Making an ISO file from a DVD

Its really easy to convert a DVD or CD into an ISO file. Its really fast too (10MB/s or 5 mins for 3.6GB).

Use the dd command to create an ISO image:
dd if=/dev/dvd of=/tmp/mydvd.iso

Now, if you want to access the contents of this ISO image you can mount it and access it like a normal DVD player:
mkdir /mnt/iso
mount -o loop -t iso9660 /tmp/mydvd.iso /mnt/iso


To unmount use
umount -d /mnt/iso

If you use this to backup your DVD collection, you can play them back using VLC Media Player. This lets you 'open a disc' and you can use the URL dvd:///mnt/iso to access it like it was in the DVD tray. Very cool! Its nice having the whole disk as one file, which you can mount when you like to access the individual files. No more messing around finding disks and having problems reading them when they get scratched.

You can play straight from the iso (without mounting it) with Xine.

Use:
xine -pfhq dvd:/path/to/iso

Xine can be installed with apt-get install xine-ui

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