blog/data/2014-03-21-nice-python-dvdvideo.txt

   1 Title: Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software
   2 Tags: english, multimedia, opphavsrett, video, nice free software
   3 Date: 2014-03-21 15:25
   4
   5 <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
   6 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
   7 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
   8 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
   9 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
  10 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
  11 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
  12
  13 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
  14 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
  15 tried using
  16 <a href="https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
  17 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
  18 and program
  19 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
  20 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
  21 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
  22 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
  23 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
  24 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
  25 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
  26 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
  27 this method.</p>
  28
  29 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
  30 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
  31 problem is
  32 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
  33 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
  34 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
  35 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
  36 DVD structures, as the python library
  37 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
  38 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
  39 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
  40 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
  41 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
  42 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
  43
  44 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
  45 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>