[vox-tech] Ripping DVDs

[Charles McLaughlin]

Pete,

Thanks for the info... APT sounds very nice.  I was really dreading
installing all of the packages that Transcode depends on.

To answer your question, there are DVD recorders that can write to blank DVD
media.  These disks, DVD-R or DVD+R (depending on which model DVD recorder
you use) work on most TV DVD players.  DVDs use an encryption scheme called
CSS that makes it hard to copy the data files off the DVD and onto your hard
drive.  This Transcode program makes it easy to extract the video from DVDs,
although I'm not sure if it can unscramble DVDs that use CSS.  In any case,
I opted not to use CSS because I think it sucks.  I used a Mac to burn the
DVD -- Apple has some nice programs for editing video and authoring DVDs.  I
wonder if there are simple video editing programs for Linux?  I've looked at
Film Gimp, but it didn't look very exciting.....

Thanks for your help.

Charles

<snip>

> stupid naive question: can you rip and burn DVD's and play them on your tv
DVD
> drive?  or are they only playable on a computer dvd drive?
>
> i know nothing about dvd's other than they cost more to rent than video
> tapes at blockbusters.  ;-)   do dvd's have something similar to
> macrovision?  or do they rely solely on CSS?
>
> pete