K9Copy and it'll work for most DVD's.

Harder way: Install Wine, RipIt4Me, DVDDecrypter, and DVDShrink and do your research so you can get it working. Burn the finished product with K3b.

DVDDecrypter can rip older DVD's without the help of RipIt4Me, but in that case I would also use possibly VOBBlanker and definitely FixVTS before sending it to DVDShrink. RipIt4Me does that stuff built in. That removes the crap that sometimes interferes, even with older DVD's, with the finished product playing on set top DVD players.

But as I've said RipIt4Me needs some tweaking to its ini file (which won't open from its menu when running it in Wine, that's broken so you've got to browse to it within the hidden .wine drive) so that the setting for auto create PSL (turned off) and always running DVDShrink with Deep Analysis (turned on) is done.

For really new, troublesome DVD's there is a command line way to rip it with an installed VLC Media Player. That's described in the Gentoo wiki's rip DVD's guide. They say it's really slow, but gets even the latest DVD's ripped.