you can make an iso, that is a digital replica. the iso can be played with for example vlc.

you can use makemkv, which creates an mkv file out of every video. this allows additional file managing, cause you get a lot of mkv files if the dvd has several bonuses. mkv wont change the encoding, cause its just a container.

as for the skipping...i used to clean up all my nonreadable dvds. just plain old simple soap and luke warm water. cleaned with microfiber cloth.

warner currently has a dvd rot replacment project, but people said you have to jump though too many hoops to make it work. and thats just warner, the other dont even care.

Mini hijack but what software would yall recommend for vhs backups, preferably linux native? I figure need to do this before they start degrading. I have a capture card already, just was wondering the best software. I tried potplayer but didnt love it..id really need software with an auto shutoff so I can play a tape when I go to work or bed and not have 6 hours of blank recorded...

MakeMKV to backup the contents and if you need it in a different format Handbrake so it can be converted to MP4.

Something to keep in mind is that Riplock is a thing. It will make DVD reads slower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riplock

Use handbrake and set it to used the Apple videotoolbox for hardware encoding. Looks good, smaller files, fast and easy. Almost everything encodes properly with this method but there are a small number of titles with interesting encryption that breaks with this method. Almost everything works this way though.

dvdbackup with the -M option makes a 1/1 clone of your dvd aswell as decrypts the video. One of the best ways to backup old dvds. Takes alot of storage tho and is cli rather if thats a plus or minus for yah.

I'm way too lazy for such an endeavor... so what I would do instead is

• buy a DVD player on a standard interface (right now seems to be USB-C) that seems to cost (wow... seriously that cheap?!) about the price of a lunch, so 30 EUR.
• download RIPs from a Torrent tracker

once that's done then I would only do the additional content of a per-need basis which I would then upload back to a Website that cares about this kind of content, potentially the Internet Archive.

You could use dd to create full disk images. This maintains everything.

"Handbrake" is quite good at making high quality mkv files, you should be able to Automate a lot of it

You should be able to make a complete backup of a DVD to an iso file using dd.

https://www.systutorials.com/create-iso-image-on-linux/

I know you are mostly asking about ripping the media. But I would recommend looking at tiny media manager to pull metadata and organize.

Automatic Ripping Machine can pull the main movie off a disc automatically, but I'm not sure about imaging the full disc. Once it's set up, you just put a disc in and wait.

https://github.com/automatic-ripping-machine/

I guess I'll use Make MKV Beta as it seems to work well and VLC can open the MKV files. Thanks for your help!

I think the best bet to preserve them as is, would be dd or ddrescue (if there are read errors). You might be able to write a small shell script to automate stuff. For example open the tray, read a filename from the user, then close the tray, rip it and then repeat. That way you'll notice the open tray, change disks, enter the tiltle and hit enter and come back 10mins later. Obviously takes something like 20 days if you do 10 each day. And you're looking for roughly 1TB of storage, if it's single layer DVDs.

Yeah I miss DVD bonuses like directors commentary, cut scenes, bloopers and alternate scenes.

This should work for -most- DVDs, unless they're using some unique copy protection.

The following packages are needed: dvdbackup, libdvdcss, cdrtools

To get info on an inserted DVD (and check it can be read): dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -I

To rip the DVD to a directory (-M will mirror the disc): dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -o /path/to/store/dvd/ -M

And then to write the directory contents to an iso image: mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o /path/to/save/movie.iso /path/of/ripped/dvd

From there you can archive the iso, mount it for playback, etc. My next step was a combination of MakeMKV and Handbrake to encode the main movie (H.265 MKV 480p30) for storage on a media server.

Look at doom9.net for decryption and ripping DVD’s.