- Get original media
- 'Get raw dump' (right now I use makemkv normally to create mkv files of the titles I want)
- Place original media in storage bin. Just in case I need it later.
- Re-encode raw dump to 'my standard' (See 'Use case' section below)
- Move raw dump to old hard drive (leftover 1/3/etc TB drives I no longer have use for in an active system, and they just sit on a shelf in a box to keep the dust off them)
- Enjoy my encodes from SSD
My movie collection, when complete, is rather small. < 100 disks. I hate waiting for HDDs to spin up, and wasting the power on them spinning idle during the 99% of their life they'll be doing nothing. I might watch 1-2 movies a day, and not the whole movie at once. Thus, I keep my collection on SSD instead of HDD just to avoid the spinup time. I already have encode settings that let me preserve near-lossless quality while reducing file size anywhere between 1/2 and 1/3.
I made a spreadsheet to calculate savings. Right now I save anywhere between $1 and $0.60 by re-encoding vs storing raw, even factoring in the power used to do the encode. And the old hard drives would go into the trash, so I consider them 'free'. Their only purpose is to save me the time of re-ripping from optical if I can avoid it.
The actual question
Thus, my question, is there a way to make an ISO or some other 'whole disk' image of the entire disc. All menus, all little files, everything. It can be encrypted or not, I don't care. As long as there is a way to later decrypt it if I need to re-make 'my standard' for some reason (maybe AV2 or h266 are worthwhile upgrades). I know I can just DD /dev/sr0, but the question is, does that actually work? Are there features pressed into the discs like there were with PS2 games that prevent a 'real' copy from being made? Will I always have to refer to the optical source? Is there some special tool I need in order to make the ISO because dd can't handle some special case?
thanks much.