Simple hack makes USB DVD drive usable

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crouton
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:02 pm

Simple hack makes USB DVD drive usable

Post by crouton »

Summary: Before attempting to rip a DVD with MakeMKV, first point mplayer at the link to the main video at ../VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.IFO and watch several seconds of the video.

Example: Suppose my user name is foo, and the disk name is FE_FI_FO_FUM. Insert the DVD into the USB drive and wait for it to automount (if it doesn't, you'll have to mount it yourself, which is beyond the scope of this tutorial.)

Code: Select all

cd /media/foo/FE_FI_FO_FUM/VIDEO_TS
mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0 -vo xv -slang en VTS_01_0.IFO 2>/dev/null
Note: If you're not comfortable running mplayer from the command line, use SMplayer instead, this will still work.

After watching a little bit of the main video, cancel out and then run MakeMKV.
bmillham
Posts: 135
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 12:42 am

Re: Simple hack makes USB DVD drive usable

Post by bmillham »

Why do you need to do this? I can rip using a DVD with no issues.
crouton
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:02 pm

Re: Simple hack makes USB DVD drive usable

Post by crouton »

bmillham wrote:
Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:02 pm
Why do you need to do this? I can rip using a DVD with no issues.
Right. There seem to be a lot of issues using external USB DVD drives. In my case, if I don't do this first, I can't rip the DVD. I cannot tell you why this works, but it does.

Whenever I open MakeMKV, it says, "Cannot find usable optical drive". But I can still click on the Open button, browse to the VIDEO_TS folder, and then open VIDEO_TS.IFO. I can do this every time. But if I don't watch a few seconds of the video using mplayer first, I can't rip the DVD.
Woodstock
Posts: 9912
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: Simple hack makes USB DVD drive usable

Post by Woodstock »

Question: Are you building MakeMKV, or using one of the "packaged" versions?

Another user was commenting that the snap package was not getting permission to read removable media, and that editing its permissions made it work. This work-around seems similar.
MakeMKV Frequently Asked Questions
How to aid in finding the answer to your problem: Activating Debug Logging
crouton
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:02 pm

Re: Simple hack makes USB DVD drive usable

Post by crouton »

Woodstock wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:26 am
Question: Are you building MakeMKV, or using one of the "packaged" versions?

Another user was commenting that the snap package was not getting permission to read removable media, and that editing its permissions made it work. This work-around seems similar.
No, not using a snapd package. Building it, or adding the ppa:

https://launchpad.net/~heyarje/+archive ... kemkv-beta
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