dvdbackup

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• Optical disc drive
• Rip Audio CDs

There are several ways to backup DVD videos. The quickest and simplest is to copy the ISO image as is. Many other methods are slow, and require several steps to accomplish. dvdbackup provides one of the simpler methods to rip a DVD (with some help from dvdauthor). It is elegant because it does not demux/remux/transcode/reformat the movie. This means the backup process is done in one step. But it can be tricked into copying much more than necessary by a DVD reporting incorrect size data.

Installation

Install the dvdbackup package. libdvdcss is required to read encrypted DVDs. dvdauthor is only required if backing up specific titles or title sets.

Examining the DVD

First, determine which title to backup. The following command retrieves information about the DVD:

$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -I

After some less useful information, dvdbackup will display something similar to the following:

$ dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I

[...]

Main feature:
	Title set containing the main feature is  1
	The aspect ratio of the main feature is 16:9
	The main feature has 1 angle(s)
	The main feature has 1 audio_track(s)
	The main feature has 2 subpicture channel(s)
	The main feature has a maximum of 28 chapter(s) in on of it's titles
	The main feature has a maximum of 6 audio channel(s) in on of it's titles

This indicates that the main feature is in title set 1. Next a list of title sets is displayed:

$ dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I

[...]

Title Sets:

	Title set 1
		The aspect ratio of title set 1 is 16:9
		Title set 1 has 1 angle(s)
		Title set 1 has 1 audio_track(s)
		Title set 1 has 2 subpicture channel(s)

		Titles included in title set 1 is/are
			Title 1:
				Title 1 has 28 chapter(s)
				Title 1 has 6 audio channle(s)

The main feature in this example is title 1. Sometimes a title set will include more than one title, sometimes not. Title sets can also include menus, which will no longer work if not backing up the entire DVD.

Ripping the DVD

Tip: dvdbackup reads the name of the DVD and creates a working directory for it. If dvdbackup decides the name of the DVD is too generic (like "MOVIE", for instance), the user must specify a name, as it will refuse to run otherwise. Just use -n movie_name to specify.

Note: If you receive an error such as "ERR: no video format specified for VMGM" you must set the video format variable. An easy way to do this is to add export VIDEO_FORMAT=NTSC (for NTSC regions) to your ~/.bashrc.

A single title

The -t option allows you to extract a specific title:

$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~ -t 1

You will now see a number of VOB files on the hard drive (in ~/movie_name/VIDEO_TS). These files can be played in MPlayer or VLC, but are insufficient to create a DVD copy. This is where dvdauthor is useful.

A title set must now be created (e.g. VTS_01_0.IFO and VTS_01_0.BUP). Be aware that the following command will make a copy of the entire movie. The original can be deleted right afterwards.

$ mkdir ~/dvd
$ cd ~/movie_name/VIDEO_TS
$ dvdauthor -t -o ~/dvd *.VOB

dvdauthor will create a copy of the movie. If it outputs anything like "SCR moves backwards, remultiplex input" there might be trouble. Before deleting any files, check the file sizes of the original VOB files compared to the copied ones. If all roughly the same size, you may be alright. You can use mplayer to test the affected VOB files to see if anything is missing.

Now, table of contents files must be created (e.g. VIDEO_TS.IFO and VIDEO_TS.BUP). This is much less time-consuming, and does not waste hard drive space:

$ cd ~/dvd/VIDEO_TS
$ dvdauthor -o ~/dvd -T

The main feature

The -F option automatically detects the main feature (though not always correctly) and copies the entire title set:

$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~ -F

Now, table of contents files must be created (e.g. VIDEO_TS.IFO and VIDEO_TS.BUP):

$ cd ~/movie_name/VIDEO_TS
$ dvdauthor -o ~/movie_name -T

The whole DVD

The -M option will backup the entire DVD structure, including menus, special features, etc. This requires approximately 7 GB of disk space for most DVDs:

$ dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~ -M

Shrinking the DVD

If the movie needs to fit on a 4.7 GB single layer dvd, vamps can be used to shrink it down to size. First, rip the main title and concatenate the vobs into one file.

$ dvdbackup -t 1 
$ cat ./movie/VIDEO_TS/*.VOB > ./movie.vob

Calculate the shrink factor for vamps. Divide the size of your vob file by the size of your writable media and round up.

$ du -BMB movie.vob
$ echo '5376 / 4707' | bc -l  #If your vob is 5376 MB

Run vamps, -a selects the audio stream. Running ffprobe movie.vob beforehand might help determine which stream to select.

$ vamps -E 1.15 -a 1 < movie.vob > movie.dvd5.vob

Author the dvd with dvdauthor:

$ dvdauthor -t -o ./author movie.dvd5.vob
$ dvdauthor -T -o ./author

Writing to disc

See DVD Writing.

Creating an ISO

The advantage of creating the ISO file is that you can test that everything works fine with mplayer before continuing. The disadvantage is that the ISO consumes hard drive space.

$ mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o ~/dvd.iso ~/dvd # if a single title was extracted

or the following if the whole DVD was extracted:

$ mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o ~/dvd.iso ~/movie_name

To test the image:

$ mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device ~/dvd.iso

If everything seems fine, burn the image:

$ growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=~/dvd.iso

Tip: growisofs is part of the dvd+rw-tools package.

Burning straight to DVD

Creating and testing an image is a waste of time and hard drive space! Basically, we can merge the mkisofs with the growisofs command:

$ growisofs -dvd-video -udf -Z /dev/dvd ~/dvd # if a single title was extracted

or

$ growisofs -dvd-video -udf -Z /dev/dvd ~/movie_name