using the dd command in terminal to backup DVDs

[redishdog]

All-

I have used the dd command in Ubuntu Linux to rip DVDs to my hard drive in there original state. Then I can watch them with VLC media player etc. This is great for going on trips because then I don't have to carry around an extra case of DVDs.

It usually works like this -

prompt$>dd if=/dev/sr0/ of=~/something.iso

then the DVD rips fine, copy protection and all

BUT,

on my macbook Pro, it won't work in terminal. I get a very small file ( a few tens of megabytes)

Does anybody know what went wrong?

Thanks

[dizzie]

Interesting. Even though they are cousins, I've found that there are a lot of command line utilities for Linux and BSD that Mac doesn't have. You might be able to find something on Darwin Ports or something, but the easiest solution would be to find a v14r or later MacTheRipper version on Rapidshare and use that.

[jman98]

Not really a fan of digging up old posts but I guess this isn't terribly old... what the heck made you find this old post dizzie? I don't recommend the practice of looking in the forums for old posts and commenting on them in general. redishdog hasn't logged in since Oct. 3 so anything we put here is for the benefit of others who might find the thread in the future.

dd can't remove copy protection and region codes. It just copies exactly what it finds. So what you would get would be a perfect copy of the DVD on your hard disk that still contains the same region coding and copy protection, if any, from the original disc.

dd exists on Macs. Whether it was installed on your Macbook Pro or not is another question altogether. I'm not an expert on Mac installs (we have a few at work and we basically just install everything) so I don't know what you have to do to get dd installed, but it definitely is available with the OS.

[redishdog]

Thanks Guys for digging up the old post I made. It was just something that has bothered me for a while. I could not find a solution for it.

I will look up MacTheRipper v15r or later but I think that's just a graphical front end for something else I have already tried.
Thanks dizzie.

It seems that the MAC OS X terminal (Darwin Kernel Version 10.4.0) dd command SORT OF works.
dd comes with OS X. There is no need to install it.
I found a new command for OS X - drutil status
perhaps I can do something like this -

MacBook-Pro:~ normal$drutil status
Vendor Product Rev
MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-898 HC09

Type: DVD-R Name: /dev/disk1
Sessions: 1 Tracks: 1
Overwritable: 00:00:00 blocks: 0 / 0.00MB / 0.00MiB
Space Free: 00:00:00 blocks: 0 / 0.00MB / 0.00MiB
Space Used: 474:19:39 blocks: 2134464 / 4.37GB / 4.07GiB
Writability:
Book Type: DVD-R (v5)
Media ID: RITEKF1

MacBook-Pro:~ normal$ dd count=2134464 bs=2048 conv=noerror,notrunc if=/dev/disk1 of=~/something.iso
2134464+0 records in
2134464+0 records out
4371382272 bytes transferred in 1621.573364 secs (2695766 bytes/sec)
todds-MacBook-Pro:~ normal$

TAAAA DAAAA!!

But when I mount something.iso after the rip, I get the finder showing one file called Archive.zip
How did that happen? That's not what I put on the DVD!!

What gives?

Regards and thanks for your help.

[Herve]

just an personal -empiric- explanation:
MacOSX always had a bad behavior with DVD devices: too much "automatic sleep features" (even if you change "enregy saver" pref pane settings).

When you tried to access to a DVD device, the system often asleep it. If you copy first the contents of the DVD on your hard disk, you avoid all these buggy automatisms. And allow to you to keep accesses to DVD disk/device.

bye

[dizzie]

Wow, redishdog, that is weird. Maybe Fairmount or Burn OSX could help you to mount the image. I've found that Finder doesn't always seem to play well with work done with the bash shell for some reason, but that may be an over-simplification.

I'm almost certain that both MacTheRipper and Ripit have a unique codebase and are not simply a gui that uses other open-source utilities exclusively. Come on, give "MTR" a try! I'll just bet that you like the results. You're on a Mac, you might as well do some stuff with a GUI. But, I understand if it would be too much of a blow to your hacker-capabilities which you obviously have. Do note that MTR will produce a VIDEO_TS folder for you, not an .iso. Of course, you can put it in a disk image with something like ffmpegx or ffmpex command line if you prefer.

Best of luck and tell us how it turns out!!

[redishdog]

Herve - My DVD drive is definitely not going to sleep during the process, neither is my MAC as I can hear the DVD drive spinning during the entire half hour or so that it takes to rip the DVD. I have also reset the settings so it doesn't sleep because I know that that sort of thing could be a problem.

Thanks for your comments dizzie.

I want to get this working as I have a pioneer DVD-R recorder which I record TV programs onto VR mode DVDs. VR mode is not compatible with most DVD players. I use VR mode to get multiple language recording capability then I intend to separate the languages into two separate tracks. That's a lot of work if you do it manually, so I want to automate the process using the terminal. I found dvd-vr which works flawlessly. It extracts the single .VRO file into separate .vob files which I can watch with VLC media player. I can extract using dvd-vr directly from the DVD but ............. below

Also - I can watch the DVD on my MAC by simply copying to my HD and not having to carry DVDs around all over the place. I'm a consultant that runs around everywhere giving presentations and running courses. The less I carry, the better.

I'll try a few things over the next week and report back. MTR v14r or later ...... got it.

Incidently, it is possible that I have installed another dd command over top of the native OS X supplied one. I managed to do that with md5.

I will check that out as well.

TQ all

[redishdog]

OK

I used MTR 2.6.6 to rip a DVD and it worked no problem so I don't have to use the command line.

You can use VLC media player to play a DVD from the VIDEO_TS folder.

Thanks dizzie for that idea. I was thinking bash.

MTR will not rip VR mode DVDs. I use dvd-vr instead.

Regards
All

[dizzie]

Cool! Glad it worked for you. And also note, redish, that if the DVDs are not commercial/ not encripted, you can just use the finder to copy the VIDEO_TS folder to your hard drive and play it with VLC - no need for MTR. Also - out of curiousity, will VLC play the DVD-R recorded disks as-is, or do you have to use dvd-vr on them first? If it will play them as-is, you could just use Finder to copy them to the hard drive without dvd-vr. Sorry if you realize all of this already.

Diz

[redishdog]

Great diz

FYI below regarding DVD-R disks


MacBook-Pro:~ normal$ ls -la /Volumes/LOGICAL\ VOLUME\ IDENTIFIER/DVD_RTAV/*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 normal staff 93087 Nov 13 23:14 /Volumes/LOGICAL VOLUME IDENTIFIER/DVD_RTAV/VR_MANGR.IFO
-rwxrwxrwx 1 normal staff 3995011072 Nov 13 23:14 /Volumes/LOGICAL VOLUME IDENTIFIER/DVD_RTAV/VR_MOVIE.VRO
MacBook-Pro:~ normal$

The VR_MOVIE.VRO file contains all the programs that have been recorded. See below:


MacBook-Pro:~ normal$ dvd-vr /Volumes/LOGICAL\ VOLUME\ IDENTIFIER/DVD_RTAV/VR_MANGR.IFO
format: DVD-VR V1.1
info : DISC37

tv_system : PAL
resolution : 480x576
aspect_ratio: 4:3
video_format: MPEG2
audio_channs: 2
audio_coding: Dolby AC-3

Number of programs: 7

num : 1
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP01 20OCT2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-10-20 20:38:50
size : 200,065,024

num : 2
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP01 20OCT2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-10-20 20:50:01
size : 167,194,624

num : 3
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP01 20OCT2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-10-20 21:03:31
size : 177,776,640

num : 4
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP01 20OCT2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-10-20 21:17:08
size : 195,995,648

num : 5
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP02 27OCT2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-10-27 20:31:03
size : 1,084,928,000

num : 6
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP03 03NOV2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-11-03 20:31:02
size : 1,083,648,000

num : 7
title: DOLLHOUSE (II) EP04 10NOV2010 VR-MODE
date : 2010-11-10 20:31:03
size : 1,085,403,136
MacBook-Pro:~ normal$

to extract, type
Pro:~ normal$ dvd-vr /Volumes/LOGICAL\ VOLUME\ IDENTIFIER/DVD_RTAV/VR_MANGR.IFO \
Volumes/LOGICAL\ VOLUME\ IDENTIFIER/DVD_RTAV/VR_MOVIE.VRO

and dvd-vr will extract the .vob files from the single big VR_MOVIE.VRO files. The resulting files can be watched with VLC media player or any other media player that can play .vob files. VLC will play the .VRO file from the DVd directly, but the separate programs are all spliced together in the order that you recorded them.

Thanks for all yr help diz.

The dd problem never got solved, but that's ok for now.

I didn't know that you could copy directly unencrypted DVDs onto the HD and play them. Silly me. It is possible that I could run into CPRM though since we just went digital a few months ago. I also had not used MTR before, but it was on my HD. I guess I never got there.

TQ again for your help.

Redishdog

[dizzie]

Hey, no one is sillier than me. You definitely taught me just as much in this exchange, so thanks as well!