Here is a short starting-point for developing a bash script that can be used to automate optical disc ripping. At least for music and application CDs as well as DVDs. Some other cli commands will need to be added to deal with bluerays or other formats.

abcde to rip CD music #

abcde is used to rip music CDs to various formats (my configuration is set to FLAC to preserve the raw quality but in a compressed format to save space.) This command will fail for DVDs.

dvdbackup to rip DVD media #

If/when that occurs dvdbackup is executed to attempt to create a “VIDEO_TS” format disc backup. This can be used to play DVD media content on any PC that supports VLC, but further conversion may be desired to create standalone video files.

Raw ISO images for anything else #

Upon failure of that, a raw ISO image is made using the date as a file name. Depending on the DVD drive hardware and specific media, it is possible for DVD media to be rejected by dvdbackup, so that an ISO is made.

The more common use-case application, data, or other misc. discs backups mean that they media is copied as it appears on the disc and the ISO can be mounted later to run the contents or copy desired files to a filesystem.

Example script #

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#!/bin/bash

OUTPATH=/AutomatedMediaBackups
DEVICE=/dev/sr0
DATESTR=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S_%N_%z)
RUNDIR=$OUTPATH

# sudo apt install flac libdvd* dvdbackup abcde && sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg dvdauthor
pushd $RUNDIR
abcde || \
dvdbackup -i $DEVICE -o $OUTPATH -M || \
dd if=$DEVICE of=$OUTPATH/${DATESTR}.iso  &> $OUTPATH/${DATESTR}.log
popd

Required dependencies may vary depending on one’s environment and the output formats desired.