Copy video DVD using k3b: too big for a DVD-RW?

I'm trying to make a direct copy of a movie DVD, using k3b. When I choose Tools --> Copy DVD, it gives me a message saying something about "video transcoding" not being available yet, but I'll be OK if I have the ".vob" files and what not prepared. Well, OK, no problem, they're all there on the original DVD.

So I created a new video DVD project. Mounted the DVD and just dragged and dropped the whole DVD directory structure. But the free space indicator says that the total to be copied is 6GB, but the space on the disc is only something like 4GB, so I can't fit it all on a disc.

What's going on? Are there movie discs that are just too big to fit on burnable discs? And does this have anything to do with "video transcoding"? I can't see how, all I want to do is copy a string of ones and zeros...

By the way, I'm only trying to write the image file here. Figured it was sensible not to risk making any coasters until I have an image successfully read. Using 2.6.8 kernel with Debian, k3b worked straight away perfectly with CD-RW and CD-R discs. Until now, k3b rocks.

Not that anyone would lecture me on copyright infringement, but if you're interested... the DVD is a Nordic version of "fscking Åmål", a fantastic Swedish film that is hardly offensive at all, despite its title (Swedes use "fscking" a bit like "damned" I think). I have the English-subtitled version (called "Show Me Love"), but I can't seem to get hold of the Nordic version, which has Swedish subtitles - very useful for learning Swedish, especially when those teenagers start talking slang really fast. Anyway, it made my day discovering my Finnish friend has a copy. My argument is that copying his Nordic version counts as an educational fair use, given I have the English version!

Yeah, there are dual-layered DVDs. In fact most new video DVD are dual-layered so they can hold up to 9 GB of data.

Movie DVD's are dual-layer, so they can fit twice as much data on them as a normal DVD. You apparently have a single-layer burner and/or disk so you won't be able to fit the entire disk on there. You might be able to copy just the video minus all the extras on the DVD, but I don't actually have a burner myself so I'm not sure how that would work or if it's even possible.

Edit: Bugger, I was too slow;)

Check the bottom of the thread... :-)

(I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I'm hoping to since I have the rest of this week off.)

-CB

I see.

It'd be lovely to just burn the movie, and bin the extras, BUT the whole point is that I want the Swedish subtitles - and be able to turn them off totally when I've mastered the language :) And there's no obvious way of extracting the subtitles separate from the other extras.

In fact I've just realised there's nothing against burning 2 DVDs. If I can just preserve the subtitles and still switch them on and off, I don't care if I have to change discs half-way through. Guess I'd better read up and find out if that's possible.

Thanks for your responses. I've only had a DVD player since Christmas, and a DVD burner for my computer since about the same time. I know, I'm way behind the times.

On the subject of being old-fashioned, my main box is a Celeron 533MHz processor with 192 MB RAM. Last time I tried to watch a DVD on it using xine, it skipped tons of frames and was really jerky. But now, after re-installing Debian sarge, totem-xine plays DVDs perfectly acceptably on full-screen mode. Do you think that the difference is because I swapped from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel?

Interesting.

Quote:

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Originally posted by root.veg
I see.

It'd be lovely to just burn the movie, and bin the extras, BUT the whole point is that I want the Swedish subtitles - and be able to turn them off totally when I've mastered the language :) And there's no obvious way of extracting the subtitles separate from the other extras.

In fact I've just realised there's nothing against burning 2 DVDs. If I can just preserve the subtitles and still switch them on and off, I don't care if I have to change discs half-way through. Guess I'd better read up and find out if that's possible.

Thanks for your responses. I've only had a DVD player since Christmas, and a DVD burner for my computer since about the same time. I know, I'm way behind the times.

On the subject of being old-fashioned, my main box is a Celeron 533MHz processor with 192 MB RAM. Last time I tried to watch a DVD on it using xine, it skipped tons of frames and was really jerky. But now, after re-installing Debian sarge, totem-xine plays DVDs perfectly acceptably on full-screen mode. Do you think that the difference is because I swapped from a 2.4 kernel to a 2.6 kernel?

Interesting.

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The subtitles are usually not very big at all (just a few megs) and I believe there are some tools out there that will strip or include them.

Like you said, it's perfectly fine to burn to two disks. This is entirely possible. You will just need to split up the video, and author two disks, each with it's own video files.

There's no telling why the video now plays better. I doubt it was just the kernel upgrade, it was probably something the kernel upgrade brought, ie better support for your hardware, or a setting changed in the software or X; who knows...at least it's going better..:cool:

I noticed that you also switched apps, from xine to totem. I've never had very good luck with xine, but I have used both mplayer and ogle on older systems and they both work really well, even on full screen. I'm currently using mplayer on a celeron 466 with 192 megs of RAM and it works smoothly on full screen.

Totem actually uses Xine as its back end, so that shouldn't have an effect. It's entirely possible that it is using a different vo now and that has sped it up though. I've heard that switching (for instance) from x11 to xv helps a lot.

As far as duplicating that movie goes, here is what I do.


I don't like to re-encode the video, because IMHO that creates significant quality loss.


You aren't going to like this, but:

I run dvdshrink under Wine-2004091. It gets the job done:

Code:

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dvdbackup -i /dev/dev -o . -M
wine dvdshrink ./MOVIE/VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.IFO
#### [ do the stuff ]
growisofs --dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=movie_part_1.iso
growisofs --dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=movie_part_2.iso

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...And yes, you will be able to keep the subtitles, and turn them off whenever you want.

I wish there was a nice (scriptable) program that would do this under linux... but I can't find one that does everything I need to do...

Well, mencoder should be able to split the video file also. Just do a dumpstream from MPlayer, take the resulting file and split it using mencoder with -oac copy and -ovc copy so you don't lose any quality. I'd have to read the man page to see exactly how to do it, but I'm pretty sure it would work. One potential snag might be the subtitles, but I believe that MPlayer supports them, so as long as you tell it to use the right ones when you dumpstream they'll be included. I don't know whether you'll be able to shut them off or not (I never use subtitles, so I know next to nothing about them), but I think it would work.

Of course, this is all pure speculation because I've never done anything remotely like this:)

Quote:

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Originally posted by psi42

You aren't going to like this, but:

I run dvdshrink under Wine-2004091. It gets the job done:

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dvdshrink works with WINE? Excellent!

So all I need to make single-layered DVDs from multi-layered commercial DVDs is WINE, dvdshrink and k3b?

I've been using dvdshrink and Windows for burning DVDs. For whatever reason (mostly because everyone I know in the real world runs Windows) I tend to learn how to do things first in Windows, then Linux, but the learning gap gets smaller and smaller. I burned my first DVD on Christmas Eve, less than a month and a half ago. If I could start burning DVDs in Linux real soon that would be SWEET!

I'm gonna study this thread closely.

There are a number of Linux based ripping tools that can be used for doing what you want to do DVDRip or AcidRip

These are not in the same class as dvdshrink but they do the job. If you want to get into real encoding check out transcode to do the heavy lifting

If you want to keep it simple - there is a great script - copydvd.sh that uses transcode to dump a DVD9(double layer) to DVD5(single layer)

personally, I like the copydvd.sh script the best. Once you have transcode compiled on your system, everything else is a breeze