Hi!
Well, I like mplayer (www.mplayerhq.hu) a lot! Conversion and all that. But
- for a quick copy of a dvd to harddisk I didn't find the right tools under
linux at that time (something similar to vobdec under win). So, I hacked 
together a copy program using heavily the libdvdread library (which is 
really great).
It should also now work on FreeBSD (many thanks to Takeshi HIYAMA!!) and
Solaris (also many thanks to Erik Hovland!!)

What you need in advance is libdvdread and libdvdcss installed (take a look 
at http://freshmeat.net/projects/libdvdread). 
There are also rpm and deb packages available! 

**IMPORTANT**
	I receive nearly NO bugreports, so either vobcopy (and therefore I) 
	are near-perfect (yeah, right) or your problems have a real slim chance
	of getting fixed. Bugreporting is *really* simple, add "-v -v" to your 
	vobcopy call to have vobcopy create a bugreport file you can mail me at
	robos@muon.de
	I did receive some questions which I answer in the FAQ. Take a look
	there before you mail me a bugreport. 
	
It should compile then via:
(Configure: ./configure.sh
	    is a self-written configure script. Try it. It isn't necessary
	    but it try to find some things. If it fails skip it) 

Compile:
	make
	(if you want to disable large file support during compilation, use
	make disable_lfs 
	instead)
Install:
	as root: make install


Handling:
vobcopy	(without any options)
	should copy the correct /path/to/dvd/video_ts/vts_0x_01.vob to 
	vts_0x_yy.vob to the directory you are invoking vobcopy from.
	(vobcopy takes the title with the most chapters by default if no title
	is specified)
 	The vobs will be merged up to 2 gigs and then a new file will be 
	started. So what you get is:
	name-of-moviex-1.vob (2 gig size) name-of-moviex-2.vob ...

For more infos on the options see "man vobcopy"
	Newest addition:
vobcopy -F
	Speed up the copying (experimental)
	(in my case it went from 10:43 min to 9:40, so not THAT much, maybe
	with faster drives...)
vobcopy -m (or --mirror, long-options are possible now)
	Mirror the content of /dvd/video_ts/ to a dir named after the dvd.
	The vobs are de-css'ed though.

	Optionally you can provide which vts_xx_01 (which title) should be 
	copied via
vobcopy -n 3
	will copy vts_03_xx.vob to harddisk.
vobcopy -o /tmp/
	will copy the output to /tmp/
vobcopy -1/tmp1/
	will continue to write the data to this directory if the first one 
	(behind -o) is full. Additionally there are -2, -3 and -4 available.
	(watch out that there are no spaces behind the number and the dir, 
	might not work otherwise) 
vobcopy -l 
	will copy the data into only one really large file (probably larger
	than 2 GB). This large-file-support has to be met by your system. No 
	autodetection yet.
vobcopy -h
	gives you the available command options (help)

If parts of vobcopy work buggy you can override some things:
vobcopy -f
	force vobcopy to write to the destination directory even if vobcopy 
	thinks there is not enough free space. 
vobcopy -i /path/to/the/mounted/dvd/
	if vobcopy fails to autodetect the mounted dvd you can provide the path
	like that.
vobcopy -I
	will give you some infos on the dvd data and on the output directory
vobcopy -v -v 
	will write a log-file to /tmp/ which you can send to me as a bugreport
	(along with a few words by you about the problem)
vobcopy -b
	begins to copy from the specified offset-size. Modifiers like b for 
	512-bytes, k for kilo-bytes, m for mega- and g for giga-bytes can be 
	appended to the number. Example: vobcopy -b 500m will start to copy 
	from 500MB onward till the end.
vobcopy -e size[bkmg]
	similar to -b, this options lets you specify some size to stop before 
	the end.	
vobcopy -V 
	prints the version number of vobcopy
vobcopy -t name|stdout
	changes the name of the output file or writes to stdout for pipeing.
	
The options can be combined and arranged as you like.
It worked with me, hope with you too.
Have fun!
Robos (robos@muon.de)

