Folks,
Just a quick note on how to backup DVD-9 (9 GB) movies onto
standard DVD+/-R 5 (4.7 GB) media painlessly.
You will need a DVD+/-RW drive (you can create a .iso with just a plain
DVD-ROM drive; you only need the writer to write the media), a fairly
fast CPU (say 2+ GHz), sufficient RAM (256-512 MB), sufficient
hard disk space for temporaries and the final .iso (say 10 GB per DVD).
Installation:
----------------
1. Do a stock install of FC-5 with KDE or at least kdelibs. You can
install kdelibs and other dependencies into a non-KDE box if you wish.
2. Pick up libdvdcss, libdvdread, fribidi, dvdauthor and vamps. I
recompiled these from SRPMS found all over the net, and the versions
I used were:
libdvdcss-1.2.9-1.src.rpm
libdvdread-0.9.7-2.fc5.src.rpm
fribidi-0.10.4-8.2.1.src.rpm
dvdauthor-0.6.13-1.fc6.src.rpm
vamps-0.99.2-1.src.rpm
3. Either rebuild the SRPMs and install the resulting RPMs (including the
-devel RPMs) or simply download and install the corresponding binary
RPMs.
4. Download and install the binary RPM of k9copy:
K9copy-1.0.4_LP-2-1.i386.rpm (note the upper-case 'K')
(if you can locate the SRPM for this binary, you can rebuild it and install
it).
Usage:
----------
1. Invoke k9copy - it should bring up a gui-based application.
2. Select the input device (usually your dvd device) and output device
(usually a .iso image).
3. Insert your DVD into the drive, and choose "File" and "Open" from
the drop-down menu. It will now read the DVD, perform some analysis
and present a list of titlesets on the DVD.
4. Select the titlesets that you want - I usually choose the English audio
and English subtitles, but of course this depends on the DVD being read.
There may be more choices for n-in-1 DVDs normally found on the
sidewalks.
5. Click "Save". It should present a directory and filename selection
pop-up.
Select a path where you have at least 10 GB free space (it's probably a
good idea to have a separate SATA drive, with a large partition mounted
at this location, which may be a subdirectory to your home directory).
6. It will churn away for a while and create <filename>.iso at that
location.
This will be about 4-4.7 GB in size, depending on the source and your
titleset selections.
(A P4 2.8/800 HT w/1 GB dual-channel DDR and an ATA100 drive takes about
15-20 minutes on average, while an Athlon-64/3000+ w/512 MB dual-channel
DDR and an ATA100 drive takes about 10 minutes on average. I suppose
it could be cut down further by using an Opteron 146, DDR400 memory and
SATA HDD and optical drives.)
7. Burn the resulting .iso to your preferred DVD writable-media and enjoy.
If you want it to be playable on older DVD players, use DVD-R media;
else use DVD+R media.
Disclaimer: Of course I (and so should you) only avail of my
fair-use rights under copyright law to make backup copies of content
that I legally own. Make sure that you exercise these rights early
and often, before you forget that you actually have these rights.
-Siva
