DVD Shrink - Been asked, but never answered
 

I have read and agonized over many posts trying to come up with the most effective way to rip a dvd-9 and compress it to be burned as a dvd-5. Everybody has similar problems, but everyone with the solutions must be keeping them secret. Many people get an ASPI error with DVDShrink in wine, myself included. Some people don't, randomness makes computer interesting. The best method that I seem to have read is ripping the vob files with dvdbackup, using DVDShrink(in wine of course) to compress them into ISO format and then burn them in K3b. I was wondering if anyone who has done this would be willing to inform us how long the ripping and compressing takes on your computer(and list your computer specs).

By accident I also noticed that you can mount a cdrom as a hard drive in wine. Is it possible to skip the entire ripping process and compress the vob files using DVDShrink(in wine again) and opening the vob files on dvd player mounted as a hard drive?

Has anyone had any luck trying to rip a DVD with Smartripper(using wine) then compress the vob's with DVDShrink(in wine)? I have not searched as extensively on this topic.

I am not interested in creating divx files, etc with dvd::rip or acidrip or anything else, I simply want to compress a dvd-9 into dvd-5. I know most of these questions have been asked previously, but they have been scattered and broken and virtually unanswered. I thought it would be best to tie it into one post and get all of my questions answered together.

I plan to attempt some of the DVDShrink tricks on here either tonight or tomorrow, and I welcome any posts regarding any other linux tools or Windows tools that will run in wine, but please nothing regarding compression to divx or VCD. Depending on the response I may attempt several different approaches to this method and report my results.

I am fortunate enough to have a Windows XP installation as well where I can use DVDShrink to rip/compress a DVD in just over 30 mins. Using dvd::rip I ripped the vob files in over 2 hours with no compression and no compatibility with DVDShrink. I would like to come up with a simple, quick, and painless method to get the same thing accomplished in Linux. Hopefully there will be a strong response to this post and many people can receive help from past successes and failures.

-Knappster

Well, here is what I have found:

DVDShrink will work fine in Linux on unencrypted disks, but that isn't much help to you probably. It crashes in Wine if you try to open an encrypted disk. You can test this using one of your unencrypted DVD backups if you want. I think you need to set win version to "win2k" or "winxp" in wine config to get it to work (It has been awhile so I don't remember all the details).

You use dvdbackup to get an unencrypted version of your disk on your hard drive. However, you can't just have VOB files, but instead need the entire disk structure copied. That is why you use the "mirror" option in dvdbackup:Finally, you have to tell DVDShrink to open with the IFO file to get the disk structure since the menus don't work properly in DVDShrink running in wine. In your backup, look for a file called "VIDEO_TS.IFO" Then open DVDShrink with:Like I said, it has been some time since I tried this, so there may be some errors in the commands above, but that is generally how you do it. I have found that creating the compressed ISO is just as fast in Linux as in Windows using the same version of DVDShrink. The only extra time is in creating the backup on the hard drive. You need to have lots of free disk space and it takes about 30 minutes or so from what I remember.

As far as I know, there is no DVDShrink comparable program in Linux, which is too bad. I gave up and just run DVDShrink in WindowsXP at home. It is one of the last things I do in Windows. When dual layer DVD burners come out, all you will need is dvdbackup. Maybe someone will develop a better alternative before that happens.

By the way, if you get a Divx compatable DVD player, you can probably play mpeg-4 backups created by mencoder. I hope to get one of these players soon. Using mpeg-4, you can store 4 dvd quality movies on one DVDR disk.

Your post was very helpful m_yates. There was just one slight trick I noticed. My dvd player is mmounted as /mnt/cdrom. When using dvdbackup, it got an error unless I entered it as /dev/cdrom. Other than that it worked like a charm. It took about 30 minutes to rip, then 30 minutes to compress.

Do you think that ripping it with k3b would copy the entire disk structure when ripping, or would it just copy the VOB files? I might test that out again tonight and post my results.

Do you know if there are any plans to fix the ASPI problem in wine? I only ask because I could rip and compress a DVD in windows in about half the time it takes to do it in Linux.

This is a satisfactory Linux solution, but that doesn't make it the best. I'll keep you informed if I come across anything better.

-Knappster

I haven't used K3b to copy disks, so I don't know. If it creates an ISO image of the DVD, you should be able to use that, provided the disk is unencrypted. Just mount the ISO image:Then you can run dvdShrink in wine: The problem your likely to run into is that K3b will make a perfect copy (INCLUDING encryption), so DVDshrink will crash. It also may not save you a lot of time compared to dvdbackup. Good luck!

I never thought to use it in wine, I just assumed it would crash - thanks for the information

Good point about the encryption m_yates. I think I read that K3b is planning on implementing something like dvdshrink in their TODO.

Right now I'm just in the mindset that anything Windows can do, Linux can do better. Unfortunately, when it comes to this that is false.

I am starting to get the impression that dvdbackup is the fastest ripper/decrypter available and nothing can match dvdshrink as far as compression speed, even if it is run in wine.

I noticed a fairly recent post on doom9's forum where someone was looking for help designing something in Linux using python. I don't know anything about python and I'm still just getting used to Linux, but if you are interested, check out: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...inux+dvdshrink

Thanks for the help and I will let you know if I discover anything more useful.

-Knappster

Thanks for the link! I had never heard of lxdvdrip. It looks like it has almost all the features of DVDshrink and can requant a DVD-9 to fit DVD-5.

See this discussion:

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t211236.html

I can't wait till I have a chance to try it out!

I have not tried it either, but I'm kind of turned off since it supposedly won't take the menus and extras with it. I imagine that it will eventually add that option, but until then, it's a tough sell for me.

I will try to keep an eye out for when lxdvdrip includes menus and extras, but when you get a chance to use it, I will be interested to find out how well it works.

I actually just found K3b within the last week. Up until then, I had mostly switched back to windows for burning. Are there any other utilities that are must haves for linux? For example, I have noticed that the file roller that comes with Redhat 9 is much slower than winrar in Windows. Perhaps the command line runs it faster, but is there a tool comparable to winrar in speed and options? I am still pretty new to Linux, just trying to learn it by using it. Advice is always appreciated.

-Knappster

I've never used winrar, but you can make rar archives in Linux. There are programs called rar and unrar. If you run debian, you can install them with "apt-get install rar unrar". They work from the command line and I don't know how speed compares.

If I want to archive files, I usually just use Konqueror. If you open up the Koqueror file manager, then select a group of files you want to archive. Right click on them and select actions>create archive. You can create zip, gzip, or bzip archives. You can also use Konqueror to extract an archive. It beats remembering all the options like "tar -zxvf "

I have used the rar and unrar programs in Linux too, but there was a GUI called FileRoller, or something like that, in Redhat 9 that is very slow with large files and it also does not show a progress bar(% complete) which is one of my biggest irks. I will probably try Konquerer out tonight if I get a chance.

I was looking back at some of the posts again, and it looks like there is a way to rip and compress an encrypted dvd in wine using DVDShrink. Check out the top two posts on this page:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...p&pagenumber=3

I did try just mount my cd-rom as a hard drive and it read an unencrypted DVD fine, but got an error with the encrypted ones. So if you start playing it in mplayer and pause it, then use DVDShrink, it might work. I think I'll give that a try tonight , because it seems more time efficient than anything else. If I have time I'll try to test out lxdvdrip too, and see if they have added menu support. I will try to keep you up to date.

-Knappster

Just to update my previous post... it appears that the mplayer trick did work! I did not go through the whole process since it is getting late, but it started without a hitch. Here is the process that I went through:

1. Mount your CD-ROM as a hard drive in wine
a)I don't know which steps are necessary to mount the drive in wine properly, but I went through 3 of them. In the config file I added:
[Drive F]
"Path" = "/mnt/cdrom"
"Type" = "hd"
"Device" = "/dev/cdrom"
"Filesystem" = "win95"

b)and then verified that my cd-rom was set up as a hard drive using winecfg
c) I also had to set up a shortcut or link or whatever to the cd-rom in a system window. Enter your ~/.wine/dosdevices directory. Then type2. Insert DVD into DVD-ROM and mount it manually as /mnt/cdrom. Open mplayer and play DVD. I skipped to the 2nd chapter to make sure it was well into it, I don't know if it helps to go that far, but it is necessary to play the DVD to get around the encryption. Then I just paused it early in the chapter.

3. Go into your DVD shrink directory and type:
It should start analyzing the CD right away. If you get an error message, then there's obviously a problem. I have only tried it once, and I didn't even go through the ripping/burning process, but it seemed to be functioning correctly. If anyone else has tried this, or would like to, I would love to hear some feedback as to the success rate. I have been extremely busy lately so I haven't had much time to play, but if I get a chance tomorrow I will practice on a couple DVDs or so. Hopefully this is as effective as it appears.

-Knappster

I happened across this which seems to be relevant:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ScriptForDvdBackup

I have however been using lxdvdrip which works quite well and is VERY fast. 1 hour on my XP2200 w/ 1G system RAM to make a complete 1:1 backup of a full length movie. That 1 hour also includes burning @ 4x. True there are as of yet no menus available but that doesn't matter to me personally.

I had a little bit more time to try to try the mount DVD drive as a hard drive trick for DVD Shrink over the weekend. It failed with the majority of DVDs simply because it would not compress them enough for some mysterious reason.

I haven't timed the entire process, but the dvdbackup, DVD Shrink, then burn process probably takes just over an hour on my machine. I am running an Athlon XP 2000, 512 MB RAM with a 4x burner. I would say that it takes 20-30 mins for dvdbackup, 20-30 minutes for DVD Shrink, then about 15 mins to burn. It is the most successful process that I have attempted thus far.

If lxdvdrip ever rips menus and other features, I would be very interested in tryin it. Until then, I suppose I am content to fill my hard drive temporarily. I will try to examine that script more thoroughly sometime rickenbacherus. Thanks for the comments.

Wine + dvd shrink works now!!!!
 

It works!!!! For me it did at least. No more ripping to the hard drive first either.

I'm using version 20040716 of wine and 3.17 of dvd shrink. Here's how I got a full backup to work (don't know about reauthoring yet."

In a shell, make a new dosdevice (something like "ln -s /mnt/cdrom2 /home/usr/.wine/dosdevices/e:" without quotes. Then still in shell do a wine /path/to/DVD\ Shrink\ 3.2.exe e: (or whatever path drive letter you chose). It should start analyzing your dvd now with no aspi error!!!

So far I've only tried The Count Of Monte Cristo, but will try others and report any problems. Enjoy and good luck!!! Also, report back any problems so we can try to fix them, and spread the word that dvd shrink seems to work fine now.


[Update]

Okay. tried to re-author a dvd and dvd shrink crashed. Also, just moving the window around a bit seems to crash it too. On the bright side, I just started on another dvd and it too works for a full backup.

[New Update]

Okay I'm an idiot....I totally forgot a crucial step in getting this to work. In another post I stated that you shouldn't have to touch your wine config file, but you do. In the part where it says

[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
;"Windows" = "win98"
; DOS version to imitate
;"DOS" = "6.22"

you need to remove the ; from the "Windows" = line and change win98 to winxp (others above win98 may work, but haven't tried them). After that, and after my other instructions, you should all be in business. I reinstalled mandrake from scratch and built wine from newest source. Also got newest version of dvdshrink. All working now that I made that wine config change.

Hey dlanor78, is that a new version of wine or dvd shrink or something? I believe I had the newest version of both when I originally posted(whenever that was).

I will try to upgrade to the newest version of both when I get home tonight. It would save a great deal of time if it worked without ripping.

Did you take any other steps not mentioned?(such as unlocking it in mplayer first, mounting it as a hard drive in the config file, etc)

At least somebody has gotten it to work. Congrats, hopefully I will have as much luck.

I checked it out over lunch. I had an older version of wine, so I upgraded to 20040716, still no dice.

So I upgraded to the new version of DVD Shrink(3.2.0.15), still no dice.

I have 2 dvd-roms. I have one mounted as a cdrom in the config file, the other as a hard drive. If I try to open the dvd-rom mounted as a cdrom, I get the ASPI error. If I mount the other dvd-rom, start playing it in mplayer, then pause it, then open it in DVD Shrink, it previews and analyzes it, but it won't compress it at all.

Looks like I'm still stuck ripping to the hard drive first. What procedure do you go through to rip yours dlanor78? Did you used to get the ASPI error also?

BTW, I'm using Redhat 9, whatever the newest kernel available for it is. I would definitely like to get this working smoothly, so any input would be appreciated.

-Knappster

Unfortunately I didn't take notes when I did this, but to the best of my recollection the steps I posted earlier are all I did. I should say that I got the newest release from winehq and built it from source. This is pretty easy to do if you use the wine installer (something like ./tools/wine-installer [read the installation notes to make sure]). One other thing I think...I'm using Mandrake and it auto mounts the dvd when I insert it. If your distro doesn't do this just mount it the same way you would to watch the dvd (to something like /mnt/cdrom). I'll keep thinking about it and post back if I think of anything else. I'm thinking of formatting my hard drive to try out another distro (vidalinux) and if I do I'll pay closer attention to the steps I take to get dvdshritk working. Good luck and post back with results.

With the version of wine I'm using you shouldn't have to touch the config file at all. Here's what my config file looks like:

WINE REGISTRY Version 2
;; All keys relative to \\Machine\\Software\\Wine\\Wine\\Config

;; If you think it is necessary to show others your complete config for a
;; bug report, filter out empty lines and comments with
;; grep -v "^;" ~/.wine/config | grep '.'

[wine]
"Windows" = "c:\\windows"
"System" = "c:\\windows\\system"
"Temp" = "e:\\"
"Path" = "c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system;e:\\;e:\\test;f:\\"
"Profile" = "c:\\windows\\Profiles\\Administrator"
"GraphicsDriver" = "x11drv"
;"ShowDirSymlinks" = "1"
;"ShowDotFiles" = "1"

# [wineconf]

[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
"Windows" = "winxp"
; DOS version to imitate
;"DOS" = "6.22"

; Be careful here, wrong DllOverrides settings have the potential
; to pretty much kill your setup.
[DllOverrides]
; some dlls you may want to change
"oleaut32" = "builtin, native"
"ole32" = "builtin, native"
"comdlg32" = "builtin, native"
"shell32" = "builtin, native"
"shfolder" = "builtin, native"
"shlwapi" = "builtin, native"
"shdocvw" = "builtin, native"
"advapi32" = "builtin, native"
"msvcrt" = "native, builtin"
"mciavi.drv" = "native, builtin"
"mcianim.drv" = "native, builtin"
"msi" = "native, builtin"
"d3drm" = "native, builtin"
"d3dxof" = "native, builtin"
"dpnhpast" = "native, builtin"
; you can specify applications too
; this one will apply for all notepad.exe
;"*notepad.exe" = "native, builtin"
; this one will apply only for a particular file
;"C:\\windows\\regedit.exe" = "native, builtin"
; default for all other dlls
"*" = "builtin, native"

[x11drv]
; Number of colors to allocate from the system palette
"AllocSystemColors" = "100"
; Use a private color map
"PrivateColorMap" = "N"
; Favor correctness over speed in some graphics operations
"PerfectGraphics" = "N"
; Color depth to use on multi-depth screens
;;"ScreenDepth" = "16"
; Allow the window manager to manage created windows
"Managed" = "Y"
; Use a desktop window of 640x480 for Wine
;"Desktop" = "640x480"
; Use XFree86 DGA extension if present
; (make sure /dev/mem is accessible by you !)
"UseDGA" = "Y"
; Use XVidMode extension if present
"UseXVidMode" = "Y"
; Use XRandR extension if present
"UseXRandR" = "Y"
; Use the take focus protocol
"UseTakeFocus" = "Y"
; Enable DirectX mouse grab
"DXGrab" = "N"
; Create the desktop window with a double-buffered visual
; (useful to play OpenGL games)
"DesktopDoubleBuffered" = "N"
; Run in synchronous mode (useful for debugging X11 problems)
;;"Synchronous" = "Y"
;
; Use the Render extension to render client side fonts (default "Y")
;;"ClientSideWithRender" = "Y"
; Fallback on X core requests to render client side fonts (default "Y")
;;"ClientSideWithCore" = "Y"
; Set both of the previous two to "N" in order to force X11 server side fonts
;
; Anti-alias fonts if using the Render extension (default "Y")
;;"ClientSideAntiAliasWithRender" = "Y"
; Anti-alias fonts if using core requests fallback (default "Y")
;;"ClientSideAntiAliasWithCore" = "Y"
;

[fonts]
;Read the Fonts topic in the Wine User Guide before adding aliases
;See a couple of examples for russian users below
"Resolution" = "96"
"Default" = "-adobe-helvetica-"
"DefaultFixed" = "fixed"
"DefaultSerif" = "-adobe-times-"
"DefaultSansSerif" = "-adobe-helvetica-"

;; default TrueType fonts with russian koi8-r encoding
;"Default" = "-monotype-arial-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
;"DefaultFixed" = "-monotype-courier new-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
;"DefaultSerif" = "-monotype-times new roman-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
;"DefaultSansSerif" = "-monotype-arial-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
;; default cyrillic bitmap X fonts
;"Default" = "-cronyx-helvetica-"
;"DefaultFixed" = "fixed"
;"DefaultSerif" = "-cronyx-times-"
;"DefaultSansSerif" = "-cronyx-helvetica-"

; the TrueType font dirs you want to make accessible to wine
[FontDirs]
;"dir1" = "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
;"dir2" = "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
;"dir3" = "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TT"
;"dir4" = "/usr/share/fonts/TT"

[ppdev]
;; key: io-base of the emulated port
;; value : parport-device{,timeout}
;; timeout for auto closing an open device ( not yet implemented)
;"378" = "/dev/parport0"
;"278" = "/dev/parport1"
;"3bc" = "/dev/parport2"

[spooler]
"FILE:" = "tmp.ps"
"LPT1:" = "|lpr"
"LPT2:" = "|gs -sDEVICE=bj200 -sOutputFile=/tmp/fred -q -"
"LPT3:" = "/dev/lp3"

[ports]
;"read" = "0x779,0x379,0x280-0x2a0"
;"write" = "0x779,0x379,0x280-0x2a0"

[Debug]
;"RelayExclude" = "RtlEnterCriticalSection;RtlLeaveCriticalSection"
;"RelayInclude" = "user32.CreateWindowA"
;"RelayFromExclude" = "user32;x11drv"
;"RelayFromInclude" = "sol.exe"
;"SnoopExclude" = "RtlEnterCriticalSection;RtlLeaveCriticalSection"
;"SpyExclude" = "WM_SIZE;WM_TIMER;"

[registry]
;These are all booleans. Y/y/T/t/1 are true, N/n/F/f/0 are false.
;Defaults are read all, write to Home
; Where to find the global registries
;"GlobalRegistryDir" = "/etc";
; Global registries (stored in /etc)
"LoadGlobalRegistryFiles" = "Y"
; Load Windows registries from the Windows directory
"LoadWindowsRegistryFiles" = "Y"
; Registry periodic save timeout in seconds
; "PeriodicSave" = "600"
; Save only modified keys
"SaveOnlyUpdatedKeys" = "Y"

[Clipboard]
"ClearAllSelections" = "0"
"PersistentSelection" = "1"
"UsePrimary" = "0"

; List of all directories directly contain .AFM files
[afmdirs]
"1" = "/usr/share/ghostscript/fonts"
"2" = "/usr/share/a2ps/afm"
"3" = "/usr/share/enscript"
"4" = "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"

[WinMM]
; Uncomment the "Drivers" line matching your sound setting.

"Drivers" = "wineoss.drv" ; default for most common configurations
;"Drivers" = "winearts.drv" ; for KDE
;"Drivers" = "winealsa.drv" ; for ALSA users
;"Drivers" = "winejack.drv" ; for Jack sound server
;"Drivers" = "winenas.drv" ; for NAS sound system
;"Drivers" = "wineaudioio.drv" ; for Solaris machines
;"Drivers" = "" ; to disable sound
"WaveMapper" = "msacm.drv"
"MidiMapper" = "midimap.drv"

[dsound]
;; HEL only: Number of waveOut fragments ahead to mix in new buffers.
;"HELmargin" = "5"
;; HEL only: Number of waveOut fragments ahead to queue to driver.
;"HELqueue" = "5"
;; Max number of fragments to prebuffer
;"SndQueueMax" = "28"
;; Min number of fragments to prebuffer
;"SndQueueMin" = "12"
;; Forces emulation mode (using wave api)
;"HardwareAcceleration" = "Emulation"
;; Sets default playback device (0 - number of devices - 1)
;"DefaultPlayback" = "0" ; use first device (/dev/dsp)
;"DefaultPlayback" = "1" ; use second device (/dev/dsp1)
;"DefaultPlayback" = "2" ; use third device (/dev/dsp2)
;; Sets default capture device (0 - number of devices - 1)
;"DefaultCapture" = "0" ; use first device (/dev/dsp)
;"DefaultCapture" = "1" ; use second device (/dev/dsp1)
;"DefaultCapture" = "2" ; use third device (/dev/dsp2)

[Network]
;; Use the DNS (Unix) host name always as NetBIOS "ComputerName" (boolean, default "Y").
;; Set to N if you need a persistent NetBIOS ComputerName that possibly differs
;; from the Unix host name. You'll need to set ComputerName in
;; HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName, too.
;"UseDnsComputerName" = "N"

;; sample AppDefaults entries

; 3 InstallShield versions who like to put their full screen window in front,
; without any chance to switch to another X11 application.
; So just catch them in a desktop window.

[AppDefaults\\_INS0432._MP\\x11drv]
"Desktop" = "640x480"

[AppDefaults\\_INS0466._MP\\x11drv]
"Desktop" = "640x480"

[AppDefaults\\_INS0576._MP\\x11drv]
"Desktop" = "640x480"

[AppDefaults\\_INS5176._MP\\x11drv]
"Desktop" = "640x480"

[AppDefaults\\_INS5576._MP\\x11drv]
"Desktop" = "800x600"

;[AppDefaults\\iexplore.exe\\DllOverrides]
;"shlwapi" = "native"
;"rpcrt4" = "native"
;"ole32" = "native"
;"shdocvw" = "native"
;"wininet" = "native"
;"shfolder" = "native"
;"shell32" = "native"
;"shell" = "native"
;"comctl32" = "native"
;
;[AppDefaults\\setup.exe\\x11drv]
;"Desktop" = "800x600"
;
;[AppDefaults\\sol.exe\\Version]
;"Windows" = "nt40"
;
;; Some games (Quake 2, UT) refuse to accept emulated dsound devices.
;; You can add an AppDefault entry like this for such cases.
;[AppDefaults\\pickygame.exe\\dsound]
;"EmulDriver" = "N"

# [/wineconf]


This version of wine doesn't use the config file for it's devices. It uses the sym links in your /home/usr/.wine/dosdevices directory. So, try this. If you installed wine from an rpm or something like that, uninstall it (rpm -e wine I think it is). They even say in the docs that you should uninstall any previous versions first. Then get the source code from winehq and build it from source. Then refer to my original post. At first I did get the aspi error too, until I did this method I described in my first post. Sorry for any typos you find. I've been switching between qwerty and dvorak layouts and it's really screwing with my accuracy.

I was working on building the source before work this morning. The configuration went flawlessly, so did the make(even though it probably took longer than 20 mins). When I got to the make install, bad things happened. Actually, just one bad thing.

It gave me some error about libraries, and said to put /usr/local/lib into some /etc/*.*.conf file something or other and then run /sbin/ldconfig (i'm not sure on the filename). So I did that, tried make install again, at the same spot(I think) it says that libwine.so.1 is not a symbolic link.

Next I go into /usr/local/lib and sure enough, libwine.so.1 is not a symbolic link, so I renamed it libwine.so.1.backup and did the "ln -s libwine.so.1.backup libwine.so.1"

I ran make install again and it gave me the same error! So I went back into /usr/local/lib and it was transformed back into a normal file, so I tried again to make sure I wasn't crazy, and the same thing.

Any idea what is going on? Could it need an updated version or something? I'm still pretty much a linux n00b giving the caveman treatment. I didn't have time to fool around with it any more before work, and I won't until tonight, but any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

-Knappster

I'm not really sure what that error is all about. I'm also kinda a n00b at all this myself. Here's something you can try though. I recommend using the command "./tools/wineinstall" (as a normal user...it will ask for your root password when it needs it) over the ./configure, make, make install method. You very well may get the same error this way, and if so I'm not sure what to tell you. All I can say for sure is that it worked for me on Mandrake 10. What I'm hoping for is that the install script will take care of the libwine.so.1 problem for you. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

What is this ASPI error you guys are talking about?

I ended up using the install script and the installation of wine worked. When I tried DVD shrink the ASPI error was still there.

mhearn, the ASPI error is "Failed to initialize ASPI device" which happens for a lot of people who try to load a disk on DVDshrink(as well as other programs).

In any case, out of the blue, my redhat installation started to hang when loading the xwindows, so I removed it and installed debian with the 2.6 kernel, dual booting with windows. Windows wouldn't boot, so I spent a long ass time trying to figure out what I did wrong.

Turns out I did nothing wrong, but instead kernel 2.6 uses an incorrect geometry to partition the hard drive. Some crazy sfdisk command fixed that. Before that I tried an older version of wine in debian and it got the same aspi error. I'm on a fresh installation right now, so I am going to try to get the source and run the install script. There won't be any previous installations of wine to conflict, so if this doesn't work, then ASPI is just the bane of my existence. I will report back after I have given it a try.

-Knappster

Important update!!!
 

Okay I'm an idiot....I totally forgot a crucial step in getting this to work. In another post I stated that you shouldn't have to touch your wine config file, but you do. In the part where it says

[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
;"Windows" = "win98"
; DOS version to imitate
;"DOS" = "6.22"

you need to remove the ; from the "Windows" = line and change win98 to winxp (others above win98 may work, but haven't tried them). After that, and after my other instructions, you should all be in business. I reinstalled mandrake from scratch and built wine from newest source. Also got newest version of dvdshrink. All working now that I made that wine config change. Also, while you're at it you could also add your new dosdevices to the config file. Not mandatory if using the command line, but if you wanna use the open disc button in dvd shrink you'll need to do this...

Where is says:

"Path" = "c:\\windows;c:\\windows\\system;e:\\;e:\\test;f:\\;

just add whatever you called your new dosdevice using the same format they're already using. Make sure to seperate all new devices with a ; and don't forget the ://

I made the change to the Windows version that you suggested and it worked! Amazing. I noticed that it seemed a lot more buggy if I tried to check many options after the disk had been analyzed. Oh well, it saves a ton of time from ripping to the hard drive first.

The next thing I have been trying to accomplish is opengl in linux so I can run games(in wine or ported). I was trying out Jedi Outcast and no opengl is installed. I have spent two or three days straight trying different methods of installing fglrx, but everything has resulted in complete, utter failure. So my only two remaining options are to keep at it or give up and use Windows for games. I think I'm going to go with the latter for now.

Thanks for the help dlanor, hopefully other people with this problem stumble across this solution a lot faster than I did.

-Knappster

Hi, well here is the technique i use to copy dvd's.



First i rip the vob files to disk using vobcopy, i found it a freshmeat.(use "vobcopy -m" to copy hole dvd)
Then i remove all other lang and sound with a program called vobstripper, also found at freshmeat.
This quite often reduces the size of the image bellow the 4.5gig mark, sufficient to copy and with no data loss.


But there are the other movies which do not fit. So some data has to be shrunk to reduce it's size.

So i use the tool "vamps" to finally shrink the size of the project using the -E param for shrinking factor.eg
"vamps -E 1.25 -a 1 < input.vob > output.vob" will shrink the project to 80%, and keep first audio track(-a).

At this point the the image should be <4.5gig so we can create an image.

I simply then use the unix command mkisofs to convert the data to an iso, and finally cdrecord to burn the image.

Easy Ehh

I used bash to glue most of this together(except for cdrecord) so all i do is insert a dvd and it created a dvd iso
allowing me to burn to dvd at a latter date. Time is very quick, and usually high quality, though vamps does reduce quality rather bad after 60%.
<edit>ow and vamps is hard to find so here it is ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/listings/0401-094.tgz<edit>

Dvd back up help needed
 

xxxx@linux:~> dvdbackup -M -i /media/dvdrecorder/ -o /home/xxxx/the_cube
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.8 for DVD access
libdvdread: Attempting to use device /dev/hdg mounted on /media/dvdrecorder for CSS authentication
Can't read title from DVD device /media/dvdrecorder/
You must provide a title name when you read your DVD-Video structure direct from the HD


the top line is command, all seems fine then it says it cannot read the title, it happens on all dvds I try, anyone got any ideas?

Good thread
 

finally i found something that half works!

i have managed to get dvdshrink up and reading the dvd (using wine dvdshrink.exe e: while mplayer is running)
the dvd analyzes fine, however i am unable to compress any video. on the right screen is says "video cannot be compressed" or something like that.

any ideas about this?

try using native quartz.dll

like this?
 

well im using the vobcopy - vobstripper - mkisofs method now and its working well, tho i need to get a hold of vamps to resize those images > 4.5gb

leckie, ive used your method as best i can, but i was wondering.

after i have vobcopy'd the dvd contents, how can i vobstripper all the *.vob files at once, and the same with vamps.

atm im doing them one at a time and it takes ages,

do you think you could give us some more detail. im SOOO close :)

thanks

Hey cadj, I'm assuming that you set up your dvd-rom to be accessed like a hard drive to get around the aspi error that pops up otherwise. I'm assuming that b/c I had the same problem. The key, though, is to leave it as a cdrom drive and change the windows emulation type to winxp, as dlanor78 stated. Hopefully that helps. I don't think anything else is too picky, so let me know if that doesn't work. I didn't use any of the native linux stuff b/c it all only copies the main feature, but no special features or anything else, but dvdshrink copies anything you want it to. Good luck.

-Knappster

Ok
 

I set the drive back to the "cdrom type" and changed the windows version to winxp, now when i open the cd i get
"cant open d:\, invalid handle" or something like that (im not at my linux box) i have allso added d:\\ to my path but not avail.

im downloading and compiling the lastest version of wine when i get home, ill see if that helps

--EDIT
Failed to read file M:\

Invalid Handle

i must note that my wine config is using

[Drive M]
"Path" = "/mnt/cdrom"
"Type" = "cdrom"
"Label" = "CD-ROM M"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
"Device" = "/dev/cdrom"

<cut short>

"Windows" = "winxp"

i dont have anything in /home/cadj/.wine/dosdevices, could this have something to do with it. if so how do i set the symlinks up

Its working!!
 

Its ok, i got it working

installed wine 20040813 rpm for mandrake 10

configured the symlinks in /home/cadj/.wine/dosdevices

ran DvdShrink.exe "d:"

works well, just as fast as windows is seems :)

thanks guys for all the help,

there are heaps of people out there who want to do the same as what i have just done. its allmost worth setting up a tutorial to do so. what do u think

ok guys i have been pointed to this post and have been reading everything you guys have posted i too am a dvdshrink user on windows box but i have since set up a second pc to try and learn some linux, i think to make things easier on all of you u might want to look into a program called lxdvdrip it has all the pieces that yall mention here....vamps and so forth well you have to load its dependents but after that its a pretty simple process, i thought that i wanted to run shrink with wine in my suse system but after all the problems posted here makes me think i will just send a huge donation to the author of lxdvdrip (lol) all i need now is a GUI and Icon and i am in lala land.thanks for the oppurtunity to post.

Nrmf

Nrmf, unless things have changed since I looked at it a month or so ago, it does not have all the features of DVD Shrink. Mainly, it only copies the main feature, no menus, no special features, etc. Those are important to me, so I won't switch over to lxdvdrip until it allows you to copy everything. Maybe I'll work on a tutorial for DVD Shrink in wine when I get a chance, but it's really only one major step. But I guess it's a little more difficult if you're starting the wine installation from scratch. We'll see.

i see ypur point, i have forgotten that eveyones needs are different when it comes to dvd copying ....i'm doing a fresh install of suse pro 9.1 now and will try the wine with shrink option, do you know if it works with the latest dvdshrink 3.2.15 or will i have to use a different version. can you repost or tell me again how to get wine and shrink to work together. thank you gain.

I'm using DVDShrink 3.2.0.15 currently. I'll try to come up with a quick tutorial thing to tell you how to do it in a few hours. You do have to be somewhat patient with it, because it tends to freeze at certain points, but they can usually be avoided. I've noticed that if you mouseover specific things after it analyzes then it will freeze, but if you open DVDShrink and that DVD again it has the analysis saved, so you don't have to wait through it again, plus it doesn't tend to crash when you mouseover the same stuff. Anyway, I gotta get going, good luck.

-Knappster

TUTORIAL!!!!
 

Here is a tutorial to the best of my knowledge of how to get DVDShrink to work without the ASPI error in Linux using Wine. I am using version 20040716(Which means that it was created July 16, 2004). It should work on all versions at least this recent, and probably some older ones. But here if you follow these steps it should work.

If you have a version that is 20040716 or higher, or you would like to try it with your version without updating, skip to step 3. If you don't have any version of Wine currently installed, skip to step 2. You can find your version by opening an xterminal window and typing You can download wine source files or particular distribution installation files at http://www.winehq.com/
(I would recommend the source files just because).

Step 1: Uninstall your current version of Wine.

If you used an RPM, you have to find the rpm name of it somehow, probably something like wine-200xxxxx, I honestly don't remember how it was named. Then type or whatever the rpm name is.

If you used a debian package, you should just be able to type (I think).

Other distros have to figure it out for themselves because I'm a linux n00b myself and have only used those 2(and my experience with them is quite limited as well)

If you installed from source, it will be trickier. If you still have all the compiled stuff, you should be able to enter that directory and type If you do not, you will probably need to download the source of the same version you had, and I don't know a whole lot about this stuff, but I assume you'll have to compile it again, make the install file, then run make uninstall, so something like this. Don't take my word for it, cause I'm just guessing, but even though it takes forever to compile, it should uninstall your version of Wine.

Step 2: Download and install the newest version of wine.

You can get the newest version of wine at http://www.winehq.com . I will only walkthrough how to install the source tarball, because it should be the same for all distros. Also, I am going to give an example with the newest version available at this time, but all you have to do is change the numbers to what you have and it should work as well. Once you have downloaded the file, type and it should create a directory named wine-20040813 (with a lowercase 'w' I think), and this directory is full of goodies. But don't touch any of them lol. TypeAnd it should compile, make, and make install everything for you. I'm pretty sure you can run it as a regular user and when it gets to a certain point it asks for your superuser password, so just follow the directions. Congratulations, now you have wine installed.

Step 3: Configure wine.

Go to your home directory and type Assuming your dvd drive is mounted as /mnt/dvd, and you want windows to read it as drive X: then type where /mnt/dvd is where your dvd read drive is mounted and X: is the drive you want windows to read it as. Next backup your config file, type This way if anything goes terribly terribly wrong(which it shouldn't) you can just replace config with the backup file. Next, use your favorite text editor(gvim in my case) to edit the config file, I will use vi, which comes pretty much standard on every linux distro. Type and you'll see plenty of jumble. Use the down arrow, or 'j' key to scroll down the file. Until you see something like this:

[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
;"Windows" = "win98"
; DOS version to imitate
;"DOS" = "6.22"

With the cursor over the semicolon at the beginning of press x to delete the semicolon. Then press the right arrow key or 'l' to scroll right until your cursor is on the 'w' in "win98". Press 'd' then 'w' to delete win98. Then press 'i' to insert and type winxp. Press escape to get out of insert mode, then ':wq' followed by enter to save and exit the file. If you screw up somewhere along the way, you can quit without saving by typing ':q!' and pressing enter and then opening the file and starting over again. If you want to save without quitting, you can type ':w' followed by enter and look around or make other changes.

Step 4: Install and run DVDShrink.

You can download the newest version of DVDShrink from: http://www.dvdshrink.org . The newest version currently out, which is the same version that I have installed, is 3.2.0.15. Once you have downloaded it, I would move it to your emulated drive c, by typing: Then run the installation file by typing, and it will bring you to a Windows installation thing. Follow the clicks and points as you would in Windows to do the installation. Once it is installed, you can run it by typing: My first point of advice is to click edit, preferences, then uncheck the box that says "Run analysis and backup in low priority mode to improve multi-tasking" which will probably double or quadruple the speed of backing the DVD up. Then make sure your DVD drive is mounted in linux and click on the Open Disc button, and if you have a DVD in it should show the drive letter and the title of the DVD. Once you click ok, it will do like a 2 minute analysis of the DVD and then show you what it's keeping and what it's not, the compression rate, etc, etc. If everything is still blank, then it's prolly just a slight but you can fix by clicking view, toolbar, then view, toolbar again. It should show up after the first time you click view, toolbar, but you'll probably want the toolbar back, hence the second time. I often have a problem with my DVDShrink freezing after the first analysis. It takes me to the debug thing in the terminal window. Either type quit, or press ctrl+c to close it altogether. One seems to flood the window with debug screens while the other works, but I can't remember which is which. If your window gets flooded, close it and open your system manager to end or kill wine. Then simply open DVDShrink the same as before, Open Disc the same as before, it won't analyze it again, since it already has that information, and it should work smoothly from there. If you would like to add or remove any tracks, do so by checking the boxes. Click backup to actually do the compression, change any settings you want(I generally save it as an ISO rather than vob files) and click OK or whatever it has. That should be it. If you save it as C:\xxxxxxx.iso then it will be in your ~/.wine/drive_c directory.

CONGRATULATIONS! You can now Backup DVDs using DVDShrink in Linux. If you turn off low priority mode, I have found that it generally takes about 30 mins to backup. I tried to make this tutorial as clear as possible, but if you have any further questions, other people prolly have the same ones, so please post them on here. Maybe sometime I'll talk to the admins about posting it as a tutorial if I get time and get any kinks worked out. Good luck and hopefully it works as well for everyone else as it does for me.

-Knappster

Thank you for you help everything works except I cant find my dos devices wine20040914 so when I open disk I have no disk I hate to ask you to hold my hand through this but I am very new this. wine20040914 is in my home directory but I can't seem to set up my dvd drive.

Forget using WINE to run DVDShrink. Use mplayer's mencoder to copy the vob files. Then use ffmpeg to recompress them at a lower bitrate. If you do not want to do that, try VMware. It works with DVD drives, but you will have to install Windows in VMware. VMware needs atleast 512 megabytes of RAM and a atleast PIII 700 MHz. If your system has these requirements or better, VMware will run fine.

knappster, you are off on compling instructions for WINE.

./configure
make depend
make

Then as root or su "make install".

After that, log in as a normal user. Next type "wine notepad". WINE will find out if you have ~/.wine directory. If you already have .wine, you probably want to rename the ~/.wine directory to ~/.wineold. If WINE finds out you do not have ~/.wine, it will create it and then it will continue running notepad. If you see notepad, then you have WINE working. You can then continue pulling your hair by configuring WINE to run desire Windows programs.

Be carful with WINE. WINE is vulnerable to spyware, viruses, and any problems that Windows has. Like Windows, WINE has a registry. Like any registry, it can be tweaked or edited by any program. The program can add a line to run a torjan or something else

Sorry, but that's rubbish. Wine does not process bootup keys in the registry so how would it "run a torjan"?

Wine is no more dangerous than Firefox is. If you run virus infected binaries via it, you may get something - surprise surprise the same is true of infected Linux binaries.

Torjans can also be implanted on a dll file. If the dll file is loaded (most likely), the torjan will run with it. Also if WINE is ran in server mode, the risk of getting a virus is very, very high.

Like many other programs in Linux, Firefox is open source. You have the option to compile it or use the binary. A virus will not go far in Linux because many files and directories have strict permissions.

windowized, open a terminal window as a regular user. It should open in your home directory, but just to be sure typethen, type as far as I know, if you type dosdevices should be listed.
so type then, if your dvd player mounts in /mnt/cdrom
type ln -s /mnt/cdrom X:
where X is the drive letter for Wine's purposes. Then, be sure to mount the drive before starting up DVD Shrink. If you follow those steps, I think it should work. If you don't have a dos_devices directory in your .wine directory I'm not sure what to think. If that is the case you should probably make a new post regarding that and someone else will probably be able to help. The one thing you might be able to do is open the .config file in the .wine directory and try to add a device, but that's somewhat more complicated and I don't know if it makes any difference in the newer versions of wine.(BTW I'm still using the same version I listed in the tutorial, so you might have better luck if you download that version) Good luck.

Now onto you Electro...
1)
It is now recommended to install wine with the installer that's packaged with it(Or at least that was the case when I did it this summer). It worked for me, whereas the .compile, make, make install did not.

2)
As far as I am aware, VMWare costs money, but Wine is free. If you're just going to use it for this purpose, why pay for a bloated product that a free product can do just fine?

3)
I do not see how your virus/spyware comments apply to this situation since it is running a program that does not access the Internet, and even if a trojan were to be downloaded, as far as I can tell, it would only affect what you do in wine, so if you're not browsing in wine, then it shouldn't matter, right?

4)
I think from what I've read Mencoder can be kinda tricky to get going and dvdbackup can take longer to rip .vob files than DVDShrink takes to rip and compress them.

5)
Good point about notepad. That's a good way to test to make sure that wine was installed properly.

Thanks for your feedback, and let me know if any of my statements were incorrect.

-Knappster

Where did you read that. I read the documentation and it said
./configure
make depend
make
make install

I did the above just fine on several computers. You can not skip "make depend". If you skip "make depend", WINE will have a segmentation fault.

Yes, when you combine the time it takes to reboot into Windows or configure WINE, VMWare compensates for it being costly and it is very, very reliable. All USB and Firewire devices works in VMWare if you setup a virtual machine and installed Windows on that VM. With VMWare you can use or test just about any x86 OS before putting it in real environments. I paid the $300 and it is well worth it.

When you use something like games, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Outlook, the problems of Windows comes to surface. WINE by default sets some drives to point to /. This is very risky.

On my computer, mencoder is ran almost every day like a DVR. I wrote a bash script to simplify the syntax so I can use it with crontab to record TV shows. You can write a bash script that does the converting automatically with ffmpeg to fit on a 4.5 GB disc. I do not suggest using mencoder to recompress mpeg because it has poor support for that. There are frontends but where is fun in that.

I do not suggest using WINE if its the first few months using Linux. This is because WINE can be hard to run certain programs and you are most likely to revert back to Windows if you can not setup WINE properly. I suggest getting yourself comfortable in Linux by using bash commands, writing bash scripts, and understand how Linux works. There are many programs in Linux that does the samething as DVDShrink and some of them does their job to well.

mencoder - Great video capture from a V4L or V4Lv2 compatible video capture card. Very fast AVI encoding performance. Poor mpeg encoding performance.
transcode - A great tool to convert one video format to another video format. Also it can do some editing.
ffmpeg - Same as transcode but it is designed for speed. It has many predefine settings for VCD, SVCD, and DVD.

For any program, you will have to find out what settings works best for your computer and DVD player.

All the three can decrypt the VOB file from a DVD if they are compiled with CSS support.

Electro,
If you extract the wine tarball and check out the README file, under the 2nd point, starting at line 13, you will read:
And that is where I read it. I would not recommend VMWare to someone who was going to use it JUST for this. $300 is a lot of money to backup DVDs. If you're paying $15 per DVD you could buy duplicates of 20 DVDs instead of paying for VMWare. I was giving a tutorial on how to setup DVDShrink in Wine, and it works. Sure, paying for VMWare and setting it up can do the same job and much much more, but it is not the most feasible option.
Again, I was explaining how to use DVDShrink in wine, not Internet Explorer, games, etc. There would be different settings in order to get those to work, and so setting up DVDShrink in the manner I explained will not make them susceptible to viruses, spyware, etc.

I am still fairly new to linux myself, so I do not have experience with bash scripts, so I am going to request something from you. You said:
I believe you, but I haven't the slightest idea how to do it. So if you could write a tutorial on how to write and execute a bash script, specifically for ffmpeg, I would be delighted. And I'm serious about that. What other dependencies are necessary, how long will it take to execute, do you need to rip the .vob files to the HD first, etc. I am very interested to learn and I think it would be great to have a completely linux native way of doing this. Also, I would like all menus, languages(digital 5.1 is optional), and special features included. I will browse the forums to find more information if I get time, but I look forward to learning from you.

Oh right, that command that comes with WINE. It gave me problems this summer and last year, so I did the normal way that a lot of programs are compiled.

You can try VMWare for 30 days. That is what I did.

If I write a bash script, you will only be cheating on yourself. I will give you my bash script that I used for mencoder to record TV shows.

As you can see it is a little complex. First the script finds out if tvtime or/and seti@home is running. If they are running, close them. Also it notes a FLAG (reminder) for seti@home that it was running. Second the script goes to the vidrec function. That function does a few things. One it finds out what time it is and making sure that is same time that user wants to run the capture. The user has an option to not designate a time, so it will capture ASAP. Next it waits until the capture is done so it can run seti@home. Running it from crontab is very easy. For an example
57 15 * * 1-5 multi-vidcap ScreenSavers 01:03:00 15:58:00

It will run the script at 3:57 PM on Monday through Friday and then the script will wait until it is 3:58 to capture ScreenSavers. Also 01:03:00 will tell mecoder to capture for an hour and three minutes. After it is done, the file will be something like ScreenSavers-09202004_15:58:00.avi and taking up about 370 MB.

You do not have to copy the vob files from the DVD. ffmpeg will decode, decrypt, and recompress from the DVD. Read the man pages or the documentation at ffmpeg's site.

Go to http://www.home.zonnet.nl/panteltje/dvd/ for some DVD programs.

That's semi-helpful, but do you know of any tutorials or anything on the net to learn the shell-script syntax? I don't have time to just look at code and guess what it does. Also, is there anywhere that ha s instructions on how to backup DVDs using ffmpeg. a) when I downloaded it, it did not include any man pages, b) once again, I don't have time to read through all of the junk to find something useful. This is simply not a feasible project for a beginner to jump into and hope to figure out quickly. I'd like to do it, but I currently have DVDShrink working like a charm. So in short, until I learn this stuff, I'm going to be sticking with DVDShrink in wine.

-Knappster

I would like to thank both knappster and electro for your help I am now trying to set up both I have dvd rip installed and everything but global preferences correct still looking for a toutorial on that and dvd shrink I have got to ad the dvd rom because of this error localhost dosdevices]$ /mnt/cdrom bash: /mnt/cdrom: is a directory but I refuse to give up and not going back to microsoft I am kind of proud of myself for no longer than I have been using linux started with mandrake 10 I have got this far. Which I did with kelp from guys like you in these forums.

windowized.
regarding your problem, do you have your ~/.wine/dosdevices set up correctly?

i had a similar problem. give us some more info on your config and we can help :)

Sorry,
Posted to the wrong thread.