Can MakeMKV create ISO images from DVDs?

[bogwoppit]

OP, I'm really feeling your pain with this thread. Your wife wants the menus, end of story. I don't know why people are beating on about other "solutions". And MakeMKV might have "MKV" in the title, but it also creates Blu ray folders with M2TS files in them so it's not unreasonable to expect it might do the equivalent for DVDs.

In any case, one of the advantages of not ripping to MKV is that it's much less of a minefield when it comes to choosing the correct title, dealing with forced subtitles etc. It also allows you to keep multiple versions of a movie from a DVD without using up double the space (e.g. the director's and theatrical cuts of the Alien movies). So yes, I do this myself sometimes, though I tend to use folder structures instead of ISOs. Some players treat these as exactly the same thing (XBMC does, no?).

Unfortunately I don't do this in Linux. It's hard enough to find the right software in my preferred Mac platform, I don't know of any cross-platform decrypting software that is really good enough to be able to use it reliably on a wide range of modern discs. So, I use Mac for some parts and a Windows VM for others.

For example, for Blu Ray, I have been using MakeMKV to rip to decrypted BDMV folders. This works great. I am testing turning these into ISOs, which is what led me to this thread. I used Imgburn (Windows again sadly, but I hear it runs fine in Wine). I also managed to do it using mkudffs on Linux (most of my already-ripped movies are on my Linux server). Writing DVD ISOs should be easier than BluRays as the format is more well supported in the traditional Linux tools for writing discs (the dvdtools package?). Googling for creating UDF (blu ray) images in Linux threw up lots of articles for doing this with DVDs but I didn't read them.

I guess MakeMKV can't rip DVDs to VIDEO_TS folders. I'm afraid I don't know of another program that can do it well under Linux. Until recently I was using combinations of AnyDVD (Windows), Fairmount (Mac), DVD Shrink (Windows). AnyDVD is very successful in removing encryption, bad sector protections, prohibited operations etc. And DVD Shrink still does a great job of ripping the main movie title. All the other software I tried ran into problems with certain discs. So I do not fancy your chances of finding something as good for Linux. I recently started using MDRP on the Mac which has managed to rip all the discs I have tried, but the other reason I like it is because it lets you select the audio and subtitle streams by playing the actual DVD through the menus.

So I'm afraid the basic answer to your question is no, MakeMKV cannot to my knowledge backup DVDs retaining the menus etc, it only does this for BluRays. You could try VLC? I couldn't get the Blu Ray decryption working but it should work out of the box for VLC, no? This is how Handbrake does it these days I think.

[MakOwner]

OP, I'm really feeling your pain with this thread. Your wife wants the menus, end of story. I don't know why people are beating on about other "solutions". And MakeMKV might have "MKV" in the title, but it also creates Blu ray folders with M2TS files in them so it's not unreasonable to expect it might do the equivalent for DVDs.

In any case, one of the advantages of not ripping to MKV is that it's much less of a minefield when it comes to choosing the correct title, dealing with forced subtitles etc. It also allows you to keep multiple versions of a movie from a DVD without using up double the space (e.g. the director's and theatrical cuts of the Alien movies). So yes, I do this myself sometimes, though I tend to use folder structures instead of ISOs. Some players treat these as exactly the same thing (XBMC does, no?).

Unfortunately I don't do this in Linux. It's hard enough to find the right software in my preferred Mac platform, I don't know of any cross-platform decrypting software that is really good enough to be able to use it reliably on a wide range of modern discs. So, I use Mac for some parts and a Windows VM for others.

For example, for Blu Ray, I have been using MakeMKV to rip to decrypted BDMV folders. This works great. I am testing turning these into ISOs, which is what led me to this thread. I used Imgburn (Windows again sadly, but I hear it runs fine in Wine). I also managed to do it using mkudffs on Linux (most of my already-ripped movies are on my Linux server). Writing DVD ISOs should be easier than BluRays as the format is more well supported in the traditional Linux tools for writing discs (the dvdtools package?). Googling for creating UDF (blu ray) images in Linux threw up lots of articles for doing this with DVDs but I didn't read them.

I guess MakeMKV can't rip DVDs to VIDEO_TS folders. I'm afraid I don't know of another program that can do it well under Linux. Until recently I was using combinations of AnyDVD (Windows), Fairmount (Mac), DVD Shrink (Windows). AnyDVD is very successful in removing encryption, bad sector protections, prohibited operations etc. And DVD Shrink still does a great job of ripping the main movie title. All the other software I tried ran into problems with certain discs. So I do not fancy your chances of finding something as good for Linux. I recently started using MDRP on the Mac which has managed to rip all the discs I have tried, but the other reason I like it is because it lets you select the audio and subtitle streams by playing the actual DVD through the menus.

So I'm afraid the basic answer to your question is no, MakeMKV cannot to my knowledge backup DVDs retaining the menus etc, it only does this for BluRays. You could try VLC? I couldn't get the Blu Ray decryption working but it should work out of the box for VLC, no? This is how Handbrake does it these days I think.

I have been using dvdbackup under linux for DVDs for some time. I wrote a wrapper script that extracts the content (minus the intentional corruption) from the DVD and builds a folder that I can use to create an ISO that is then transferred to the media server. dvdbackup is getting long in the tooth.

Every once in a while I run into (usually discs from Paramount) that causes errors in either libdecss or libdvdnav4 resulting in "Zero check" erros from dvdbackup. At that point I'll turn to MakeMKV and it will _sometimes_ extract some of the content, but it always fails on at least one or two titles. (When I post those failures here I always get told it's just bad media - I'm always curious how reading bits are different than reading bits, but that's another conversation.)

Can you share how you get MakeMKV to extract to a folder that I can use to rebuild a disc with menus? I am not (usually) reticent with mkuddfs - I use it, cdrskin and (sometimes) xorriso to make quarterly backups of a fairly large amount of audio files >2GB onto BD-R media.

[Chetwood]

OP, I'm really feeling your pain with this thread. Your wife wants the menus, end of story. I don't know why people are beating on about other "solutions".

Because this is a forum for a tool that creates MKVs? I wouldn't even have added the option to create ISO from BD, there are already plenty of tools for that. I also don't see Apple's refusal to support MKV as Mike's problem, VLC exists.

[MakOwner]

OP, I'm really feeling your pain with this thread. Your wife wants the menus, end of story. I don't know why people are beating on about other "solutions".

... there are already plenty of tools for that. ...

Really? Care to share the names of those tools?

[Chetwood]

DVDFab, AnyDVD for starters? (Can't be bothered to look for Mac tools).

[MakOwner]

DVDFab, AnyDVD for starters? (Can't be bothered to look for Mac tools).

Those are windows only tools - I'm looking for Linux tools.

[Chetwood]

So, you're telling me there's no tools for Linux to rip to ISO? Tough luck.

[Woodstock]

If you are looking for an exact ISO just for mounting for playback, there's an obscure (sic) tool called "dd" available on Linux. It does a forensically-exact copy of a disk to a file, including all the encryption, menus, etc. Many tutorials out there on the web, including video on some, on just how to use it.

[MakOwner]

If you are looking for an exact ISO just for mounting for playback, there's an obscure (sic) tool called "dd" available on Linux. It does a forensically-exact copy of a disk to a file, including all the encryption, menus, etc. Many tutorials out there on the web, including video on some, on just how to use it.

I wouldn't call dd "obscure", but I need the BD or DVD image without the encryption.

[dannyboy48888]

+1 for ddrescue, then mount as let libdvdcss decrypt into VLC

[Wasabi]

Can you use VMware or some other such virtual machine to run Windows on your Linux box? That sure seems easier than trying to figure it out natively (and dealing with the grumps here )

[green_dog]

Sorry to resurrect this old post, I also have a problem similar to the one from the OP's. It would be very useful if makemkv could save whatever it read either as an iso or as regular folder with decrypted VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. When I run mkisofs on the decrypted data it complains about the IFO being invalid, but makemkv seems to read (and repair) the decrypted data just fine... the problem is likely in mkisofs, but in some cases it's useful to have redundancy in functionality across different programs imo.