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 (back then - 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!!) and on MacOSX (either
straight from this source or get it via fink - that really works)

What you need in advance is libdvdread(-devel) installed. This will only copy
css-unencrypted dvd's (take a GOOD 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 along with a small description of your system (OS,
	hardware, ...) and the problem.
	I did receive some questions which I answer in the FAQ. Take a look
	there before you mail me a bugreport.

It should compile with:

$ autoreconf --install
$ ./configure
$ make

and either invoke the vobcopy binary, or if desired, install with

$ make install

For rpm based systems the commands should be something link this:
The src.rpm should rebuild cleanly on any RPM-based distro with
"rpmbuild --rebuild vobcopy-0.5.8-1.src.rpm" (or replace "rpmbuild" with
"rpm" on older distributions), so it's distribution-neutral.
Alternatively this will build the binary package for them automagically:
rpmbuild -ta vobcopy-0.5.8.tar.gz

Compile:
	make
Install:
	as root: make install


Handling:
vobcopy	(without _any_ options)
	will copy the title with the most chapters to the current directory.
 	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 ...
	During copying there is a .partial appended to the filename to
	indicate that the files are not done yet. If for some reason the
	sizes don't match the one on dvd the .partial will stay to indicate
	that something is wrong.

For more infos on the options see "man vobcopy"
	Newest addition:

vobcopy -M will rip the title with the longest playing time. Normal
	mode without any options is with the most chapters. Both
	methods can be wrong so please try both. I will implement a
	message when the methods deliver different "main" titles shortly.

vobcopy -x will not ask any questions if you want to overwrite
	pre-existing files but will simply do so.

vobcopy -O <filename of single files you want to copy, more than one have to
	be separated by comma>
	e.g. -O video_ts.vob,vts_01_01.ifo,vts_01_01.vob
	or -O bup,ifo will copy all files containing ifo and bup in their names

vobcopy -F <fast_factor= 1..64> (--fast)
	Speed up the copying (experimental)
	(in my case it went from 10:43 min to 9:40 with 1x to 10x, 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.

	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/, "-" or "stdout"
	will copy the output to /tmp/, or to stdout for piping to another program
	(like bbtools, see the vobcopy page)
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 the current directory. You can send me this
	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
	changes the name of the output file or writes to stdout for pipeing
	(deprecated, use -o instead now)

vobcopy -q
	all info and error messages of vobcopy go to vobcopy.bla in the current
	directory instead of stderr. Good when you want to pipe the output of
	vobcopy to some other program, e.g. bbtools or mplayer.

vobcopy -x
	overwrite all existing files without further question

The options can be combined and arranged as you like.
It worked for me, hope for you too.
Have fun!
Robos (robos@muon.de)