DVD Ripping question

[grepico]

Finally got my core and 2 MD's running great!  (Ultimately involved installing 0704 then upgrading to 0710B4 then removing devices and redetecting them, but that's another story)

Anyway, I'm now ripping DVD's to the core and some of them fail.  I notice that it only occurs on newer movies and I've seen a reference somewhere to dummy sectors as a ripping protection method on some DVD's. 

Is that the case and is there a way around it?

[kir]

I don't know if have Windows at all, but take a look at this post: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=1232.msg27536#msg27536

where finsdown uses windows tool Ripit4me to rip the DVD with the similar issues. And please read my comment below regarding the using folderlocks when copying the ripped DVD folders to LinuxMCE to prevent UpdateMedia from scanning half-copied folder.

[grepico]

Thanks for the reply, I did see that post and I am able to use a similar method to rip dvd's on my Windows box then copy them to my Core.

I was hoping there might be a solution to fix the DVD rip function in LMCE.  I've been touting this system to many friends and things like this would be beyond their ability.

Does anyone know if there's a fix or modification I can make to the Core to get by this?

[gazlang]

lmce uses the dvd-css ripping tool. This cannot decrypt the newer sony dvd encryption, so for the time being you have to use external rippers like the ones mentioned above

[jonsnipes]

best thing to do is go into the kde desktop and install wine (sudo apt-get install wine) which will let you run windows programs on linux. then d/l a dvd ripping program (dvdshrink is good and free but sometimes does have problems ripping some encryption..  dvdfab is one of the best ones and has no trouble and has many features, but dos cost money for a full version) and use that to rip the dvds to an iso file, then simply rename the .iso file to a .dvd file and youre good to go...  you will need to go into the pluto admin page and manual add the attributes though

[grepico]

Does anyone know how likely it will be for someone to update libdvdcss to handle decrypting newer discs?

I searched for it online, but never found any mention of a new version coming out.

If there's no hope of an update, I'll have to scrap LMCE all together and I'd like to know before investing anymore time or money into it.

Thanks

[kir]

You don't need to update libdvdcss. It decrypts them well. It is a ripper that is failing. Different program, different place.

[grepico]

You don't need to update libdvdcss. It decrypts them well. It is a ripper that is failing. Different program, different place.

I'm yet again confused.  What do you mean "ripper"?  What exactly do I need to look for as a seemless solution?

[kir]

You don't need to update libdvdcss. It decrypts them well. It is a ripper that is failing. Different program, different place.

I'm yet again confused.  What do you mean "ripper"?  What exactly do I need to look for as a seemless solution?

OK, I'll try to shed some light here:
- when you have issues with new disks (copying them to Core AKA ripping), the separate tool is called that copies DVDs sectory by sector into a .dvd file. This is where it fails, according to your description (because of new protection with dummy sectors). I am calling this tool "ripper".

- when you are _playing_ the DVDs or .dvd files (ripped DVDs), the libdvdcss is used to decrypt the DVD for the playback

So, on the stage of copying (where it fails for you), libdvdcss is not used. Therefore it is no sense to look for libdvdcss updates, you should either use different ripper tool (which will not be seamless, but can work) or work on updating the current ripper to handle errors.

I would suggest you to try copying one of the failing DVDs from the commandline using
dd if=/dev/cdrom1 of=/home/linuxmce/testDisk.dvd conv=noerror
to see if it is possible to copy it at all, by suppressing errors (the "conv=noerror" should do this). It is for a start.

[skeptic]

I have run into this several times, however, I have yet to find a DVD that VLC will not rip.  The trick seems to be to use VLC from the command line with these options:

vlc dvd:/dev/dvd@$calctitle --sub-track=$sidnumber --sout "#standard{access=file,mux=ps,dst=$OUTFILE}"

$calctitle = title number
$sidnumber = subtitle track (not needed)
$OUTFILE = output file, in vob format (movie.vob)

This is a C&P from a little script I wrote to rip my DVDs.  One little oddity, on occasion the vlc window that pops up will either hang or loop instead of exiting at the end of the movie.  If it hangs, no big deal, just kill it.  If it loops, better catch it quick 'cause it's likely in an infinite loop continually adding the intro menu to the end of the movie.

[grepico]

Thanks for the replys guys and the help is much appreciated.

I'm going to try both of those methods, however the ultimate goal is to get this thing to a point that an 8 year old could walk up to my TV, drop in a movie and choose "Copy Disc" from the menu.

Can any of these solutions be implemented through the UI?

[skeptic]

I'm a complete newbie to LMCE, but the fact that vlc requires a small gui window to pop up (as far as I can tell) leads me to believe this is not something that would work well with LMCE.  Window focus, closing the window if it hangs/loops, etc.  If someone knows how to launch an arbitrary script and control a window that pops up I'd be very interested.  This would allow me to use vlc to rip, which for me is far more reliable than the integrated LMCE/MythTV methods, then transcode the VOB into a smaller H.264 format.  If it were somehow integrated into the current DVD ripping method that picks up the movie info and cover that would be everything I want in DVD ripping functionality.

I'm sure there is a way to do this via manual database update if nothing else, I just don't know how it would handle the vlc window.  It also likely would not be able to run as a background task.  If someone knows a way to ensure vlc stops at the end of the movie, and perhaps how to hide or not open the window, it should be possible.

[grepico]

OK, after some investigation (please remember that I'm new to LMCE and Linux in general), I've discovered that it seems that the ripping function is performed by the command /usr/pluto/bin/disk_copy which is being called from /usr/pluto/bin/ripDiskWrapper.sh.

Here is the section of script that seems to be executing the command:

case $diskType in
   2)
      ProgressOutput='>(/usr/pluto/bin/DiskCopy_ProgressExtract.sh|/usr/pluto/bin/Pluto_Progress.sh "$diskDriveDeviceID" "$jobID" "$taskID")'
      command='/usr/pluto/bin/disc_unlock "$sourceDevice"; nice -n 15 /usr/pluto/bin/disk_copy "$sourceDevice" "$targetFileName.dvd.in-progress" > '"$ProgressOutput"

I've searched my ass off for switches for the disk_copy command but I only find references to the Mac command.  Anybody know where I can find out about this command or if I'm even on the right track?

I'm hoping that I'll be able to add a switch that will ignore errors or something and enable me to rip newer DVD's.

Thanks

[darrenmason]

There is not much to disk_copy....

See
http://svn.charonmedia.org/trac.cgi/browser/trunk/src/Disk_Drive/disk_copy.c

I would suggest that if you find something that works better (eg; vlc or something)
then you should be able to get ripDiskWrapper.sh to call it.

[royw]

In the source code, there is src/Disk_Drive/disk_copy.c which looks to be a plain vanilla 64 bit disk copy program.  Basically on any read error, the disk_copy intentionally fails.

What it looks like we need to do is to modify disk_copy.c to ignore bad sector errors.  This will probably mean reading just one sector (2048 bytes) at a time, checking the errno if the read returns 0, and checking that position is not EOF.  It's going to be much slower.  It might be possible to regain some performance by threading the loop.

FYI, here's a description of Sony's ARccOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARccOS.  Also a little more info is available on the gentoo wiki: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup_a_DVD.

On my gentoo workstation, I tried the dd and vlc work-arounds, but without any success.  The ddrescue did work in ripping the dvd to hard disk:

ddrescue -n -b 2048 /dev/sr0 rush3.iso rush3.log


Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Initial status (read from logfile)
rescued:         0 B,  errsize:       0 B,  errors:       0
Current status
rescued:     6685 MB,  errsize:    188 MB,  current rate:        0 B/s
   ipos:   133300 kB,   errors:       2,    average rate:    2918 kB/s
   opos:   133300 kB
Finished

HTH,
Roy