1. Backup disk and remove copy protection

AnyDVD HD

AnyDVD HD does a good job removing the copy protection and backing up the disk to your hard drive. It is a proprietary piece of software, but I found that a lifetime license was worth the investment (about € 100).

Please note that removing copy protection may be illegal in some countries. In Norway (where I live) it is, to my best understanding, illegal to circumvent effective copy protection measures. As far as I see it, AnyDVD makes the copy protection on Blu-rays very ineffective. However, there are, to my knowledge, no court orders that defines what effective is. Removing the copy protection may therefore be in the gray area. Nevertheless, I strongly believe consumers should be able to back up their own DVDs and Blu-rays, and use software like XBMC to manage their media collection.

2. Identifying the movie streams

DBInfo

You may want to store the whole blu-ray with all its files and folders. I am however mainly interested in the main feature itself. To identify the stream(s) that contain(s) the movie I use BDInfo. The first and longest playlist normally contain the stream(s) that constitute the movie. The movie in the screenshot above was contained in only one stream (“00000.m2ts”). The streams are always located in the folder “[movie root]\BDMV\STREAM”.

If only one stream (.m2ts file) contains the whole movie, you may simply store this file where ever you like, and watch it with XBMC or any other viewer you’d like. If the movie is constituted of several streams you should use tsMuxer to join/append these streams in the order shown in BDInfo.

Please note that the .m2ts container does not contain subtitles and chapters. If you want this you could for instance use the mkv container. However, since I normally do not care about either, I just back up the .m2ts file.

3. Adding an AC3 sound track and removing unnecessary tracks (optional)

Eac3toAC3

Some players are not able to decode DTS sound tracks. As a consequence of this I normally add an AC3 (Dolby Digital) track to my .m2ts containers. This is done by first encoding the DTS to AC3 using Eac3to.

tsMuxer

Next, create a new .m2ts file by adding (muxing) the newly created .ac3 file to the .m2ts file from the blu-ray. This is done using tsMuxer.

While muxing the two files I normally remove tracks that I do not need. This may be languages, presentation graphics, or video tracks with lower resolution. To remove them, simply uncheck the tracks that you do not want.

Lennon against Aresenal - http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Nevertheless, C Sports has also changed a bit. The good, C Sports now support for Linux through Flash, and they provide streams from the Carling Cup. The bad, the prices are still too high. 79 NOK (10 €) for a game in the first round of the Carling Cup, is still too expensive. At least with the service quality they offer. The ugly: the image! The picture quality on my stream was very poor. Charging 10€ for it is almost a robbery. Moreover, the stream ended five minutes before the game ended!! I could at least not reconnect at the end of the game.

Nice to see more streaming services available on the Linux platform. However, the image and service quality needs to increase, and the price needs to decrease.

Step 1.Installation

First, dvdbackup may be installed through Synaptic, or by typing the following into the command line: sudo apt-get install dvdbackup

Second, you most likely have to install a CSS library to remove the copy protection. This may be done by adding the following unofficial repositories to your list of repositories (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager, then Settings->Repositories, and them on the “Other Software” pane):

deb http://unofficial.debian-maintainers.org/ lenny main contrib non-free restricted
deb-src http://unofficial.debian-maintainers.org/ lenny main contrib non-free restricted

You will most likely get an error message because of a missing key. Ignore this error message, or get the missing key through installing the package dmo-archive-keyring. Then you need to add the package libdvdcss2.

Third, Handbrake does not have an official stable release for Ubuntu at the moment. However, the nightly build has been working very well on my computer. To install this build follow these instructions. In short, add the following two repositories, and install the package handbrake-gtk.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/stebbins/handbrake-snapshots/ubuntu lucid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/stebbins/handbrake-snapshots/ubuntu lucid main

Step 2. Ripping with dvdbackup

I use the command line tool dvdback up to make a copy of the DVD on the hard drive. The copy does not have any copy protection. To do this, start the command line, and go to the folder where you want the image to be stored. Then, type: dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M

dvdbackup - screenshot

I have experienced some problems with the name of the dvd drive, but /dev/dvd/ usually works. If not, find the right name under /dev or /media. As you might see from the image above, you could receive some error messages. Do not worry about these. They are ignored sectors that are part of the copy protection. Ripping a full DVD usually takes about 15 to 20 minutes on my computer.

3. Transcoding with Handbrake

Transcoding the movies and series from the DVD format (usually a VIDEO_TS folder with several VTS_**_*.VOB files) to a single video file is very simple. First, set up Handbrake the way you want. Personally, I do not include subtitles, select the MP4 file format, and use the “High quality” preset. However, you may play around with the settings any way you like.

HandBrake - Screenshot

Second, Select “Source” in Handbrake (see the screenshot above), browse to the source folder of one DVD, and click “OK”.

Third, Pick the “Title” you want to encode. give it a sensible name, select the folder where you want to store the transcoded file, and click “Add to Queue”. The longest title is automatically selected. For DVDs with movies, the longest title is usually the movie itself. For TV series, make sure that you add all the episodes on the disc to the queue.

Fourth, when you have added all the movies you want to transcode, simply click “Start” and let your computer do the job. On my machine (AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black with 4 GB RAM), transcoding a movie takes about 45 min to an hour with the hiqh quality settings. On an AMD Athlon X2 4850e with 4 GB RAM, it takes significantly longer.

The next step

When Handbrake finishes you will have a collection of transcoded movies and series. In future post, I will show how I manage these using another set of open source software.

Disclaimer

Ripping and transcoding (copyrighted) DVDs may be illegal in some countries. In Norway, where I live it is not illegal to break “weak” copy protections like CSS (the copy protection used on DVDs). Distribution of copyrighted material is still illegal in Norway and most other countries, so please don’t do it.

This does not work right out of the box with Ubuntu. Thanks to Anders S. Lund I found the solution, which was to install an alpha version of Moonlight:

1. Remove the Firefox-VLC plugin: “sudo apt-get remove mozilla-plugin-vlc”
2. Remove previous versions of Moonlght: In Firefox goto Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions
3. Download the most recent version of Moonlight: http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/prerelease.aspx
4. In case of sluggish performance, turn of all effects by closing the browser and using the following command: “MOONLIGHT_OVERRIDES=effects=no firefox“

See the following link for more information/troubleshooting.

MOONLIGHT_OVERRIDES=effects=no firefox

Steam - Technology for the future or infrastructure from the past?

Recently I complained about Canal Plus’ C Sports awfully high prices. Paying close to €20 for streaming a Premiere League game, is in my eyes way too expensive. While I am a very big fan of digital distribution I wonder why so many digitally distributed products have to be so expensive. Digitally distributed products are often sold at the same or even higher price as their retail counterparts. The most recent example is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. MW2 was recently made available through Steam for close to €60. Elkjøp, a Norwegian retail store, is currently selling the same game in a weekend deal for 350 NOK (about €40).

A €20 price difference is quite astonishing. Retail products come on a disk which is put into a case together with a manual. The cases are transported all over the world and sold in stores which need to pay rent and their employees. These are all costs which can be cut if the product is distributed digitally.

Setting up and maintaining a server park for digital stores is obviously not free either. However, it would surprise me if these costs are higher than the costs related to printing, distributing, and selling retail products. Moreover, digital distribution should give the developers and publishers added advantages. First, it is so far not possible to resell digitally distributed product. Hence, everyone who wants to get their hands on a product needs to buy it from the publisher rather than through second hand stores or on the private market. Second, by requiring activation of the games through the digital store, the stores may contribute to reducing piracy. Third, digital stores would make it far easier to sell add-ons, extensions, and other products using micro transactions. All in all, digital distribution seems to be a big advantage for the developers and publishers.

However, this is not the first time Steam charges the price of a kidney for their games. I guess we as consumers should look elsewhere to increase the competition in the market. I hope that stores like Impulse and Direct2Drive will increase their catalogs and contribute to forcing Steam into reducing their  prices.

Premiere League action

The Good: C Sports is the services I have been waiting for. I would like to enjoy Premier League football from time to time, but I don’t really have time to watch that many games. Hence, I don’t really bother to pay about 3000 NOK (€370) per year for the whole Canal+ package. Having Premier League games available through pay-per-view is perfect.

The Bad: Like most other paid or rental services, C Sports does not support other browsers than Internet Explorer and Safari on Windows and Mac. Linux is not supported.

The Ugly: The really ugly thing about the C Sports service is not the fact that I have to run it on Windows using IE. It is rather the awful price you have to pay per game. 159 NOK (close to €20) per game is way, way too expensive. Personally, I think maybe about 50 NOK (€6) would be a good price. However, I understand that the Premier League rights are expensive and I could have paid 100 NOK. 159 is just too expensive. I might try the serivce but I am not becoming a regular viewer.

Fixing it was rather easy. Have a look at the solution provided by M.Srinivasaverman (thanks man!).

Yesterday, I saw The Last Boy Scout (again) with Bruce Willis and I wonder why they don’t make these kinds of movies any more. Except from the constant cigarette smoking, I love most things about it. The movie is very far from classical art, but who cares about art? I want entertainment when I see a movie. In the Last Boy Scout, Bruce Willis is a 100% witty bad ass. I love his rather silly jokes. Maybe I have a sense of 90ies-humour?

Do we have anything similar from the last decade? There are a few which I can think of but they are not as bad ass and not as “witty” as the old Bruce Willis movies. I think Guy Ritchie has a few good ones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and RocknRolla) but they are not the same. Even though Jason Statham is involved in a few other ones besides Snatch (Crank 1 and 2, Transporter 1, 2, and 3) he is not that witty as Willis. I also liked Shoot ‘Em Up and Taken but again they fall short when it comes to the silly jokes.

If you have any recommendations for pure action-entertainment, please give me a hint.

I have previously been impressed by how easy it is to buy and download digital content through either your Xbox or xbox.com. If the movie rental it is as simple as buying games/game add-ons I am sure it will be a hit. Well, as long as Microsoft is able to get a decent selection of material and as long as the the pricing is right it is going to be a hit.

Microsoft’s movie on demand and other services like Hulu have not been available here in Norway so far. I have until now used Cdon’s bredbåndsfilm a bit but the selection of movies is not yet good enough. The biggest problem with Cdon’s offering though is ironically enough their dependency towards Microsoft. Cdon and other services like SF Anytime do unfortunately require Windows and Internet Explorer.

Another interesting news is Microsofts Games on Demand (browse down a bit). They do not say anything about Norway but it would be really cool to be able to buy Xbox games and download them over the Internet. However, the Xbox’s 20GB disk may be a bit of a problem…

Justice Is Lost
Justice Is Raped
Justice Is Gone
Pulling Your Strings
Justice Is Done
Seeking No Truth
Winning Is All
Find it So Grim
So True
So Real

I must admit that I probably look for the opportunities where I can use Metallica lyrics to express something but this time I think it is quite appropriate. While I am against piracy I must say that I value democracy, freedom of speech, and just legal system over the commercial interests of a reactionary industry. Recently, it seems the commercial values of the movie and music industry is more valuable than a just legal system. Legal companies here in Norway are pushing to get sensitive information (IP, names, addresses etc) from the Internet Service Providers about “suspected” pirates. The attorneys are in other words trying to do the police’s work. Do we really want to privatize the police? I don’t think so.

However, it seems the Norwegian courts are bending over for the movie and music industry. A recent verdict about whether or not a Norwegian ISP has to hand over the identity of a suspected pirate to the attorneys, was today kept secret from the public. I agree with Atle, WTF? How is it possible to keep a verdict which concerns the whole legal system, secret? If private companies are allowed to act as police I would like to know about it.

If the movie and music industry feel the police are not doing enough to solve their cases maybe they have to realize that there are other cirmes (murder, rape, child molestation, trafficing and so on) which are way worse than illegal distribution of music and movies. Second, maybe they should try to deal with this politically like the rest of us. If they are not happy with the way the police is spending their resources maybe should start their own political party and change the way the country is run. Third, why don’t the industry start providing the services we want? How hard can it be? There are plenty of alternatives of people who have understood how to use technology propperly to distribute digital content: NRKbeta, Steam,  Metallica (of course), and a whole lot of others.