DVD backups to local storage

Anyone here done much DVD backing up?

i.e. Watching DVD’s is SUCH and OUTRIGHT PAIN IN THE ARSE on a computer!

Who even has an optical drive hooked up all the time? Not me… I have to hook up an ancient USB2 DVD drive (I have two)…

Got a DVD delivered today (Mr Bungle : “The Night They Came Home” - i.e. a live music DVD - Mr Bungle are now a SUPER GROUP - Dave Lombardo [ex Slayer] on drums, Scott Ian [Anthrax], Trevor Dunn [as well as Mr Bungle, Tomahawk, Fantomas], Trey Spruance [Mr Bungle, and brief stint with Faith No More] and of course Mike Patton [too many acts to list, but also includes crooning Italian lounge songs al la Sinatra, but in Italian]) - it took me 45 minutes to get the right combo of usb ports (both DVD drives are also USB powered) to read the DVD in VLC… Got there in the end…

Now I want to rip it to an mp4 or mkv file on my hard drive…

I’d rather do it the CLI way - I seem to remember 7-8-9-10+ years ago I used Handbrake, which does have a CLI interface, but I’m guessing 95% of Handbrake’s users will be using the graphic frontend (I’m pretty sure it’s cross platform)…

Basically looking for recommendations and hints and maybe examples…

I’m probably going to just try ffmpeg first off, something like :

╭─x@titan ~
╰─➤  cd /media/x/The\ Night\ They\ Came\ Home/
╭─x@titan /media/x/The Night They Came Home  
╰─➤  ls -al
total 10
dr-xr-xr-x  4 x    x     136 Mar 31  2021 .
drwxr-x---+ 3 root root 4096 Jun 23 16:42 ..
dr-xr-xr-x  2 x    x      40 Mar 31  2021 AUDIO_TS
dr-xr-xr-x  2 x    x     716 Mar 31  2021 VIDEO_TS
╭─x@titan /media/x/The Night They Came Home  
╰─➤  ls -al VIDEO_TS 
total 6444278
dr-xr-xr-x 2 x x        716 Mar 31  2021 .
dr-xr-xr-x 4 x x        136 Mar 31  2021 ..
-r--r--r-- 1 x x      12288 Mar 31  2021 VIDEO_TS.BUP
-r--r--r-- 1 x x      12288 Mar 31  2021 VIDEO_TS.IFO
-r--r--r-- 1 x x    9512960 Mar 31  2021 VIDEO_TS.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x      92160 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_0.BUP
-r--r--r-- 1 x x      92160 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_0.IFO
-r--r--r-- 1 x x     882688 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_0.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x 1073442816 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_1.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x 1073381376 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_2.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x 1073725440 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_3.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x 1073733632 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_4.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x 1073367040 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_5.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x 1073727488 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_6.VOB
-r--r--r-- 1 x x  146954240 Mar 31  2021 VTS_01_7.VOB
╭─x@titan /media/x/The Night They Came Home  
╰─➤  cd VIDEO_TS

Then :

╭─x@titan /media/x/The Night They Came Home/VIDEO_TS  
╰─➤ cat VTS_0*_*VOB | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec h264 -acodec mp2 /var/tmp/rip.mp4

Anyone got any pointers, provisos, gotchas or caveats emptor?

Hmmm - taboo again - answering my own post?

That worked…

1.2 GB mp4 file??? Got sound… that sounds reasonable?

Solved? Probably…

When you want to copy a DVD you need to figure out which file is the main film file. This can be one of several types, mp4,mkv or one of a few others. When in your dvd player you can simply copy the file from the dvd across to your hard drive, using drag ‘n’ drop. The hard one is figuring out which file on the dvd is the actual film file. The clue is usually the size of file, film being the largest.

Movies on DVDs are usually sliced into chapters, as can be seen in this thread’s example.

Sorry, Akito, thoughtless of me.