From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:23:12 +0000 (+0000) Subject: New post. X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/92b2bb90b5a3dc4d9f63f0c60e9cbbd19d4ab06b?ds=inline New post. --- diff --git a/blog/data/2014-03-21-nice-python-dvdvideo.txt b/blog/data/2014-03-21-nice-python-dvdvideo.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..1ced9ff18a --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/data/2014-03-21-nice-python-dvdvideo.txt @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +Title: Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software +Tags: english, multimedia, opphavsrett, video +Date: 2014-03-21 15:20 + +

Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious +children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a +movie is not straight forward. My preferred method at the moment is +to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn +Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file. This way the +subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is +just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.

+ +

Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle +DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them). I've also +tried using +dvdbackup +and genisoimage, but these days I use the marvellous python library +and program +python-dvdvideo +written by Bastian Blank. It is +in Debian +already. Instead of trying to read every block from the DVD, it +parses the file structure and figure out which block on the DVD is +actually in used, and only read those blocks from the DVD. This +work surprisingly well, and I have been able to almost backup my +entire DVD collection using this method.

So far, python-dvdvideo +have failed on between 10 and 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my +collection. The most common problem is +DVDs +using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters, which according to +Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some +players to fail too). A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent +DVD structures, as the python library +claim +there is a overlap between objects. An equally rare problem claim +some +value is out of range. No idea what is going on there. I wish I +knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie +collection will stay with me in the future.

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So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using +python-dvdvideo. :)