tethik@web:~#

Ripping DVDs

Here is how I rip my old DVDs in 2026. I'll update this post as I learn more and rip different formats.

Prerequisites

Some packages that can be installed on Ubuntu 24.04

apt install handbrake handbrake-cli
apt install libdvd-pkg # necessary codecs
apt install dvdbackup

Ripping the raw DVD files

dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -o ~/Video/MovieName -F -p

If you have multiple parts of .VOB files, you can simply cat them into a single file:

cat *.VOB > ./movie.vob

Transcoding

The resulting vob file will likely be very large and can be made into a more efficient format that if you have a media server to stream it from. To transcode / compress the videos into a smaller format, you can use Handbrake.

Modern devices should be able to handle H.265 MKV format. For old DVDs, I found that the Matroska > H.265 MKV 720p30 preset worked well. With this I managed to reduce the filesize of a movie.vob from 4.7gb to roughly 700mb.

Rough how-to using the Handbrake UI:

  • "Open Source" --> select the combined .VOB file.
  • Set the preset to Matroska > H.265 MKV 720p30
  • Under the "Tags"-tab set the title of the movie and any other details you want to add.
  • Set the name and destination of the new file under "Save As" (Close to the bottom of the UI)
  • Press "Start" to start the transcoding process (it will take a while)

Once done, you should get a notification and have a fresh new .mkv or .mp4 file that you can upload to your media library 😉

File organization

For Jellyfin, I simply put the movie file (e.g. movie.mkv) under a folder with the name of the movie + year of publish. e.g. The Movie Name (2021).

See the following links for reference how to organize your files if using jellyfin:

(Other) References

Posted 2026-07-14 21:45:00 +0200 +0200