Toastboy’s Tech Tips

How to use vobcopy and mkisofs in Ubuntu to backup your dvds^* to your hard disk

There are many different methods for backing up media your hard disk.

In Ubuntu, the easiest way to do this is right click on the dvd and copy it directly. This works about half the time.

Or you can try the unix dd command method.

> dd if=/dev/dvd of=nameofdvd.iso

This too only works some of the time.

For the rest of the time, I use vobcopy and mkisofs to do the trick.

To get started install vobcopy, mkisofs

> sudo apt-get update
> sudo apt-get install vobcopy
> sudo apt-get install mkisofs

Then to run vobcopy do this in the directory that you want the data to be written to.

> vobcopy -m

Now that you have all the vobs you can make your own dvd iso image of the files. cd into the directory that contains the VIDEO_TS directory.

> mkisofs -dvd-video -o filename.iso .

This just tells the mkisofs command that you want to make a dvd-video of the files and write it filename.iso and the . means everything in the current directory.

If you run into problems, you may have a copy protected dvd. To decode the dvd you most likely will need libdvdcss2, and libdvdread

> sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libdvdread3

With mplayer you can load up the new iso image file you just made and watch it like the dvd was in the drive.

Copyright Information about dvds.
Make sure that making backups of dvds is allowed in your area.

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