issues retrieving DVD titles to .mpg files

[hydra3333]

Someone I know has a few DVDs which they have purchased and want to watch without benefit of a DVD player.

I gather something like this commandline may have worked in the past, eg to capture title 4 from the DVD in the J: drive into an mpeg2 .ts file

"C:\VLC\vlc.exe" dvdsimple:///J:#4 --sout "#standard{access=file,mux=ts,dst=The.Party.01.mpg}" vlc://quit

Unfortunately, the person does not recall if it ever worked, however now with the latest version of VLC it apparently just appears to start VLC and sit there doing nothing.

Any advice on getting the VLC commandline working would be appreciated.

In the meantime the individual found a manual hack approach along these lines:

Use VLC live to record multiple titles on a DVD to .TS and then convert them to .MPG and then .MP4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DETERMINE THE CORRECT TITLE NUMBERS ON THE DVD IN CASE THEY ARE NON-INTUITIVE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Open a DVD (Media, Disc)
Play, and see the DVD main menu
Choose a title and click on it to play it
Press PAUSE and then drag the timeline slider back to 00:00
Right click on the playing area and click on "Playback" "Title" then observe the playing title number in the Pop-out menu
Right click on the playing area and click on "Playback" "Stop" then click the "Play" button to go back and see the main menu
Repeat for next title number to find
Quit and Restart VLC

CAPTURE THE CORRECT TITLE NUMBERS to .TS
----------------------------------------
From the menu Media, Convert/Save, Disc
Set the "Starting Position" Title number you determined above, eg 4
Click the Convert/Save button
Choose the "Convert" radio button
In the Profile drop-down, choose "original_video_audio"
Click Browse to choose the destination path and unique filename for this title on the DVD - you MUST add ".TS" extension to the end for it to work properly
FIRST READ THE NOTE BELOW then click the Start button
NOTE: the conversion will start at title number selected eg 4, but it will NOT stop at the end of it
YOU need to manually click the stop button once that title has converted and it has just started on the next title
so keep an eye on the PROGRESS BAR and be ready click the "stop" square button
Then quit VLC and repeat for the NEXT title you noted (do not forget to change the title number at the start )

CONVERT THE .TS TO USABLE .mpg files
------------------------------------
Now use VideoReDo to QuickStreamFix the .TS files (which unfortunately play jerkily) into "nice" mpeg2 .mpg files
Now use VideoReDo to trim the new QSF'd .mpg files,
since you have captured a part of the next title at the end, and save to a new extension, eg .qsf.cut.mpg

CONVERT THE USABLE .mpg FILES TO .mp4 FILES
-------------------------------------------
Change the lines
G:
CD G:\DVD\name_of_folder
to point to the disk and folder where you captured the .TS files and QSF's them to .mpg

Look at the "REM" lines which have "Call :mpg_to_mp4"
Change their filenames to the ones you have QSF's and trimmed cut (no extension)
Un-REM the relevant lines
Check the ffmpeg settings in function :mpg_to_mp4
for example whether audio dynanorm is to be done or not
Then run this .bat file to convert the .mpg files to .mp4

[ProWo]

Rip with Makemkv, then play the resulting mkv with the player you like

[abolibibelot]

For once, MakeMKV might be the right answer !

Reminds me of a famous french sketch called “Télémagouilles” from the trio Les Inconnus, where a male comedian impersonating an abysmally stupid blond woman at a parody of a TV game show kept repeating “Stéphanie de Monaco !” to almost every question asked by the host, until a question came for which the answer was actually Stéphanie de Monaco — and she replied “Madonna !”
https://all-french-gifs.tumblr.com/post/66817094969/photoset_iframe/all-french-gifs/tu...h5zh/500/false

[ProWo]

For once, MakeMKV might be the right answer !

Reminds me of a famous french sketch called “Télémagouilles” from the trio Les Inconnus, where a male comedian impersonating an abysmally stupid blond woman at a parody of a TV game show kept repeating “Stéphanie de Monaco !” to almost every question asked by the host, until a question came for which the answer was actually Stéphanie de Monaco — and she replied “Madonna !”
https://all-french-gifs.tumblr.com/post/66817094969/photoset_iframe/all-french-gifs/tu...h5zh/500/false

Bow down, God has spoken

[Skiller]

VOB2MPG, but MKV is able to keep the chapters which a plain MPG file can't. Therefore MKV is the better alternative I'd say.

[abolibibelot]

Bow down, God has spoken

The Gun is good ; the Penis is evil.

[netmask56]

hydra3333 Overly complex and fiddly when MakeMKV can save all the titles on a disc or just the main movie complete with all languages and subtitles and chapters - or you can select what components you want and ditch the superfluous tracks. I transferred all my DVD's and Blu rays to my NAS. Put the discs away safely with my physical disc player/s. Simple and quick solution.

[usually_quiet]

VOB2MPG, but MKV is able to keep the chapters which a plain MPG file can't. Therefore MKV is the better alternative I'd say.

VOB2MPG doesn't work if you are running Windows 10 64 bit without some help. See https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/376694-Instructions-for-Running-on-Windows-10#post2430545

[ProWo]

Instead of vob2mpg you can use clever Ffmpeg-GUI on Win64

[hydra3333]

Thank you.

[hydra3333]

A pity no one had a working VLC commandline.
Oh well.

The linux build instructions for makemkv at https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224 did not work for me, I must be doing something wrong.
Anyway, I ended up with this which seemed to work under Ubuntu 21.10:

#!/bin/bash
# to get rid of MSDOS format do this to this file: sudo sed -i s/\\r//g ./filename
# or, open in nano, control-o and then then alt-M a few times to toggle msdos format off and then save

echo "Creating the Linux version of makemkv ..."
set -x

# 0. Install prerequisites

set -x
cd ~/Desktop
sudo chmod +777 -R *
sudo apt -y update
sudo apt install -y apt-utils
sudo apt install -y debconf debconf-utils
sudo apt install -y locales
sudo locale-gen en_AU.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LANG='en_AU.UTF-8' LANGUAGE='en_AU:en' LC_ALL='en_AU.UTF-8'
export LANG='en_AU.UTF-8' LANGUAGE='en_AU:en' LC_ALL='en_AU.UTF-8'
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install -y git build-essential pkg-config libc6-dev libssl-dev libexpat1-dev libavcodec-dev libgl1-mesa-dev qtbase5-dev zlib1g-dev
sudo apt install -y curl
sudo apt install -y wget
sudo apt install -y nano
#sudo apt install -y ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt install -y build-essential
# The commands below configures alternative for each version and associate a priority with it. 
# The default version is the one with the highest priority, in our case that is gcc-10.
sudo apt install -y gcc-8 g++-8 gcc-9 g++-9 gcc-10 g++-10 gcc-11 g++-11
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-10 100 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-10 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-9   90 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-9  --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-9
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8   80 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8  --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-8
# Later if you want to change the default version use the update-alternatives command:
# sudo update-alternatives --config gcc
sudo apt install -y make 
sudo apt install -y automake 
sudo apt install -y cmake 
sudo apt install -y yasm 
sudo apt install -y pkg-config 
sudo apt install -y autogen 
sudo apt install -y autoconf 
sudo apt install -y autoconf-archive
sudo apt install -y libtool-bin 
sudo apt install -y libtool 
sudo apt install -y ninja-build
sudo apt install -y clang
#sudo apt install -y git 

read -p "After installing prerequisites, press Enter to continue"

# 1. download the fdk-aac source from git: https://github.com/mstorsjo/fdk-aac.git and build it

set -x
cd ~/Desktop
sudo chmod +777 -R *
sudo rm -vfR fdk-aac_git
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mstorsjo/fdk-aac.git fdk-aac_git
cd fdk-aac_git
pwd
autoreconf -fiv
export CFLAGS="-fPIC"
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export CPPFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export LDFLAGS=$CFLAGS
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/ffmpeg/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --prefix=/tmp/ffmpeg --disable-shared --enable-static 
make
sudo make install

read -p "After installing fdk-aac, press Enter to continue"

# 2. download the ffmpeg source from git: git://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git and build the libraries

set -x
cd ~/Desktop
sudo chmod +777 -R *
sudo rm -vfR ffmpeg_git
git clone --depth 1 git://git.ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.git ffmpeg_git
cd ffmpeg_git
pwd
export CFLAGS="-fPIC"
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export CPPFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export LDFLAGS=$CFLAGS
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/ffmpeg/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --prefix=/tmp/ffmpeg --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-pic --enable-libfdk-aac --disable-doc --disable-programs
make
make install

read -p "After installing ffmpeg library, press Enter to continue"

# 3. configure and build makemkv-oss:

set -x
cd ~/Desktop
sudo chmod +777 -R *
m_ver="1.16.5"
sudo rm -vfR "makemkv-oss-${m_ver}"
mkdir -p "makemkv-oss-${m_ver}"
cd "makemkv-oss-${m_ver}"
pwd
#https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
#https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-bin-1.16.5.tar.gz
#https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-oss-1.16.5.tar.gz
url="https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-oss-${m_ver}.tar.gz"
curl -4 -H 'Pragma: no-cache' -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' -H 'Cache-Control: max-age=0' "$url" --retry 50 -L --output "makemkv-oss-${m_ver}.tar.gz" # -L means "allow redirection" or some odd :|
tar xvzf "makemkv-oss-${m_ver}.tar.gz"
cd "makemkv-oss-${m_ver}" # again
pwd
export CFLAGS="-fPIC"
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export CPPFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export LDFLAGS=$CFLAGS
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/ffmpeg/lib/pkgconfig ./configure
make
sudo make install

read -p "After installing makemkv-oss, press Enter to continue"

# 4. configure and build makemkv

set -x
cd ~/Desktop
sudo chmod +777 -R *
m_ver="1.16.5"
sudo rm -vfR "makemkv-bin-${m_ver}"
mkdir -p "makemkv-bin-${m_ver}"
cd "makemkv-bin-${m_ver}"
pwd
#https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=224
#https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-bin-1.16.5.tar.gz
#https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-oss-1.16.5.tar.gz
url="https://www.makemkv.com/download/makemkv-bin-${m_ver}.tar.gz"
curl -4 -H 'Pragma: no-cache' -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' -H 'Cache-Control: max-age=0' "$url" --retry 50 -L --output "makemkv-bin-${m_ver}.tar.gz" # -L means "allow redirection" or some odd :|
tar xvzf "makemkv-bin-${m_ver}.tar.gz"
cd "makemkv-bin-${m_ver}" # again
pwd
export CFLAGS="-fPIC"
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export CPPFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export LDFLAGS=$CFLAGS
#PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/tmp/ffmpeg/lib/pkgconfig ./configure
./configure
make
sudo make install

read -p "After installing makemkv-bin, press Enter to continue"