[gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[James]

Hello,

I have a large DVD(movie) collection, that I want
copied to hard drive(s) and a database set up
about the movies. Since disc is cheap
($75/2TB) I'm not even going to fool around
with conversion or compression, i.e. MPEG-2
is fine for now, unless the process can
be automated (see schema below). Naturally
being able to store video in different formats
would be a big plus.

I'm very flexible on the DB so any software 
package that already exists in a (gui) tool
form, so that I can set it up with simple
instructions for an adolescent to:
 load the dvd
 execute the script or simple procedure
 wait until dvd movie is stored on disk
 then swap out for another DVD...

<rinse and repeat 500+ times>


What software exists, or what software
would be easy to script up such an endeavor?
Tagging movies by rating, genre, year, etc
would be a bonus.

Hopefully, playing movies after this will
be a gui experience; so I can turn the kids
and less astute friends loose in a 
multimedia room where the computer is hooked
to a large screen LED device. Later on 
audio (music) tracks will be added to the menu 
or system, which hopefully supports a wide
range of audio files. 


Lots of pieces exist in software, but, I'm 
looking for recommendations on a complete
system, that is rather straight forward to
install new movies (and audio) and then play them
via an easy to use interface, seemlessly.


Any comments or suggestions are most welcome.


James

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Fernando Freire]

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James,

It sounds like you want a complete solution for your multimedia, might I
suggest something like xbmc or boxee? They're both solid platforms,
unfortunately I cannot suggest a script for automating the disk
ripping/conversion process.

-Fernando
On Mar 8, 2011 11:04 AM, "James" <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a large DVD(movie) collection, that I want
> copied to hard drive(s) and a database set up
> about the movies. Since disc is cheap
> ($75/2TB) I'm not even going to fool around
> with conversion or compression, i.e. MPEG-2
> is fine for now, unless the process can
> be automated (see schema below). Naturally
> being able to store video in different formats
> would be a big plus.
>
> I'm very flexible on the DB so any software
> package that already exists in a (gui) tool
> form, so that I can set it up with simple
> instructions for an adolescent to:
> load the dvd
> execute the script or simple procedure
> wait until dvd movie is stored on disk
> then swap out for another DVD...
>
> <rinse and repeat 500+ times>
>
>
> What software exists, or what software
> would be easy to script up such an endeavor?
> Tagging movies by rating, genre, year, etc
> would be a bonus.
>
> Hopefully, playing movies after this will
> be a gui experience; so I can turn the kids
> and less astute friends loose in a
> multimedia room where the computer is hooked
> to a large screen LED device. Later on
> audio (music) tracks will be added to the menu
> or system, which hopefully supports a wide
> range of audio files.
>
>
> Lots of pieces exist in software, but, I'm
> looking for recommendations on a complete
> system, that is rather straight forward to
> install new movies (and audio) and then play them
> via an easy to use interface, seemlessly.
>
>
> Any comments or suggestions are most welcome.
>
>
> James
>
>
>
>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Paul Hartman]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 12:09 PM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a large DVD(movie) collection, that I want
> copied to hard drive(s) and a database set up
> about the movies. Since disc is cheap
> ($75/2TB) I'm not even going to fool around
> with conversion or compression, i.e. MPEG-2
> is fine for now, unless the process can
> be automated (see schema below). Naturally
> being able to store video in different formats
> would be a big plus.
>
> I'm very flexible on the DB so any software
> package that already exists in a (gui) tool
> form, so that I can set it up with simple
> instructions for an adolescent to:
>  load the dvd
>  execute the script or simple procedure
>  wait until dvd movie is stored on disk
>  then swap out for another DVD...
>
> <rinse and repeat 500+ times>
>
>
> What software exists, or what software
> would be easy to script up such an endeavor?

Basically all of the GUI DVD-ripping/recoding software are just shells
to run the commandline tools like transcode, ffmpeg, mencoder etc.

If you find a GUI tool to do as you wish, it should be trivial to look
in its logs and see exactly which commands it ran and then put that
into a shell script for repeated usage.

Ripping the original DVD contents is the easy part (just use vobcopy),
converting it to any other format can be more tricky because you get
problems like audio and video being out of sync that sometimes can't
be fixed without manual tuning.

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Vincent-Xavier JUMEL]

From what I understand, you want to automate a ripping process. Ripping
is the easy part since you don't want to bother with encoding. In my
opinion, you should had a udev line that fire up a
mencoder/transcode/vlc/vobcopy/<your favourite encoder/copier> session,
clean the swap and then eject the CD.

The udev manpage is quite clear on the subject, examples are all around
the net.

Cheers.
-- 
Vincent-Xavier JUMEL GPG Id: 0x2E14CE70 http://thetys-retz.net

Rejoignez les 5336 adhérents de l'April http://www.april.org/adherer
Parinux, logiciel libre à Paris : http://www.parinux.org

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 8 Mar 2011 11:25:33 -0800, Fernando Freire wrote:

> It sounds like you want a complete solution for your multimedia, might I
> suggest something like xbmc or boxee? They're both solid platforms,
> unfortunately I cannot suggest a script for automating the disk
> ripping/conversion process.

MythTV has a plugin to rip DVDs to disk, and MythVideo can look up
information on IMDB and add it to the film's metadata.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

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[gentoo-user] Re: Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[James]

Vincent-Xavier JUMEL <endymion+gentoo <at> thetys-retz.net> writes:


OK

Thanks to all the posters.
I'm going to try a few of these
suggestions and see what I like.
If I get stuck, I'll post back on
the automation portion of the task.


thanks again to all,
for all of the suggestions.


James

[gentoo-user] Re: Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[James]

Neil Bothwick <neil <at> digimed.co.uk> writes:


> MythTV has a plugin to rip DVDs to disk

Is that part of media-tv/mythtv or another package?
(emerging mythtv and xbmc right now...)

> MythVideo can look up information on IMDB 
> and add it to the film's metadata.


I found this wiki:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythVideo

is this what you refer to? If not do you
have a wiki, url or example somewhere on the
net?


James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 00:20:22 +0000 (UTC), James wrote:

> > MythTV has a plugin to rip DVDs to disk  
> 
> Is that part of media-tv/mythtv or another package?
> (emerging mythtv and xbmc right now...)

I think it may be part of MythTV itself now.

> > MythVideo can look up information on IMDB 
> > and add it to the film's metadata.  
> 
> 
> I found this wiki:
> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythVideo
> 
> is this what you refer to?

Yes, media-plugins/mythvideo.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The best antiques are old friends.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Stroller]

On 8/3/2011, at 6:09pm, James wrote:
> ...
> I have a large DVD(movie) collection, that I want
> copied to hard drive(s) and a database set up
> about the movies. Since disc is cheap
> ($75/2TB) I'm not even going to fool around
> with conversion or compression, i.e. MPEG-2
> is fine for now, unless the process can
> be automated 

I've started this process, and am pretty much happy with my "workflow".

IMO you're absolutely right not to transcode the movies, if you can avoid it. I've wasted a lot of time trying to do that well - whilst  h264 *is* really good, if you look closely picture quality is still not as good as the original and there are several other ways you can trip up when processing an even moderately large collection.

DVD is a pretty whacky "standard", and I don't believe there are any transcoding tools that will be certain to get the right framerate, aspect ratio (anamorphic picture, cropping &c) and stuff like that every time. If you blindly rip anything less than the whole DVD then it's very easy to get the wrong language of audio or miss subtitles on foreign movies.

An example of a movie which has caused ripping complications for me is "Killing Zoe" - it features an American protagonist but is set in Paris. It is a Hollywood movie but there are large sections of French dialogue - the American director probably wanted to give it a European "flavour" by including so much. The DVD I have of this movie has a forced subtitle only for the French parts - the film was surely subtitled like this during US theatrical release, but I had not seen it for some years when I originally ripped the disk. So thinking that "this is an English language DVD of a Hollywood movie" I just ripped audio and video exactly as I would have ripped any other US DVD at the time (for "hard subtitles" this procedure would have, in fact, been perfectly fine). Consequently the subtitles were missing, and I missed loads of context when I watched it because I don't really speak French - it was only 3/4 of the way through that I suddenly realised my mistake and that there's supposed to be subtitles for these sections. Only at that stage of the plot there was simply too much French dialogue I didn't understand.

That is an example of one the most user non-optimal possible experiences from poor DVD ripping. The viewer doesn't understand the movie, but when watching it again the surprise of plot elements may be spoiled from having inadvertently watched it in the wrong language in the first place. Dramatic effect is important and, especially since DVDs allow branching (Director's Cut vs Theatrical on the same disk), there probably loads of examples where the DVD does something clever that can't be captured correctly via a conventional rip of title 1 to .mp4. These may seem like unusual cases, but it's the corner cases that get you every time; since I've found at least a couple of them whilst ripping less than 50 disks, there are probably several in any DVD collection. In one scene of the British movie "Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" characters talk in cockney rhyming slang so impenetrable it's subtitled; I have no idea whether this short set of subtitles is hard or forced on the DVD. Presuming the movie also has English subtitles for the deaf, how does the DVD avoid those clashing? I don't know, but I don't want to have to care, either. One might hypothesise that the same problem might manifest during the Disney movie "Wall-E", were the beeping of one of the robots subtitled. Feel free to dismiss this problem because "that film doesn't affect me", but I'm sure you'll find a movie that does affect you, after you've ripped it.

(I've just reread your original questions, and seeing your mention of asking a teenager to perform the disk-swapping, I now realise that I've probably been preaching to the converted with these last two lengthy paragraphs. However I might as well leave that commentary in the hope it'll benefit someone else some time).

It's pretty common now to rip the main title to .mkv file, but I think this is still flawed. The .mkv container allows storage of the original MPEG2 video encode (quick to rip, no loss of quality) and unlike .mp4 (I think) it also permits multiple different audio tracks (director's commentary &c) and multiple subtitles. .mkv is pretty widely supported on standalone players (nearly as widely as .mp4 h264/AAC) but you still have the problem I described before that it may default to the wrong language or subs; at least in this case the viewer can select those from the player's menus themselves, but it's not as nice as the original DVD in a conventional player. You may be already past the cockney scene before you realise the subtitles are missing and have to rewind; more likely you'll just not be aware of these subtitles at all, and you'll entirely miss the point of this scene. I'm not aware of any tools which will easily "translate" from a DVD the settings for default or forced subtitles or for default audio - usually the latter is the first track, but not always. No other format will handle the DVD's original menus. Most people don't care, but you also lose extras like the "making of" video and deleted scenes when you rip a DVD to .mkv.

IMO ripping the whole movie to a DVD .iso file is the optimal solution for home viewing. It's just like a perfect dd clone of the disk, except decrypted, and so open-source players can treat the file just like the original DVD. Standalone players and consumer devices do not support .iso files quite so well as they do .mp4, but there are now a good crop of great $100 set top boxes. These include a Western Digital "TV Live" and the PlayOn HD Mini [1] (I have this latter) - both of which browse to your files over network shares (e.g. Samba) and then treat them just like the original DVD, showing the GUI DVD menu. 

Both the Western Digital "TV Live" and the PlayOn HD Mini are in fact mini Linux boxes (MIPS, I think) with a dedicated video decoder chip. It's easy here on gentoo-user to be critical of the fact that these boxes have a proprietary closed-source driver for that decoder and that the o/s isn't really user-servicable, but it's very hard to beat them for price, performance, convenience and their lack of a fan. Ideally we might all build Linux-based home media centre PCs, but that would cost more and it is difficult to achieve such a small form-factor; it's another Linux project you could sink many hours into. These consumer players, on the other hand, are nice looking little boxes - they're tiny, with low power consumption and no fan. I can't emphasise that last point enough, because fanless on any kind of regular PC is a real PITA. Connect a consumer network video player to your network, HDMI to the TV, use the menu to browse the network and go - your video plays perfectly.

Under Gentoo, ripping a DVD to .iso is very easy. It is fundamentally: 
   dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -o tmpdir -M
followed by:
   mkisofs -dvd-video -o "Movie Title.iso" -sysid '' -A '' -V $TITLE dir/VIDEO_TS

As long as you have appropriate decryption (CSS) libraries installed then you'll get a perfect copy using these two commands. Actually, I'm not sure how the layer change is handled, but I can't say that it manifests during playback. The most significant caveat I can think of is that some recent DVD releases introduce artificial "scratches" to prevent copying. There are some mastering faults of this kind that mplayer and the like won't notice because they're on a part of the DVD which is never read during normal playback. I intended to take a look at the dvdbackup source code and add an option to insert zeroes instead of its current failure - erroring out with a "bad read" message; I'm pretty confident that shouldn't be too difficult, that it will fix the problem and result in a playable disk image. That got kind put on hold a while back and I haven't had a chance to look at it again since. The only other alternatives I'm aware of are to transcode (mplayer -> mp4) or use a Windows-based ripper; DVD FabDecryptor seems to work on all these disks, it offers a free trial and you can circumvent the license restrictions with ethical integrity, as its developers violate the GPL license of the ffmpeg code they use.

I've got a Perl script to wrapper `dvdbackup && mkisofs`, reduce typing a little and do some error-checking. It tries to preserve some of the DVD metadata (TITLE &c), and you might find it handy if handing off disk-swapping to your teenage progeny. My script is currently too ugly for me to distribute widely - as soon as I finished I realised I want to rewrite it from scratch - but I think it's fairly robust and if you want a copy for your personal use only then email me off-list. In the next version I'd like to remove the "unskippable" flag from all titles / chapters, as it seems a little daft to have ripped all one's DVDs to a network RAID array, and yet still have to suffer the dumb FBI warnings. All the Windows rippers do this, so I assume it's possible to implement, but I have no idea how difficult.

There are some questions in your original post that I haven't addressed. I don't know that there's any "perfect" solution in existence for this kind of consumer management of media files. I'm pretty sure MythTV does some clever lookup of metadata at the IMDB and adds cover art and stuff, but MythTV's focus is on TV recording(s), not DVDs; it probably handles DVDs pretty well, has a decent search and stuff, but it's a whole larger proposition than my setup, a lot more work. Besides, you can probably rip DVDs with `dvdbackup && mkisofs` and then later worry about databasing (whether by importing them in to MythTV or otherwise). 

HTH,

Stroller.


[1] http://www.playonhd.com/en/?upn=products&subpage=playonhdmini

[gentoo-user] Re: Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[James]

Stroller <stroller <at> stellar.eclipse.co.uk> writes:


> > I have a large DVD(movie) collection, that I want
> > copied to hard drive(s) and a database set up
> > about the movies. 
> I've started this process, and am pretty much happy with my "workflow".

Wow, thanks for the book of knowledge.....

I'll contact you, offline.

James

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 18:27:59 +0000, Stroller wrote:

> There are some questions in your original post that I haven't
> addressed. I don't know that there's any "perfect" solution in
> existence for this kind of consumer management of media files. I'm
> pretty sure MythTV does some clever lookup of metadata at the IMDB and
> adds cover art and stuff, but MythTV's focus is on TV recording(s), not
> DVDs; it probably handles DVDs pretty well, has a decent search and
> stuff, but it's a whole larger proposition than my setup, a lot more
> work. Besides, you can probably rip DVDs with
> `dvdbackup && mkisofs` and then later worry about databasing (whether
> by importing them in to MythTV or otherwise). 

MythTV uses a perl script for the IMDB lookup, you could adapt that to
another setup. However, MythTV also handles all the database stuff. A
recording is a recording, whether copied from a TV card or a DVD.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

"God created the world in six days.  On the seventh day he also decided
to create England... just to try out his Practical Joke Weather Machine."

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Stroller]

On 9/3/2011, at 10:37pm, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 18:27:59 +0000, Stroller wrote:
> 
>> ... I'm
>> pretty sure MythTV does some clever lookup of metadata at the IMDB and
>> adds cover art and stuff, but MythTV's focus is on TV recording(s), not
>> DVDs; it probably handles DVDs pretty well, has a decent search and
>> stuff, but it's a whole larger proposition than my setup, a lot more
>> work.
> ...
> MythTV uses a perl script for the IMDB lookup, you could adapt that to
> another setup. However, MythTV also handles all the database stuff. A
> recording is a recording, whether copied from a TV card or a DVD.

In referring to MythTV's "focus" one aspect I had in mind was that, last time I read about it, I think MythTV kept DVD rips in a separate menu hierarchy from TV. So if you want to look for an action movie, and you click on "TV" and browse through the videos there, you only see the TV recordings; you then have to exit out of TV and choose DVDs before you can browse what action genre DVDs you have stored.

This may well have changed - they may well have unified that in the last 2 or 3 years - however MythTV is still quite a big undertaking. I think you'd want to add in recording of TV to justify MythTV, and WAF isn't instantaneous.

MythTV is, by all accounts, absolutely gorgeous. I think it's probably the most ideal home media centre option, but it's a heck of a lot more complicated than whacking a bunch of files on a network share.

Thus I have some reservations about utilising MythTV's IMBD Perl script as it surely populates its results to the MythTV MySQL DB. How to display the results? YAMJ and similar might be worth a look because they do the same thing but create pretty designed-for-TV HTML pages with links to the media files. 

OP might also investigate XBMC.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 23:34:02 +0000, Stroller wrote:

> > MythTV uses a perl script for the IMDB lookup, you could adapt that to
> > another setup. However, MythTV also handles all the database stuff. A
> > recording is a recording, whether copied from a TV card or a DVD.  
> 
> In referring to MythTV's "focus" one aspect I had in mind was that,
> last time I read about it, I think MythTV kept DVD rips in a separate
> menu hierarchy from TV. So if you want to look for an action movie, and
> you click on "TV" and browse through the videos there, you only see the
> TV recordings; you then have to exit out of TV and choose DVDs before
> you can browse what action genre DVDs you have stored.

It still keeps recordings separate from videos, and probably always will
as TV recordings don't have menus, multiple subtitle languages etc.

I was looking into using MythTV's DVD ripping and tagging capabilities
separately when I discovered that DVD ripping has been removed from the
latest release, so the whole discussion is moot.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

There's too much blood in my caffeine system.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Gregory Fontenele]

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any manager can I unsubscribe from this list?

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 20:28, Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 23:34:02 +0000, Stroller wrote:
>
> > > MythTV uses a perl script for the IMDB lookup, you could adapt that to
> > > another setup. However, MythTV also handles all the database stuff. A
> > > recording is a recording, whether copied from a TV card or a DVD.
> >
> > In referring to MythTV's "focus" one aspect I had in mind was that,
> > last time I read about it, I think MythTV kept DVD rips in a separate
> > menu hierarchy from TV. So if you want to look for an action movie, and
> > you click on "TV" and browse through the videos there, you only see the
> > TV recordings; you then have to exit out of TV and choose DVDs before
> > you can browse what action genre DVDs you have stored.
>
> It still keeps recordings separate from videos, and probably always will
> as TV recordings don't have menus, multiple subtitle languages etc.
>
> I was looking into using MythTV's DVD ripping and tagging capabilities
> separately when I discovered that DVD ripping has been removed from the
> latest release, so the whole discussion is moot.
>
>
> --
> Neil Bothwick
>
> There's too much blood in my caffeine system.
>



-- 
Atenciosamente,
Gregory Fontenele

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Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 09 March 2011 18:27:59 Stroller wrote:
> I've got a Perl script to wrapper `dvdbackup && mkisofs`, reduce typing a
> little and do some error-checking. It tries to preserve some of the DVD
> metadata (TITLE &c), and you might find it handy if handing off
> disk-swapping to your teenage progeny. My script is currently too ugly for
> me to distribute widely - as soon as I finished I realised I want to
> rewrite it from scratch - but I think it's fairly robust and if you want a
> copy for your personal use only then email me off-list. In the next version
> I'd like to remove the "unskippable" flag from all titles / chapters, as it
> seems a little daft to have ripped all one's DVDs to a network RAID array,
> and yet still have to suffer the dumb FBI warnings. All the Windows rippers
> do this, so I assume it's possible to implement, but I have no idea how
> difficult.

Hi Stroller,

I also would like to have a copy of your perl-script for this. It would make 
my life a lot easier trying to convert my dvd-collection.

As for the "unskippable" flag, I wonder if the other tools "rebuild" the menu 
structure and remove it that way. I have in the past played with making dvd-
menus myself and it wasn't too hard. (following the howtos)

Thanks in advance,

Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Stroller]

On 16/3/2011, at 12:44pm, Joost Roeleveld wrote:

> On Wednesday 09 March 2011 18:27:59 Stroller wrote:
>> I've got a Perl script to wrapper `dvdbackup && mkisofs`, reduce typing a
>> little and do some error-checking. ... In the next version
>> I'd like to remove the "unskippable" flag from all titles / chapters, as it
>> seems a little daft to have ripped all one's DVDs to a network RAID array,
>> and yet still have to suffer the dumb FBI warnings. All the Windows rippers
>> do this, so I assume it's possible to implement, but I have no idea how
>> difficult.
> ...
> As for the "unskippable" flag, I wonder if the other tools "rebuild" the menu 
> structure and remove it that way. I have in the past played with making dvd-
> menus myself and it wasn't too hard. (following the howtos)

That one can make DVD menus with GUI Linux applications indicates that it must be possible to make such changes. I would imagine (or at least hope) that it's not so much a case of rebuilding the menus from scratch, but just as case of flipping a single bit - the equivalent in a binary-file of changing "skippable=no" to "yes" in a text file.

What programs have you used to make DVD menus in the past?

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 16 March 2011 13:54:57 Stroller wrote:
> On 16/3/2011, at 12:44pm, Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Wednesday 09 March 2011 18:27:59 Stroller wrote:
> >> I've got a Perl script to wrapper `dvdbackup && mkisofs`, reduce
> >> typing a little and do some error-checking. ... In the next version
> >> I'd like to remove the "unskippable" flag from all titles / chapters,
> >> as it seems a little daft to have ripped all one's DVDs to a network
> >> RAID array, and yet still have to suffer the dumb FBI warnings. All
> >> the Windows rippers do this, so I assume it's possible to implement,
> >> but I have no idea how difficult.
> > 
> > ...
> > As for the "unskippable" flag, I wonder if the other tools "rebuild" the
> > menu structure and remove it that way. I have in the past played with
> > making dvd- menus myself and it wasn't too hard. (following the howtos)
> 
> That one can make DVD menus with GUI Linux applications indicates that it
> must be possible to make such changes. I would imagine (or at least hope)
> that it's not so much a case of rebuilding the menus from scratch, but just
> as case of flipping a single bit - the equivalent in a binary-file of
> changing "skippable=no" to "yes" in a text file.
> 
> What programs have you used to make DVD menus in the past?

DVD Author, there are some howto's for it on the web, including on on the 
gentoo forums:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117709

I don't know how that menu works, but if anyone knows which file contains it, 
we might be able to edit that bit.

If anyone knows how to create the "dvd-author" xml-config-files from an existing 
DVD, I'm sure, with some clever scripting, we can amend that particular flag.
It is in my todo-list, but it doesn't have a very high priority at the moment.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Joost Roeleveld]

On Wednesday 16 March 2011 15:17:14 Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 March 2011 13:54:57 Stroller wrote:
> > On 16/3/2011, at 12:44pm, Joost Roeleveld wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 09 March 2011 18:27:59 Stroller wrote:
> > >> I've got a Perl script to wrapper `dvdbackup && mkisofs`, reduce
> > >> typing a little and do some error-checking. ... In the next
> > >> version
> > >> I'd like to remove the "unskippable" flag from all titles /
> > >> chapters,
> > >> as it seems a little daft to have ripped all one's DVDs to a
> > >> network
> > >> RAID array, and yet still have to suffer the dumb FBI warnings.
> > >> All
> > >> the Windows rippers do this, so I assume it's possible to
> > >> implement,
> > >> but I have no idea how difficult.
> > > 
> > > ...
> > > As for the "unskippable" flag, I wonder if the other tools "rebuild"
> > > the menu structure and remove it that way. I have in the past
> > > played with making dvd- menus myself and it wasn't too hard.
> > > (following the howtos)
> > 
> > That one can make DVD menus with GUI Linux applications indicates that
> > it
> > must be possible to make such changes. I would imagine (or at least
> > hope)
> > that it's not so much a case of rebuilding the menus from scratch, but
> > just as case of flipping a single bit - the equivalent in a binary-file
> > of changing "skippable=no" to "yes" in a text file.
> > 
> > What programs have you used to make DVD menus in the past?
> 
> DVD Author, there are some howto's for it on the web, including on on the
> gentoo forums:
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=117709
> 
> I don't know how that menu works, but if anyone knows which file contains
> it, we might be able to edit that bit.
> 
> If anyone knows how to create the "dvd-author" xml-config-files from an
> existing DVD, I'm sure, with some clever scripting, we can amend that
> particular flag. It is in my todo-list, but it doesn't have a very high
> priority at the moment.
> 
> --
> Joost

Stroller (and others),

While having a quick search, I found the following page:
http://old.nabble.com/dvdunauthor-xml-file-dump,-then-import-to-dvdauthor-with-
errors...-td20324985.html

This may be usefull to someone with good script-fu? :)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Automation: Ripping DVDs to disk

[Paul Hartman]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Joost Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
> As for the "unskippable" flag, I wonder if the other tools "rebuild" the menu
> structure and remove it that way. I have in the past played with making dvd-
> menus myself and it wasn't too hard. (following the howtos)

It is the UOP flag (user operation prohibition). Most "DVD copier"
programs who make whole copies of discs (like K9Copy or DVD 9to5 in
linux or DVDShrink on Windows) remove this flag and the region
restrictions, too.

The DVD's author can define actions for every type of button press on
the remote control, or prohibit them. Sometimes they work-around the
removal of UOPs by defining the keys with invalid actions so even if
the prohibition is removed, the key still doesn't work. In that case
it's probably more difficult to fix it yourself.

A list of the UOP flags is here:
http://www.dvd-replica.com/DVD/cmd-7.php