ArsGeek

Previously I had written about using xDVDShrink to back up your dual layer DVDs to single layer DVDs. Now we’ll look at another native app, K9copy. K9copy is great becasue it will also retain the original DVD menu!

This howto is written specifically for Ubuntu users, but it will work for any Debian based distro and with some minor changes, just about any Linux distro.

First, we’re going to get the latest version of K9copy. You can get a previous version through Synaptic/apt-get but the version available from the repositories will not support (well) backing up the original DVD menu.

So let’s get the latest version first.

wget http://thepiratecove.org/files/k9copy-1.0.4-2_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i k9*.deb

Now, let’s add support to play encrypted DVDs.

sudo apt-get install libdvdread3

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

Let’s add K9copy to your Applications menu. Right click on Applications and chose “Edit Menus”

Click once on Sound and Video to highlight it, then go to File -> New Entry

The name will be “K9copy” (no quotes) and the command to launch K9copy is:

/usr/local/kde/bin/k9copy

Now, you’re set to launch K9copy. Let’s do it. Make sure you have a DVD you want to copy in your dvdrw drive.

When you launch K9copy, click on the folder icon in the upper left to open and read the DVD. Also, click the “Keep Original Menus” box in the middle, on the right of the main page.

Once that’s complete, click on the Settings tab and select where you’ll want to keep your work files. I would not suggest using any of the auto-burning features on this tab, as they seem a bit broken. Let’s just create the iso and then you can use your favorite DVD burning tool to put the finished product on a disk.
Finally, click the gears icon in the upper left to start the copy. You’ll be prompted to give a path for where you want the complete .iso file to be placed. Now, this can take a while, but when it’s done, you should have a burnable ISO file.

geek out.

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