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Ouch! Does this guy know what he's talking about?

Discussion in 'General Linux Discussion' started by cloasters, Jun 8, 2020.

  1. cloasters

    cloasters Moderator

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    Very helpful post, booman. Thank you! AFAIK, Blu-Ray players for PC's don't exist. Has this changed?
  2. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    dd does a block device copy, which still includes the copy-protection. If you want to copy just the video itself, instead of creating an iso, makemkv is king, it gives you a movie file that can be played by any media player. And makemkv handles bluray as well.
  3. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Oh, I didn't realize that. Any DVD I've copied ran fine in VLC. Guess I should try another Disney video.
  4. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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  5. Gizmo

    Gizmo Chief Site Administrator Staff Member

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    Yup, I've used MakeMKV extensively to build my Plex library. I like it so much I even gave them money. :D
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  6. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    I assume Mint comes with the required DVD cracking libraries preinstalled. VLC use those libraries to crack and play DVD movies on Linux. VLC is also able to play iso files without requiring you to mount them first, which is why you can play the iso files directly.

    As for bluray, I'm using an external bluray player for my computer, connects via USB. It's very small so I can easily put it away in a desk drawer when I'm not using it. Playing bluray directly is not as easy as DVD, which is why I rely on MakeMKV.
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  7. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    I have no idea if I have DVD cracking libraries???
    I just found that dd command online and tried it with a few DVDs and it worked fine. There is a chance none of the DVDs I ripped actually had DRM on them.
    Anyways, I don't have enough drive space to rip all of my DVDs, but one day maybe?
  8. cloasters

    cloasters Moderator

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  9. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    DVD (and bluray) is an encrypted proprietary format, and you need the decryption algorithm to play, which is proprietary. That's why physical DVD and Bluray players for computers come with this proprietary player software for Windows, which is required to play it on a computer. This applies to all DVD movies. Every single DVD movie you have is encrypted because the DVD movie format is encrypted.

    The wikipedia article goes into further detail:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

    When you use the dd command, you are doing a block device copy, bit by bit. It does not alter the data it copies in any way, so the encrypted format is still there.

    On Linux, you can install system libraries that are able to crack this encrypted format on DVD movies (don't mix up the DVD disc and DVD movie format), and since you are able to play your iso files made from DVD movies, you do have those libraries installed. If you didn't have them installed you simply would not be able to watch.

    MakeMKV is a proper ripper, in that it creates movie files without any form of encryption or protection, using an open format. It also takes less space than copying the entire disc with dd.
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  10. cloasters

    cloasters Moderator

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    Very interesting, thank you Daerandin!
  11. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Ah, that makes sense now. Thank you for explaining. Its crazy how things always get complicated, but that is thanks to pirating.
    I'll check out MakeMKV as I've wanted to rip our DVDs and store them on our server. 8GB a pop is pretty large.
  12. Gizmo

    Gizmo Chief Site Administrator Staff Member

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    Even ripping with MakeMKV, I ended up building a RAID using 5 4-TB WD Red NAS drives (WD40EFRX-68N). It's configured as a RAID 5 using dmraid, giving me 15 TB of usable storage, and I've chewed up about 60% of that so far. I used the 5400 RPM NAS drives because they can provide I/O plenty fast enough for streaming from the Plex server to my streaming devices (even streaming blu-ray), and they are inexpensive.
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  13. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Wow! How many movies do you have?
    Are they all BlueRay?

    I'm ripping DVDs and hopefully MakeMKV will rip them at 4-5GB instead of 8GB
    We have about 100-150 DVD collection. I will just rip our favorites.
    I have about 200 GB of free space on my server. Small in comparison, but maybe it will work?
  14. Gizmo

    Gizmo Chief Site Administrator Staff Member

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    I've got about 30 TV series, and about 170 movies. About half the movies are Blu Ray, but the TV series are things like NCIS, Blue Bloods, Stargate (everything but SG-U), Star Trek (everything but Voyager); stuff that had MANY seasons. Easily 2/3 of my storage is TV shows.
  15. cloasters

    cloasters Moderator

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    Yowsa, serious money if you want to run with the big boys. Pausing to think about it actual disk DVD's and Blu-Rays ain't cheap. Avoiding Voyager shows good taste, Janeway's one note voice made me cringe.
  16. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    I'll agree that Voyager is not on the same level as TNG and DS9, but it is still one of the GOOD Star Trek shows, unlike Enterprise. Janeway is awesome, and I'll die on this hill.
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  17. cloasters

    cloasters Moderator

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    To each their own. If you like "Voyager" more power to you. Personally, "DS-9" is by far the best series. Have it on DVD but I know it too well to really enjoy it nowadays. Big Sigh!
  18. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Wow, that is a lot of TV shows to burn. I'd rather stick with Netflix instead. Cause how many times am I going to watch a series in my life?
  19. Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    My three favorite Star Trek series is TNG, DS9, and Voyager, in that order. I have everything Star Trek on DVD, except for the two new series, Discovery and Picard, and I still have not seen any episodes of them. I am very excited about the Picard series as I have seen that it includes characters from both TNG and Voyager, but I wanted to let the show run for a while so that when I sit down to watch I, can binge a lot of episodes without pause.

    I actually prefer to have my own copies instead of watching on Netflix. I can rip stuff and then easily bring along whatever I want to watch if I'm going to spend a lot of time without internet access, such as the plane trips to Asia that me and my wife usually take every year. This year we are of course staying in Norway through our vacation.
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  20. booman

    booman Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming Staff Member

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    Agreed! My favorites as well:
    • The Next Generation
    • Deep Space 6
    • Voyager
    What happened with Enterprise the prequel? I watched a few and just wasn't impressed...

    I haven't see Discovery or Picard either. I didn't realize Picard was a new series, I thought it was a documentary or something...

    I prefer owning my DVDs as well, but I don't have any TV series on DVD. They are just too expensive. But that is a good call... when you are offline, its nice to have something to watch. Specially long flights.

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