Alright, seeing as I've only done this successfully once, it might seem rather ambitious of me to attempt to write a HOWTO on these two issues. But I've been working at it for several days, and I guess I'd like to document what I've done so I don't forget next time around. (And now that 5 years have passed, I've done it a few more times, and the instructions are still great!)

Besides, I fancy myself pretty good at explaining things, and I think these instructions are actually really good; thus here they are:


So, I have a DVD. There are two things that I would like to do with it (aside from watching it):

1. I'd like to make an exact copy of the DVD. I can only do this if it is a DVD5. (I wrote this before dual-layer writers were available on the market. Thus, it should now be possible to follow these instructions to make exact copies of DVD9's as well, though I haven't really updated the instructions)
--- my GUI solution: k3B
--- alternately, CLI: dvdbackup, genisofs aka mkisofs, growisofs aka dvd+rw-tools

2. I'd like to make a copy of the movie with the menus and extras taken out, while preserving the original, unmodified VOBs.
--- my solution: k3B, dvdauthor, mkisofs
--- or use dvdbackup in place of k3B (detailed instructions not provided)

(( Now, number two could also be applied to a DVD9 if the menus and extras make the difference between fitting in 4.7 GB and not fitting in 4.7 GB. We could also use these instructions to split a movie between two discs. ))


--- CLI solutions: I don't know of a CLI tool that can do a "clone" read the way k3b does; however, dvdbackup can lift all the titles and menus... and what else would you really need?
Instructions here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dvdbackup
I'll summarize them...
$ cd /directory/where/you/want/to/save/the/dvd
$ dvdbackup -M; eject /dev/dvd
$ genisoimage -dvd-video -udf -o MovieName.iso movie_dir_saved_by_dvdbackup/
$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=MovieName.iso

Alternately you can skip the genisoimage step:
$ growisofs -dvd-video -udf movie_dir_saved_by_dvdbackup/

Note: I would strongly recommend using a tool that is designed to rip dvd's, such as dvdbackup. Some people commenting on this thread have recommended other tools such as dd that don't utilize error-correction and other special features of optical media. Since optical media is orders of magnitude more error-prone than magnetic media, dd is likely to give you an error-laden copy.


Pitfalls:

--- new pitfall 0 ---
Some newer drives may refuse to do a bit-for-bit rip. Yes, indeed, hollywood got its way and the hardware manufacturers have been crippling the hardware they sell us. If you have an older DVD drive, don't toss it when you buy a newer one! That old non-crippled drive might prove itself very useful when your brand new one refuses to do what you want.

--- pitfall 1 ---
Don't use a FAT32 volume! It cannot make files bigger than 4GB, and DVDs tend to be a little bigger than that.

--- pitfall 2 ---
I didn't have this problem, but many people do. Make sure you have libdvdcss, in order to defeat DVD encryption. (Actually, I'm not entirely sure it's necessary for this guide... but it's definitely a good thing to have.)

--- pitfall 3 ---
GB = Gigabyte or Gibibyte? Scroll down to the bottom of this message if you don't know why a DVD+-R would only record 4.37 GB instead of the advertised 4.7 -- it's a long and ugly explanation so I put it all the way at the end.

--- pitfall 4 ---
Is that a DVD5 or a DVD9 you're trying to copy? Or perhaps a DVD5 with more sectors than we normally see? 4.7GB = 4,700,000,000 bytes = 4,589,843 KiB = 4482 MiB = 4.377 GiB. A DVD9 can hold almost (but not quite) twice that much information)

--- pitfall 5 ---
If you rip once with some tool and encounter problems, don't be afraid to just rip again with another tool. dvdunathor, vobcopy and dvdrip all rip slightly differently, whether the difference is in the directory structure or the format of the actual ripped files (dvdunauthor does something quite weird.) And don't delete that old rip! You might want to refer to it again.

--- pitfall 6 ---
Up-to-date versions are good. Updating does not always solve problems, but it sometimes does. I am running the following:

k3b --version
Qt: 3.3.4
KDE: 3.3.2
K3b: 0.11.20

dvdauthor --version
DVDAuthor::dvdauthor, version 0.6.11.

mkisofs --version
mkisofs 2.01-unofficial-iconv (i686-pc-linux-gnu)

I know that, for example, older versions of mkisofs do not support the -dvd-video option


Alright, enough with the pitfalls, let's get to work...




--- Number 1 --- make an exact copy of a DVD5 ---

As things ultimately turned out, this was not all that difficult. k3B did the trick quite nicely.

Tools > DVD > Copy DVD
- Options: Only create image
- Check your tmp directory, and specify a name, e.g. /tmp/MyMovie.iso
- press Start and wait a little while...


Now before burning, you might want to check out the image. You could even do a diff operation. You'll have to become root in order to mount it...

mkdir /mnt/iso
mount /tmp/MyMovie.iso /mnt/iso -t udf -o loop
cd /mnt/iso

Now you can explore the image you just made! To check it against the disc, do this:

mount /mnt/dvd
diff /mnt/iso /mnt/dvd -r

... and sit back for a little while. If it doesn't write anything to the screen, then they're identical! Yay!

This also ought to be possible from a device perspective, but I don't actually know if this will work: diff /dev/hdc /tmp/MyMovie.iso

Oh, and when the image is thus mounted, you can even watch it from your hard drive:

xine dvd:///tmp/MyMovie.iso

umount /mnt/iso


According to silverw (as seen in his comment below) it is possible to view the image without doing a linux mount, by using mplayer:

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /tmp/MyMovie.iso


It's even easier with vlc...

vlc /tmp/MyMovie.iso


Okay, now that you're satisfied you've got a good copy on your hard drive, let's burn it in k3B:

Tools > DVD > Burn DVD ISO Image
- Specify your image to burn
- Speed probably says auto. You might have a little ambiguously iconed button which provides the following tooltip when hovered over with the mouse: "Determine supported writing speeds" -- seems like a great idea to me! You'll have to have the blank DVD in there in order to do the test.
- You can verify written data if you like, but it only does an md5, and I'm inclined to do another diff, so I don't bother with k3B's verification.

Start... and wait... and wait...


And you ought to have yourself a nice copy! You can check it against the image in the same way that we checked the image against the original disc... or with two drives, you could even check the discs against each other. Of course, this is all time consuming, but it's nice to know that you have a good copy.





--- Number 2 --- copy the movie with no menus / extras ---


I previously had instructions here which suggested running dvdauthor directly on the dvd mountpoint. This is a bad idea because there is a good chance that the dvd drive will encounter read errors; dvdauthor doesn't have a concept of "retrying" in order to get a good read, so it will likely give you a lousy copy. Thus it's better to use software designed for reading the dvd, e.g. k3B or dvdbackup.

So before I give the details, here's a quick summary of everything:


use k3B to grab an iso of the original disc, or dvdbackup to grab whichever titles you want

dvdauthor -o auth_dir -x MyMovie.xml

( rename all the lowercase names to uppercase )

mkisofs -dvd-video -o MyMovie.iso auth_dir

use k3B to burn the new iso



Looking at these one by one:

Grabbing the image with k3B is identical to that described in number 1. Real quick, here's how it goes:

Tools > DVD > Copy DVD
- Options: Only create image

Now you'll need to loopback mount that new iso in order to grab the VOBs with dvdauthor...

mkdir /mnt/iso
mount /tmp/MyMovie.iso /mnt/iso -t udf -o loop
cd /mnt/iso


Alternately, you can use dvdbackup. The dvdbackup manpage is pretty good, so I won't try to restate what is written there. I will note that you may only want one title; more on titles below.


Supposing you've verified that you got a good rip, let's move on to dvdauthor...


dvdauthor always needs a -o switch, which specifies its destination directory -- where it writes the VOB, IFO and BUP files. This directory should already exist; you might have to create a new one. I do a naming scheme like MyMovie_auth

And that -x switch ... definitely the most complex part. Here's the simplest xml file I could figure out how to make:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<dvdauthor>
<vmgm />
<titleset>
<titles>
<audio lang="en"/>
<pgc>
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB" />
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_2.VOB" />
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_3.VOB" />
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_4.VOB" />
</pgc>
</titles>
</titleset>
</dvdauthor>


If you leave out the vmgm section, dvdauthor will not create the video_ts.ifo and video_ts.bup files, and this will make mkisofs complain that they do not exist. If this happens to you:

dvdauthor -T -o auth_dir

that -T switch looks inside the auth_dir and figures out how to make video_ts.ifo and the backup.

This had me confused for quite some time; then I used dvdauthor -T for a while; now I just put in that <vmgm /> and it's automagically taken care of.

You can use as many VOBs as you want... you could even use the same one twice! But let's figure out which ones we want, because if you've got some kind of fancy DVD, there are probably a hundred and one of these VOB files, so... which??? ls -Ss is your friend here, and it will help you find the biggest ones that have the same title. Let's look at the naming scheme for those VOBs:

VTS_01_3.VOB

01 is the TITLE.
3 is the CHAPTER.

I believe it's possible to make additional chapter stops within the VOB CHAPTERS, but I don't know how it's done.

So, you'll want the main movie, which will be stored as maybe 2-4 VOB files which are the same size, about 1 GB, and then one additional one which is smaller (the remainder). Chances are the main movie will be on the first title, VTS_01_1 through VTS_01_5 or whatever. Here's a snippet from an output of ls -Ss1

1048404 VTS_01_1.VOB
1048404 VTS_01_2.VOB
1048404 VTS_01_3.VOB
217806 VTS_01_4.VOB

So you see, the first three parts all have the same size, 1,048,404 KB, and the last one finishes off the movie.

Now, VTS_01_0 is just the menu screen for title 1, so you don't need that (unless you want to get into authoring menus.)


Now, if you want to split a DVD9 onto two DVD5 discs, we could do this like so... create two xml files, Disc1.xml and Disc2.xml. Disc1.xml would look like the above, while Disc2.xml would be very similar, with the exception of:

<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_5.VOB" />
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_6.VOB" />
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_7.VOB" />
<vob file="/mnt/iso/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_8.VOB" />

Or however the VOBs fit best. If you have a number 9, and you can't fit either 1-5 on the first disc, or 5-9 on the second disc, then you would have to figure out a way to split VOB5. I've never done it so I'm not going to go into it.

Anyway, the xml above is a really, really simple example. It will produce just one title, with as many chapter stops as you have VOBs -- and those chapter stops are not necessarily at sensible spots in the movie: a VOB - VOB transition can occur in the middle of a scene, even in the middle of a camera shot. Assuming you burn it, you won't have sensible chapter stops or a welcome menu, which is kind of annoying, but oh well.

Now, if you want to get into authoring, you can do all sorts of neat menu manipulations and chapter settings with dvdauthor. I really wish I could do that, but I've already spent a few days here, and I really have better things to do than devote all my time to authoring copies of DVDs. Just in case such an expert happens to be reading this, who is also good at explaining things, here's what I'd like to know:

- How can I set custom chapter stops? Let's see a really super-simple example, first just splitting one VOB into two chapters; then, if possible, merging two VOBs into one chapter; then splitting several VOBs into a number of chapters, including one or more VOB - VOB transition that does not have a chapter stop at the VOB - VOB transition point. This is the kind of step-by-step explanation that is sorely lacking in the linux community...

- Can I name those chapter stops so on a rightclick menu I can see the chapter names?

- How do I either split or properly access a VOB/mpg MENU file, which has several menus in it?

There, that's a nice start... anyway, not the purpose of this howto, but those are my showstoppers. Without the basics, I can't do anything. Once I understand the basics, I could probably do some pretty nifty authoring work with dvdauthor's xml, but right now I'm stuck with nothing.




Alright, enough with dvdauthor. Or, wait, I still must make a complaint about it:

The annoying thing (or rather, one annoying thing) about dvdauthor is that it seems to like to save the file names as all lowercase, instead of uppercase. So go into the auth_dir, and:

mv audio_ts AUDIO_TS
mv video_ts VIDEO_TS
cd VIDEO_TS
rename 'y/a-z/A-Z/' *

If you really like, you can do it all in one command:

find auth_dir -exec rename 'y/a-z/A-Z/' {} \;


I personally have the added difficulty of being forced to store the stuff on a FAT32 at the moment (fortunately my movie is only 3.3 GB, so it is possible!) FAT32 won't allow renaming to uppercase because it is stupid. So I create a system of softlinks on a linux drive:

mkdir softlinks
mkdir softlinks/AUDIO_TS
mkdir softlinks/VIDEO_TS
ln -s /full/path/to/auth_dir/* softlinks/VIDEO_TS
cd softlinks/VIDEO_TS
rename 'y/a-z/A-Z/' *


If dvdauthor puts up warnings on the screen, it may have created a bad image... I found this out the hard way, and am debating whether to throw away this disc that is missing a half-second of audio in two rather unimportant places. Even when it's not important, the break is really annoying.



Then we do:

mkisofs -dvd-video -o /tmp/MyMovie.iso auth_dir

or in my case,

mkisofs -dvd-video -f -o MyMovie.iso softlinks

The -dvd-video switch tells it how to format the iso file;
The -o switch is for output... name the iso you're outputting! As you can see, I put it in /tmp
And then we have the directory where AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS live -- auth_dir or softlinks. (The -f tells it to follow those softlinks)


Alright! now we're ready to

xine dvd:///tmp/MyMovie.iso

and burn it using k3B. (instructions above, in the Number 1 section)



Enjoy!
~David.



As promised, --- pitfall 3 --- GB = Gigabyte or Gibibyte? ---

The metric system people will insist that "Giga" means 10^9. However, in the computer world, we do everything in powers of 2, and we have often used the prefix "Giga" to refer to 2^30 -- which is a bit larger than 10^9. The metric system people have proposed that all us computer folks should stop abusing the prefix "Giga", and instead use the prefix "Gibi" ... and likewise with Mibibytes, Kibibytes -- and that we should write KiB, MiB, GiB. This is not really happening, and it remains a source of confusion, especially because disk and drive manufacturers advertise their products with sizes in proper metric MB and GB, not computer-world powers-of-two MiB and GiB. So when a manufacturer advertises a DVD as having 4.7 GB space, they mean 4.7 x 10^9, NOT 4.7 x 2^30.

4,700,000,000 bytes
= 4,589,843 KiB
= 4482 MiB
= 4.377 GiB

So as things turn out, we only get 4.37 instead of 4.7. But fear not, the DVD you are trying to copy is likely also so limited! However, pressed DVD5's larger than 4,700,000,000 bytes are not uncommon -- they may be as big as 4,707,319,808 bytes, and perhaps bigger.

By the way, above you mentioned not having figured out how to play ISOs in mplayer. The syntax is:
mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /path/to/Movie.iso
This works (as in xine) whether the file is mounted or not.

Originally posted by demerson3
Your guide looks good from a cursory read. May I give you one CLI pointer?
How to cut out K3B -- which is my favorite thing to do with GUIs, especially
if they're part of KDE.

What is your device?
Now use the power of "dd" to make that exact copy you want:
And check it, too.
Now burn, baby, burn!
And you've successfully made an exact copy faster than K3B
using the raw power of GNU/Linux, and any errors while you
burn will be right there in front of you.

NB: You can always look at the K3B log and see what commands it used.

1 members found this post helpful.

A better place for this may be the Tutorials section.

Bruce Hill:

I have been led to believe that there are special utilities that are designed to make use of the optical media's built-in error correction. I know that cdparanoia is a good example of a program that uses error-correction and multiple read attempts to get a much better read of an audio CD than dd would yield. So I have been led to believe that 'dd' is not the ideal way to copy DVD's.

However, next time I use k3b to read in a disk (it's going to be difficult, seeing as I do not have access to a dvd drive at the moment!) I'll check out the k3b logs and see what it uses. Perhaps it's just using dd after all.


XavierP:

I would be happy to move this to the tutorials section, but I don't really know how to go about doing it.

Looks like that
<vob file="matrix_dvd.mpg" chapters="0,0:30,1:00,1:30,2:30,3:00,3:30,4:00"/>

You'll have guessed that the numbers are time markers.

(taken from http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117709)

So why can you not compress and copy in Linux like you can in Windows using Roxio or Nero?

How about:
cat /dev/cdrom | bzip2 -vv > myfile.iso.bz2

Laban what does that do? Also could you explain exactly what I should put in that line. Thanks.

cat readss the device (your cd/dvd drive). What it reads is piped (sent) to bzip2 which is a compression utility like zip/rar/gzip etc. The -vv part is just to show that something is happening. Bzip2 sends the now compressed information out to a file - my_file.iso. But just to show that the file is compressed, we'll add .bz2 as well.

So:
cat YOUR_DVD_DRIVE_GOES_HERE | bzip2 -vv > FILENAME_OF_SAVED_IMAGE.iso.bz2

Made any sense?

So how is this like Nero or others for windows. Can this be read in a home DVD player. I have 2 programs in windows that I use to rip and then burn movies. WHAT GIVES WITH LINUX?? Nothing is simple or staight forward in linux now is it.

Gunner

First you are trying to think windows and run Linux. This will not work. You have to learn to think in Linux. It is not any harder than windows but it is very different. It is very similar to learning a new language (say Spanish). It does not work very well to think in English and speak Spanish but if you think in Spanish you can speak it much more easily.

For native dvd shrinking there is k9copy is works very similar to dvdshrink. You can also run a lot of the windows dvd programs through wine(this can be hit or miss).

Good Luck
Lazlow

Lazlow has a point there. You need to think different in Linux than in windows. I've had to gone back to windows due to work and I'm getting really angry at it because I'm thinking Linux in Windows. It just won't do as I want it to. If you're used to windows and moves to Linux, you're probably thinking the same thing.

As for burning CD/DVD in Linux, K3b is excelent. Looks a bit like Easy CD Creator.

Well I have read enough Linux books to drive me crazy BUT it would seem to me that Linux would have something similar to Nero. K3B can not take a movie rip it then burn it (DVD9 movies) I can use DVD Fab Decrypter to rip and then go into Nero or CD Creator and burn the movie which these programs automatically compress the ripped movie to fit on a single DVD. That is what I am looking for. As for ripping programs in Linux they are very not user friendly. DVD Rip needs a college grad to operate. Just me wanting to find something easier and simpler to help some folks like me really want to completely convert to Linux not rely on both.

That is why I mentioned k9copy and the wine option.