copy dvds

Doesn't work that way. DVDs are encrypted with the lame CSS algorithm. It's so lame, that it was broken within months after the first software DVD player software was avaliable. The result are DeCSS and libdvdcss. Unfortunately their use is illegal in countries with lame laws. Actually even giving advice about them is illegal there, so writing and posting this makes impossible for me to travel into these countries for the next years.

To get your DVD onto your harddisk you need to rip them. This can be done with:

transcode (and the dvdrip GUI frontend to it) mencoder (included in the mplayer software) and VLC

But all of them require the libdvdcss being installed to decrypt CSS protected DVDs (that's everyting coming from Hollywood, and a lot more).

I recommend using the h264 video codec or XVid and OggVorbis. If you want the 5.1 sound, then just copy the AC3 from the DVD. The Matroska container format can hold multiple video and audio streams, so this is your best choice for multi language DVDs.

The documentation of the mentioned programs have documentation about ripping DVDs (which is not illegal if the DVD is not protected, but since most DVDs are you need to get illegal in some counytries if you still want them on your harddisk).

Gladly I'm living in a country which has (still) sane laws, for which cracking CSS is not illegal, but only further delivery of unlegit copies.

Wolfgang Draxinger -- GPG key FP: 2FC8 319E C7D7 1ADC 0408 65C6 05F5 A645 1FD3 BD3E