Some scripts to automate ripping and transcoding of your DVDs (movies or series) into video files. Note this is most efficient digitizing TV series and/or large amounts of movies.

If you only have a few movies you want digitized, I recommend using Handbrake to do it manually.

How it works

This project is divided in two separate parts, the ripper and the transcoder.

The idea is to clone this project to your local machine, then run the ripper manually, which just copies the inserted DVD. Then you transfer the files to the transcoder. The transcoder can also be on your local machine, or you can have this project cloned onto a server, which then does the transcoding automatically 24/7.

Ripping

To do the ripping, enter the ripper directory and run ./rip_dvd.py <args>. The most important argument is the type of the DVD, either movie or series, and the name of the movie or TV series you are ripping.

Directory structure:

./ripper
├── bell.oga           # The sound to be played when ripping has finished
├── rip_dvd.py         # The ripper script
├── rip.log            # Logs all ripping attempts
├── ripped
│   ├── movie          # The ripped movies
│   └── series         # The ripped series
├── tmp                # The ripped files while ripping has not yet finished.
│                        # If the script has been terminated, this might not get deleted.
│                        # In this case just remove it yourselves.
└── transfer_ripped.py # The transfer script

Transfer

To transfer the ripped files to the transcoder, enter the ripper directory and run ./transfer_ripped.py. This will rsync all the ripped files to the TRANSFER_DESTINATION_FOLDER (see Configuration) which may be on an external server which then will transcode them into video files.

Note while the transfer is in progress, the script will create movie_title.lock files in source and destination folder to indicate the transfer is yet incomplete. The transcoder will not try to transcode data for which the .lock file exists.

Transcoding

To transcode the ripped files, enter the transcoder directory, then run ./transcode_dvd.py. This will try to transcode all the files in the raw folder and put the results in the transcoded folder. While transcoding is in progress, you can see the live log produced by handbrake by running tail -f raw/movie_title.log.

You can also run this in a systemd-service. For this see the video_transcoder.service.sample file.

Directory structure:

./transcoder
├── transcode_dvd.py                # The transcode script
├── transcode.log                   # Logs all transcoding attempts
├── raw                             # The transfer_ripped.py script should transfer all ripped files here
│   ├── movie
│   └── series
├── transcoded
│   ├── movie                       # The transcoded movies
│   └── series                      # The transcoded series
├── tmp                             # The transcoded files while transcoding has not yet finished.
│                                     # In case of an error during transcoding, this might not get deleted.
│                                     # In this case just remove it yourselves.
└── video_transcoder.service.sample # The sample systemd service file

Fixing transcoding errors

When there was an error transcoding you will see an movie_title.err.log file in the raw folder. This will include the handbrake logs telling you what has gone wrong. After you have fixed the error, delete the movie_title.err.log file and the transcoder will re-attempt transcoding of the movie on the next run.

Fixing Handbrake Error 5

Sometimes when a dvd is damaged, handbrake will exit in the mid of transcoding, resulting in a video file with only a part of the movie. When this happened, handbrake wrote Encode failed (error 5) into the log.

For me, using the option --no-dvdnav resulted in the full video being transcoded (note the damaged parts will not be fixed). To tell the transcoder to use this option, just create an empty series_or_movie_title.nodvdnav file in the raw folder.

Fixing series errors

When transcoding TV series, a common error is that there are more video tracks on the DVD than you specified there are episodes on the DVD. Whether this is the case, you can see at the bottom of the series_title.err.log file.

To fix this, find out which tracks correspond to the episodes on the DVD, then create a series_title.titles file in the raw folder. In this file specify the track numbers one per line.

Example: your series file is called Lost_S01_E01-04, but the DVD has 5 tracks. Assuming track 1 is just a bonus scene you do not want transcoded, create Lost_S01_E01-04.titles:

Then delete the Lost_S01_E01-04.err.log file and the transcoder will retry the transcoding using just titles 2-5 on its next run.

About movie transcoding errors

To automate the DVD-transcoding, this project will tell handbrake to find the main title of the DVD and transcode it. The detection of the main title can sometimes fail resulting in some other DVD title being transcoded.

This means there is no guarantee that transcoding works for every movie (though in my case it worked for about 90%) and you should check all resulting video files. In case of a failure it is fastest to rip and transcode the DVD manually with handbrake.

Configuration

Configuration is done via an .env file. For this, just do cp .env.sample .env and edit the .env file to your liking. When using an server for transcoding, edit the TRANSFER_DESTINATION_FOLDER value. Its default is to transfer the files to the transcoder/raw folder of the current project.

Dependencies

dvdbackup (ripper)
rsync (ripper)
libnotify (ripper)
handbrake (transcoder)
python3 with dependencies listed in requirements.txt (both)

Nix dev-shell

If you use nix you can use the flake.nix via nix develop to enter a shell environment with all the dependencies satisfied. In case you also use direnv, just run direnv allow . to automatically enter the environment whenever entering the project directory.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.