Converting old DVDs/cd into mp4/mp3

DVDs

Old DVDs take space and bulky. I have tons of those that I accumulated over the years and running out of space in my cabinet. This will be an ongoing project for me to turn them into mp4 so that I can store them in a hard drive and view them from my TV.

You will need first install the following software before ripping a DVD:

You can find Handbrake in the default Ubuntu repositories, but there's a decent chance that the package will be fairly outdated. Thankfully, the Handbrake developers maintain an official Ubuntu PPA.

Begin by opening a terminal window and typing the following command to add the PPA to your system.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases

Now, update your package database, and install Handbrake.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install handbrake-gtk

This will install the video decoding software for converting DVDs to MP4.

Next, type the following command at the terminal prompt to install the restricted extras package. This will install a collection of codecs:

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

During the installation, a blue screen will appear with a license agreement. Press Tab to highlight the option to accept the agreement, and press Enter.

Finally, install the libdvd-pkg to install a library that will let you play DVDs within Ubuntu by entering the following command:

sudo apt install libdvd-pkg

At the end of the process, you may get a message saying you need to run another apt-get command to continue installing the package. If you get this message, type the following command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg

converting to ISO first and then use handbrake

The old linux machine which has a DVD drive is slow. My other machine is fast but there is no DVD drive. So I decided to rip the DVDs to ISO image first and then use the faster machine to turn into mp4.

Create an ISO disk image from a CD-ROM, DVD or Blu-ray disk. First get block count. I am using /dev/dvd. In your machine it could be /dev/sr0. Make sure you are using the right device name for your machine.

isosize -d 2048 /dev/dvd

Now run dd command and display progress bar while using dd command:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/dvd of=output.iso bs=2048 count=<blocks> status=progress

Combining both in the same script,

blocks=$(isosize -d 2048 /dev/dvd)
dd if=/dev/sr0 of=isoimage.iso bs=2048 count=$blocks status=progress

Now you can use output.iso for hard disk installation or as a backup copy of CD/DVD media. Please note that dd command is standard UNIX command and you should able to create backup/iso image under any UNIX like operating system.

FYI, you can restore hard disk drive from a previously generated ISO image using the dd command itself using,

$ sudo dd if=output.iso of=/dev/dvd bs=4096 conv=noerror

Windows platform DVD decoding in Handbrake

Windows distribution lacks video decoder for some DVDs. You will see choppy output in such case. Download libdvdcss-2.dll file from VLC and copy into HandBrake directory. It should resolve the decoder issue.

I got these instructions from following sources. Read for more details.

how-to-use-ubuntu-to-convert-dvds-to-mp4.

linux-creating-cd-rom-iso-image.

wikipedia dd.

Audio CDs

This recipe worked pretty good. install cdparanoia and lame

cdparanoia -vsQ

lists all the tracks.

cdparanoia -B

converts all the tracks in .wav format. If the CD has bad tracks and you don't want those tracks then -X option will not output those tracks.

cdparanoia -BX

Following python snippet will convert all the files tp mp3 using lame.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
from pathlib import Path

for path in Path('.').rglob('*.wav'):
    newpath = path.with_name(path.stem.replace(' ', '-') +'.mp3')
    cmd = "lame -V2 '{0}' '{1}';rm '{0}';".format(str(path), str(newpath))
    print(cmd)
    returned_value = os.system(cmd)
    print(returned_value)

concat ts files

C:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe -f concat -safe 0 -i mylist.txt -c copy xyz.mp4

mylist.txt file (UTF-8),

file 'abc.ts'
file 'def.ts'
...