Ladd Photos

Below is a small script I wrote to make a copy of an audio CD under Linux. Simply place a blank CD in the burner, the CD to copy in your second CD/DVD drive, and run the script. I am sure there are tons of scripts like this out there on the net, but I decided to contribute mine anyways, mainly because I feel it is clean, concise, and the best way to copy an audio CD. You will need to edit the device’s (/dev/hdb, /dev/hdd, etc) to match your computer setup. BTW, only use this script to copy CDs you already legally own… or else the RIAA will throw lawyers at me. Here is the script:

#!/bin/sh
cd /tmp
cdparanoia -w -d /dev/hdd -B
cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdb speed=40 driveropts=burnfree -pad -audio track*.wav
rm -f track*.wav 
eject hdb
eject hdd

Below is a python script I wrote to make a copy of a video DVD and burn it onto a writable DVD. This is a more complicated process than copying an audio CD because manufactured DVDs can hold around 8.5 gigabytes (GB) of data while your blank writable DVD can usually only hold 4.7 GB. So, this script goes through the process of taking the movie tract, decrypting it, separating out the video and audio, compressing the video as needed, combining the result back together, and burning it onto the blank DVD. I can’t tell any difference between the original and the copy, besides all the “extras” missing, so it works out well.

This script runs under Linux and requires python, vobcopy, libdvdcss, mjpegtools, transcode, dvdauthor, and dvd+rw-tools. Only use this script to copy DVDs you legally own for your personal use or else the MPAA will saw off your hands with a rusty butter knife. You have been warned!

#!/usr/bin/python

####
# Author: Chris Ladd
# File: copydvd.py
# Date: April 13, 2005
# License: GPL v2
####

import os;

# Change this to point to your DVD burner
DVD_BURNER = "/dev/hdb"

# Make sure we have a clean environment
os.chdir("/tmp")
os.system("rm -f *.vob")
os.system("rm -f *.vob.partial")
os.system("rm -f movie.m2v")
os.system("rm -f movie.ac3")
os.system("rm -f shrink.m2v")
os.system("rm -f movie*.mpg")
os.system("rm -f toc.xml")
os.system("rm -rf movie/")

# Copy the dvd movie track
assert os.system("vobcopy -l") == 0
assert os.system("mv *.vob movie.vob") == 0

# Separate the audio and video
assert os.system("tcextract -i movie.vob -t vob -x mpeg2 > movie.m2v") == 0
assert os.system("tcextract -i movie.vob -t vob -x ac3 -a 0 > movie.ac3") == 0

# Calculate how much we have to shrink the video
m2v_size = float(os.stat("movie.m2v")[6])
ac3_size = float(os.stat("movie.ac3")[6])
print "m2v size: %f" % m2v_size
print "ac3 size: %f" % ac3_size

factor = float(m2v_size / (4700000000.0 - ac3_size) * 1.02)
factor = round(factor, 2)
print "shrink factor: %f" % factor

# Shrink the video if necessary and put it back together with the audio
if factor > 1.0 :
    assert os.system("tcrequant -i movie.m2v -o shrink.m2v -f %f" % factor) == 0
    assert os.system("mplex -f 8 -o movie%d.mpg shrink.m2v movie.ac3") == 0
else :
    assert os.system("mplex -f 8 -o movie%d.mpg movie.m2v movie.ac3") == 0

# Write the DVD TOC so that the video starts playing once inserted
toc = open("toc.xml", "w")
toc.write('<dvdauthor>n  <vmgm />n  <titleset>n   <titles>n    <pgc>n')
for filename in os.popen("ls movie*.mpg") :
    toc.write('      <vob file="%s" />n' % filename[:-1])
toc.write('    </pgc>n   </titles>n  </titleset>n </dvdauthor>')
toc.close()

# Create the DVD image
assert os.system("dvdauthor -o movie -x toc.xml") == 0

# Burn the new DVD
assert os.system("growisofs -Z %s -dvd-video movie/" % DVD_BURNER) == 0

# Clean up
os.system("rm -f *.vob")
os.system("rm -f movie.m2v")
os.system("rm -f movie.ac3")
os.system("rm -f shrink.m2v")
os.system("rm -f movie*.mpg")
os.system("rm -f toc.xml")
os.system("rm -rf movie/")