During a recent workshop in India for the Film Heritage Foundation, I ran an open-source workshop introducing students from India and surrounding countries to open tools and standards. From a few different students came the request to archive DVDs (and CDs) and also to extract the contents in a way that would result in good quality video files that could be upscaled for DCP creation. Many had been given born-digital content shot on video cameras recording straight to disc where no other source is available. Understanding methods for access and preservation (preferably with open-source tooling) was high on their todo list. Optical media is also listed as ‘Critically Endangered’ in the DPC Bit List, so discussions about approaches for disc preservation are very important. Take a look at the DPC Preservation Management of Digital Materials for more information about the variety and challenges of optical media discs.

WARNING: This tutorial is for archivists or content owners. Please do not rip discs that you DO NOT own or DO NOT have permission to replicate for archival access purposes.

Thanks to the Mastodon digipres.club who responded to my request for their approaches to DVD preservation. From these responses and some research there appear to be three clear methods preferred by memory institutions:

• Archiving the Disc ISOs are preserved as-is. An ISO is a single-file digital copy of the entire optical disc, like a CD or DVD, that preserves all the data and its exact structure. The ISO file allows you to burn a new physical disc with the same content, or to mount the file as a virtual drive on your computer
• Archive the Streams DVD video codecs are preserved but the contents are rewrapped for archiving, sometimes preserving the original DVD menu structure too
• Encoding the Streams Ripping the streams from the DVD and encoding into separate Audiovisual files and disregarding the menu data though preserving chapters – usually just for access copies
• A Brief Conclusion

The method you choose will depend on how you think you will need to use the files in the future. You may want to follow up with two approaches, such as generate an ISO in case you want to burn discs in the future, but also rip the streams to provide easy access files. Below I outline some of the software people have been using, and try to link to resources that discuss workflows or video guides to use the software.

I’ve run some tests myself with software called MakeMKV and Handbrake. I’ve not been able to test an extensive range of optical media discs below, just unencrypted write once (burnable) DVD-R and DVD+R. It’s possible different discs will give different results! So if you want to incorporate any of these steps into a preservation workflow please run some tests yourself and ensure the results meet all your requirements.

Archiving the Discs

Amongst the software recommended for ISO creation was MakeMKV which is available for all platforms and makes ISO files from a disc very easy. Load the software, connect your Blu-ray or DVD drive, insert a disc and wait for it load. If you click the button at the top, second from the left (yellow folder with a green arrow) it will load your MakeMKV disc backup panel where you simply pick a folder path and a file name then hit OK.

I tried a homemade DVD-R and DVD+R with some old television captures. When the job completed a “Backup done” pop-up appeared, and log outputs display in the lower half of the window. I didn’t have any errors but if I did I assume details would be found here!

And it’s as simple as that to make an ISO! I’ve dropped the .iso file I created into VLC and the menu played as if it was the DVD player software displaying it – with active buttons that launched all the video streams.

Finding the software for long-term preservation is just one step to preserving your discs though. Below there are some further approaches to ISO preservation that I recommend reading, particularly where archive professionals discuss their workflow choices!

Windows solutions

Microsoft Windows users can investigate ISObuster, and the open-source tool that comes with it IROMSGL. There’s a great blog that helps with installation of the ISObuster family of software on the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) website, and if you want to try installing this is a definite read! And here is a wonderful workflow description using ISObuster and IROMLAB by NYPL in the code4lib journal, a wonderfully detailed document produced between the British Library and the DPC: Developing a Robust Migration Workflow for Preserving and Curating Hand-held Media, and a blog from University of Kent about the preservation of DVDs and CDs of their Stand Up Comedy Archives using IsoBuster.

Linux solutions

For Linux users you can create ISOs using software called BitCurator. It’s an extensive and popular tool built with many free and open source digital forensics tools and is freely distributed under an open source license. There are excellent installation guidelines, and an active community with mailing lists to help with any issues! There’s also a great guide to the TATE’s disc imaging workflow built on BitCurator. There’s also a tool called readom and ddrescue that support ISO creation from CD-ROMs and DVDs. Check out Bitsgalore’s blog post about preserving discs with these tools for more info – it also links to his 2015 blog which he updated in 2024! A great mine of information!

Mac OS solutions

Mac users have a built-in tool, Disk Utility, which can copy non-protected DVDs and create ISO format images. They have great support documentation that shows you how to use the sofware to make an empty ISO then populate with your files, or build an ISO from a connected disc drive – the second section which I think is the most helpful!

General guides

There are some general Digital Preservation guides that provide links to other open-source or proprietary worfklows and tools including Community-Owned digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR) and AMIA open source workflows. There’s also a nice comparison of disc imaging software on Wikipedia which give a great overview of what formats are supported by the many softwares that are available to you!

Archiving the streams

The second approach is to remux the streams to a different wrapper, but maintaining the existing stream codecs. MakeMKV also lets you rewrap your disc contents into a Matroska container. You can use the same simple GUI interface to do this.

First you need to click on the little disc player button taking you to a new panel (shown below) which let you select which streams you want to preserve. You also need to select a folder path to locate your Matroska stream in, like the example below “MKVFOLDER” on my desktop.

Tick the Title, Video and Audio streams you want to merge into your new MKV, select your Output folder path then hit the “Make MKV” button in the top right side. The file created will stream all the media files into one MKV file, called A1_t00.mkv, B1_t00.mkv…

When it’s finished another box pops up confirming completion, and how many titles were saved. The streams are remuxed, maintaining their original DVD codec and configurations. There should be Menu metadata that identifies your DVD chapters and playing the file in VLC allows you to skip between them. Example metadata from my home movie:

General
Unique ID                                : 237398971924116193003695742342456494704 (0xB29960FE3FE17398A5B9D6A04A1D4A70)
Complete name                            : /Users/Joanna/Desktop/MKVFOLDER/A1_t00.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 2
File size                                : 823 MiB
Duration                                 : 12 min 31 s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 9 184 kb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2025-12-04 19:28:34
Writing application                      : MakeMKV v1.18.2 darwin(x64-release)
Writing library                          : libmakemkv v1.18.2 (1.3.10/1.5.2) darwin(x64-release)

Video
ID                                       : 1
ID in the original source medium         : 224 (0xE0)
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@Main
Format settings                          : CustomMatrix / BVOP
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : M=3, N=12
Format settings, picture structure       : Frame
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG2
Codec ID/Info                            : MPEG 1 or 2 Video
Duration                                 : 12 min 31 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 8 796 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 9 282 kb/s
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Standard                                 : PAL
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.848
Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00:00
Time code source                         : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed                         : Open
GOP, Open/Closed of first frame          : Closed
Stream size                              : 788 MiB (96%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No
Color primaries                          : BT.601 PAL
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.470 System B/G
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.470 System B/G
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Audio
ID                                       : 2
ID in the original source medium         : 189 (0xBD)128 (0x80)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 12 min 31 s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 384 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 34.4 MiB (4%)
Title                                    : Stereo
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Original source medium                   : DVD-Video

Menu
00:00:00.080                             : en:Chapter 01
00:05:40.880                             : en:Chapter 02
00:11:20.720                             : en:Chapter 03

The MKV format can store multiple video/audio tracks with all meta-information and preserve chapters. There are many players that can play MKV files like VLC, and there are tools to convert MKV files to many formats, including DVD and Blu-ray discs. It’s free at the moment but may not stay that way – and it’s only partially open-source.

Using FFmpeg’s DVD Demuxer

I’ve been reliably informed by one of FFmpeg’s amazing developers that the new DVD demuxer available in Version 8 is very capable at remuxing DVDs! The command following would create a similar file to MakeMKV I think. Because we’re using FFmpeg’s stream copy “-c copy” no streams will be encoded. The file will only be remuxed to Matroska:

ffmpeg -f dvdvideo -demuxer-lavf-o-add=title=1 \
-i av://dvdvideo:/VOLUMES/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER \
-map 0 -c copy movie.mkv

Let’s look at what these commands mean: ffmpeg calls the software -f dvdvideo will select the DVD demuxer filter to run the command -demuxer-lavf-o-add=title=1 will select a specific video title from your DVD for you – if you leave this out it should default to title 1 anyhow. -i av://dvdvideo:/VOLUMES/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER finds your DVD or CD and the /VOLUMES section onward needs to be relative to your Terminal location -map 0 will map all the streams into the stream copy Matroska -c copy will stream copy the stream codecs without encoding them movie.mkv – the name you want your new remuxed file to be called

The only obstacle to trying this out right away is that the dvdvideo library doesn’t install currently with Package Managers like Homebrew, so you would need to build your version of FFmpeg from source and ensure you include --enable-demuxer=dvdvideo in your build instructions. There’s a great series of guides to building from source available on FFmpeg’s trac website to help.

I’ve not found many other solutions for remuxing streams but if I find more (or you know of any) then I can add them in due course!

Encoding the Streams

If you just want to make rip your streams to make viewing copies then there’s one well known piece of software used by many – Handbrake. It is available for operating systems and can handle many, many different format conversions thanks to sharing FFmpeg libraries.

It will let you select your loaded CD / DVDs and a drop down lets you select which title you want to rip. You can manually select your preferred format and codec selections, or click on ‘Toggle Presets’ and pick one of the supplied options like the one below – Matroska with H.264 codec. This will make a 576 height file at 25 FPS and progressive..

Unlike MakeMKV, this software will encode your video and audio streams. I’m unaware of any stream copy features with it. If your plan is to supply these files for web viewing then you will want to deinterlace, and I would select Yadif for this (a very good FFmpeg deinterlacing filter).

When you’re ready to go hit the green “Start” button at the top. I’ve used this software for years and it’s generally really reliable, easy to use and fast, thanks to FFmpeg!

Using FFmpeg’s DVD Demuxer

Of course, if you have gone to the trouble to build your version of FFmpeg from scratch with the new DVD demuxer installed, then you can use FFmpeg to rip/encode your files too! You will need to experiment with commands and

ffmpeg -f dvdvideo -demuxer-lavf-o-add=title=1 \
-i av://dvdvideo:/VOLUMES/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER \
-map 0 -c:v libx265 -crf 26 -c:a aac movie.mp4

Most of the command is the same as the one above, but instead of using FFmpeg’s stream copy (-c copy), we are setting a video and audio codec to encode the file with. -c:v libx265 selects the H.265 library for the encoding -crf 26 is a way to control the bit rate and quality of the finished file using the constant rate factor flag. 26 is a medium setting generally consider the best average setting -c:a aac selects AAC audio codec for encoding

This should result in a file with different metadata than the example above, as you have encoded the MPEG stream into H.265! You should hopefully see a benefit in file size too as the H.265 encoding algorithm is much newer and more effective at balancing image preservation/compression ratios. But you are encoding a lossy format to another lossy format so be prepared to tweak your command to find the best config for you.

A Brief Conclusion

The fact there are so many more archival articles and tools for preserving optical image discs to ISO suggests this is a preferred approach across institutions. If you retain a .ISO file then you can make new burns of DVD/CD from your preserved file, and also remux or rip the contents at a later date. So if you just have time to do one of the three suggested approaches above, then making an .ISO is likely the best option for you!

While reading various sources I’ve learnt of many disc problems including stuttering or pausing caused by seeking across file boundaries, audio sync issues, timing problems, wrong playback order and truncated files. DVDs and CDs are an old technology and processing them can be problematic. Maybe consider testing more than one software to see which works better for you. And always review your derivative files to make sure they are whole, don’t stutter or freeze, play back audio in sync and represent all streams of your original disc.