Tips & tricks

Backing up movies on DVD or bluray

There are many programs for copying DVDs. Some allows you to take a complete backup, whereas others can be used to re-encode a DVD into a single file.

One of the benefits of re-encoding DVDs is that the re-encoded file typically takes up much less space than a complete DVD, partly because you can remove those annoying FBI warnings and other regions of the DVD that you cannot fast-forward through. The re-encoded movies can then be played either directly from a USB connected hard disk, or served from a LDNA server.

The following (command-line) tools assist in backing up your DVDs:

vobcopy

This application will copy all files from a DVD onto your hard disk, or subtract only specific tracks/titles from the DVD. A benefit to copying all the files to the hard disk prior to encoding them is that this speeds up the encoding process, and you can encode multiple DVDs in parallel (depending on available CPU threads).

lsdvd

The lsdvd command works similar to the "ls" command to obtain a list of content from a DVD, i.e. all the tracks on the DVD, their lengths, and any available audio tracks.

mencoder

The MEncoder application allows you to encode from one set of video and audio formats into another.

mplayer

The MPlayer application can be used to analyse the video and audio input, and assist in determining how to best crop and/or scale the video.

dvd2xvid.sh

The dvd2xvid.sh script utilizes lsdvd, mplayer, and mencoder, in an attempt at automating the encoding of DVDs into standalone Xvid encoded AVI files. There are several options for the script, but most videos can be encoded by merely pointing the script at the folder where vobcopy has copied the DVD file structure.