How does one copy DVDs

[Dupmeister]

hello folks. now that my boot order crisis is over, onto my next hurtle.
I want to make backups of my DVDs, I have little interest in becoming a bootleg baron, but I am dismayed at how my son tosses $10 Thomas videos around like Frisbees and I would like to make backups so I don't have to keep shelling out the bucks. obviously no windows program will let me do this and all screach at me for even attempting to copy the video.

I tried doing it in Ubuntu, I loaded the disk, set it to copy and all seemed to go well. there were no errors, however the new video refuses to play, on my computer it acts like there is no readable disk and if I put the copy in my DVD player, the player jams up and I have to unplug it.

what am I doing wrong?

[Juan Pablo]

Try this

dd if=/dev/hdb of=~/dvd_backup.iso
cdrecord dev=/dev/hdb ~/dvd_backup.iso

Change /dev/hdb to your actual /dev name

[darkrose0510]

For copying video DVD's try installing vobcopy

sudo apt-get install vobcopy

then run man vobcopy and you'll get the man page for to see what to do

vobcopy will create a copy of your DVD as a file in your home directory, this can then be burnt to disc with you favorite GUI burning app (I use K3B personally).

[Dupmeister]

you will have to excuse, I am still new to Linux and don't really understand the commands.
I tried what you typed but I don't think I have the name of the DVD drive right, when I try I keep getting errors:

dupmeister@Freedom:~$ dd if=CD-RW/DVD±R of=~/dvd_backup.iso
dd: opening `CD-RW/DVD±R': No such file or directory

I got the name of the DVD drive by going into my file browser and looking at the properties of the DVD drive, where else can I get the name of the drive?

another question: when I tried to copy the DVD with the GUI interface why didn't it work? it didn't seem bothered with copyrights or anything, in fact I got no errors at all, it just didn't play back. what went wrong?

by typing in the commands you offered, what am I telling the system to do?

thanks for your help

[Dupmeister]

For copying video DVD's try installing vobcopy

sudo apt-get install vobcopy

then run man vobcopy and you'll get the man page for to see what to do

vobcopy will create a copy of your DVD as a file in your home directory, this can then be burnt to disc with you favorite GUI burning app (I use K3B personally).

I tried to install and got the following:

dupmeister@Freedom:~$ sudo apt-get install vobcopy
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package vobcopy

I tried searching for this aplication with ubuntu's package manager but the program wasnt availible.

any other thoughts?

[darkrose0510]

You may need to edit your sources.list to ensure you have edgy/universe (assuming you're using Ubuntu edgy, otherwise version/universe) enabled.
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
find the lines that look like

#deb http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe
#deb-src http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe

remove the leading # from both lines, save and exit.
then update apt;
sudo apt-get update
and try to install again
sudo apt-get install vobcopy

[Dupmeister]

ok Darkrose,
I have installed vobcopy, thanks for that
now I need a little assistance in using it.
I ran the program and it works but without any options god is it slow, I started it on a 5Gig disc and turned the monitor off and went to bed, the next night after I came home from work it was still going and only at 35%

could you show me how to get the fast option to work?
I typed in vobcopy -f64 but that didn't work. what would be the popper syntax? and if I wanted to combine the mirror option, how would I type that out?

thanks for the help

[darkrose0510]

I think for fast you need a space between the f and the factor so;
vobcopy -f 64

I don't use it much, and when I have all I've used is mirror
vobcopy -m
which took about 15-20mins to copy a 8GB disk to the hard drive.

[Dupmeister]

I wonder why it is taking me so long then?
I figured out the fast factor, you have to use F64 instead of f64.
I set the speed to a factor of 64 and it greatly sped things up but its still taken 8 hours to copy 51% to do an 8 gig disc in 20 minutes, why is mine going so slow? I cant imagine it is a hardware issue, I have a Athalon64 with 2 gigs of duel channel 400mhz DDR. a little slow is one thing but if it takes you 20 minutes why would it take me 8-16 hours?

another question, you said you use the mirror option, if I do not use the mirror option, will I still be able to copy the file to disc? or is using the mirror option the only way to make a playable copy?

[k_amisi]

For me the easiest thing has always been to make an ISO of the dvd or cd.

use these it works for everything.

# mkisofs -o ~/<dvdname>.iso -J -A -V -v -R /dev/<dvddrive>

To determine the name of your dvd drive.

#mount -v

That will output the currently mounted drives, and you can substitute the /dev/hd(something) for your dvd onto the mkisofs command.

Once the iso has been created you can burn it with any burner of your choice.

I hope these works for you.