DVD Ripping

[bizthepirate]

Enough said. If Boxee wants to do something, amazing, I feel DVD ripping is one of those options. IMHO, Handbrake would be the easiest backend to use, but that's just because I'm a diehard fan of Handbrake, and there could be other options (mencoder, for one). Honestly, I have never seen a media center that would do DVD Ripping, most likely for legal purposes, but, could it not be offered as a plugin or such? It would pretty much make me cry, in joy.

[tsella]

handbrake is great!

i don't think we'll venture into these waters, but a python script around any decoder that supports it would do. thing is, its a lengthy and cpu intensive process. why do it on the box running boxee? you should be able to enjoy boxee while you are ripping your dvds on some other boxen :)

[bizthepirate]

This has probably been asked a dozen times but is there some form of reference or documentation for making python scripts with boxee?

[marcel]

Hi bizthepirate
We have no specific documentation for creating python scripts for boxee but you can use some xbmc user's sites as references :

http://members.cox.net/alexpoet/downloads/

http://home.no.net/thor918/xbmc/xbmc.html

[tsella]

also, you can look at scripts we ship with boxee, such as rtorrent controller.

and http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Building_Scripts

[belovedmonster]

thing is, its a lengthy and cpu intensive process. why do it on the box running boxee? you should be able to enjoy boxee while you are ripping your dvds on some other boxen :)

The problem with that philosophy is it requires two computers to use Boxee, that is kinda unacceptable. Besides, I have an ancient PC that sometime chugs just playing SD video and I can quite happily listen to mp3s and browse the net while I encode video, so no reason why ripping a DVD would render Boxee unusable for the entire time.

Maybe Boxee could be clever enough that it assigns CPU to the rip depending on what else you are doing. Like say you are just listening to mp3s while you rip then a lot of CPU goes to the rip, but if you then decide to watch a HD video it pretty much pauses the rip process until that movie has finished. All the while the rip is going on in the background with whatever spare CPU there is.

However it works, I really do think Boxee needs to be able to rip media as well as play it.

[bigfatdummy]

Currently I rip my DVD's on my Mac in Handbrake and transfer the file to my Linux box. Honestly, ripping with Handbrake on a Mac is by far the easiest way I have found to do it. Plus, I want my video is MP4 format so I can put it on my iphone as well as on boxee.

The other method is to get handbrake cli for linux.

Copy HandBrakeCLI to your /usr/bin/ & chmod +x it

sudo cp HandBrakeCLI /usr/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/HandBrakeCLI

Then all you have to do is open the terminal and use,
HandBrakeCLI -i /dev/cdrom -o /home/username/folder/filename.extension

for me its

HandBrakeCLI -i /dev/cdrom -o /home/bigfatdummy/Movies/myrippeddvd.mp4

Very simple to pop the DVD into the drive and paste the command into the terminal.

[Arno]

I agree that ripping would be a great feature. I still do not understand why there is such a fuzz about ripping DVD's, while my itunes immediately starts ripping an audioCD as soon as I enter it in the drive...

I would love to store my DVD's and CD's on a computer or NAS or something and storing the discs somewhere else. Makes for easier access, all that additional info that Boxee can then pull off the net, etc would make it so much better...

Those who want to rip illegally, have handbrake and other ways to do so anyway, not to mention torrents and usenet.

Ok, end of rant :-) Time to go enjoy Boxee some more! Excellent work guys!

Arno

[agentlame]

I agree that ripping would be a great feature. I still do not understand why there is such a fuzz about ripping DVD's, while my itunes immediately starts ripping an audioCD as soon as I enter it in the drive...

because it's in violation of the dmca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca) to circumvent encryption (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_ripping#Legality). dvds are encrypted with css (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System), cds have no such encryption.

[iBog]

Boxee could easily use the Unix utility DD to copy the DVD to an .ISO file. This is not CPU intensive.

This does not crack or remove the CSS encryption. Boxee currently supports playback of DVD or ISO image with CSS encrypted content.

Read about the drama involving RealDVD here (http://www.realdvd.com/litigation). And why the MPAA should loose against RealDVD here (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/why-mpaa-should-lose-against-realdvd).

[Arno]

because it's in violation of the dmca (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca) to circumvent encryption (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_ripping#Legality). dvds are encrypted with css (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System), cds have no such encryption.

AH, thanks for that. New to me, I learned something today. Nevertheless seems strange to me from a consumer's point of view.

Well, how about ripping CDs then :-)