Is there a program that will convert a dvd movie ISO so I can watch the movie from the hard drive? I have a couple of dvd movies that's in ISO format and i would like to play them while they're still on the hard drive.

Thnx.

I don't know what you mean by "convert", but mplayer will quite
happily play ISOs.

mplayer -dvd-device movie.iso


Cheers,
Tink

Hmmm, I didn't know that. I have this on an external hard drive, this is why I would like to convert the iso into, for example, an mpg or avi type of file. I may use this on a windows machine and Mac OSX.

Thnx.

In the windows platform you can mount ISO file and see it as virtual DVD ( DAEMON Tools ).
After you mount such virtual DVD you can rip it.

Maybe somebody can advise you on similar tool for Linux platform. You have to copy the content of DVD to you hard drive before you convert it. Some DVD might be protected, so you have to use special tools to copy DVD (in some countries is prohibited, but in some other not – you can use the product you legally bought in the way you want to use it, IT’S YOUR RIGHT!).
After you mount ISO, you take VOB files from it and convert them using any DVD Ripper.
Maybe you can try with GordianKnot using WINE. I haven’t tested it, but will try in the future.
Regarding playing ISO files Tinkster gave you a hint.

regards
Rafal
Moja stronka - Linux SUSE, systemy SAP i inne rzeczy

The usual way of mounting an image as a "virtual drive" under Linux is to use mount with loop option:
after which '/path/to/mountpoint/' should display the contents of the image.iso the way you'd see the DVD contents usually. I think it's more or less equivalent to what Daemon tools does on Windows, but since I don't need to use Daemon tools (no need to work with images on Windows, heh ) I wouldn't know exactly. Also I haven't mounted DVD images, just CD, and those have been data discs..

EDIT: but to rip a DVD, or other disc for that matter, I think you wouldn't usually mount it under Linux - you would work with the device file, rather than the mounted filesystem. Therefore I would throw a lucky guess that you don't need to mount the iso file (correct me if I'm wrong, please) but you could try to work with the image directly. On Windows you don't work with image files directly, because Windows "handles" or at least seems to handle files (such as image files) and devices (such as a DVD drive) differently by nature.

I wonder if I could mount the ISO under Mac OSX since it's based on *unix* also. If so, then everything would be alright. I hardly use Windows but others may want to view it.

For me, I recently setup my mini mac as my multimedia center with my hdtv, I will check to see if mounting the iso will work.

Thnx.

To just get a movie file there's many options, k9copy can extract
mpeg4 files, acidrip (uses mplayer/mencoder) and DVD::RIP can
produce a variety of video file formats ... just bear in mind that
you loose the functionality of e.g. choosing the sound-format,
audio language and subtitles - which is a definite bonus in the ISOs.


Cheers,
Tink

You might find something useful here:


List of ISO Image Software from Wikipedia.

Includes Linux, OSX, and Windows programs.

I went ahead and trying dvd::rip after searching around and decided to see how ripping from dvd disc comes out. Now I noticed that the format will be in avi...which format would I choose if I wanted to burn the ripped stuff to dvd disc later?

Thnx for all the help.

DeVeDe, for instance, is quite capable to convert pretty
much any video format you throw at it back into a DVD.



Cheers,
Tink

If you think you want to re-author the video back to another dvd, the best format to use is mpeg2, because that's the native dvd format. Just stay within the dvd specs and you can whip out a new disk in no time. Anything else will have to be converted back to mpeg before authoring, with probable loss of quality (and time).

If you're more concerned about file size, the various mpeg4 codecs are probably more suitable (xvid, H264,etc). ogg theora is also pretty good, and completely Free.

BTW, .avi is just a container format. The actual video and audio codecs used can vary. It can hold mpeg and mpeg4 video, for example, but these also have container formats of their own.

Thanks for the help. Now I'm alittle confused on how the ripping is going. It looks like it's finished and I see 5 .vob files, around 1gb each. I do not see a avi file but I do see the folder. Maybe I didn't setup the configuration correctly.

During the chapter selection, I only chose the first one, the largest. Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong?

Thnx.

The vob files are mpg files. If you are going to make them back into a dvd, I would not do any more to them (maybe a name change). Every time you convert from one format to another you WILL loose quality.

Ok, how do I Play the movie using Totem? I just tried and pointed totem to the vob folder and chose the first vob file, and it worked, but will it automatically start the other vob files when the first one ends?

Copying it back to a dvd disc was just a question, its no big deal doing that. My main objective is ripping it to the hard drive and being able to view it.

This is my first time ripping dvds.

Thnx.

I've never used Totem - but you'd have to enqueue them
in a play list. No application I know will automatically
pick up subsequent files.



Cheers,
Tink