DVD preservation format

No, I am not about to ask what type of DVDs are "archival."

I am pondering the following… For the preservation of a DVD, where the DVD format itself is significant (i.e. the interactive experience of the menus, etc), what could be considered a preservation format?

Is a rip that produces audio TS / video TS folders sufficient for longevity, or is a raw, sector level disc image the best approach?

Ben Fino-Radin

• disk-image
• dvd
• rip
• dump

Comments

Answer by Andy Jackson

Well, DVDs are in Universal Disk Format - extended from the ISO9660 format - so if you rip them directly as block devices that's what you get, and you get everything. I believe the region encryption is done within this container, and there are no 'tracks' as with CD-ROMS (or rather there is always just one data track).

Disclaimer: There may be fancy DVD formats that use more tracks, weird copy protection, or other unusual stuff.

Comments

• Ben Fino-Radin: Thanks Andy – it's clear that such an image would capture the lowest level of information, but this says nothing of whether or not you would consider this to be a **preservation** format. This in my mind means not only a perfect capture of the data, but in a format that I will likely be able to interpret and render accurately in years to come.
• Andy Jackson: I believe this format is trivial to 'mount' as a virtual disk and playback using open source software - e.g. VLC. I'm not aware of any other format that is capable of replaying DVD-specific features, e.g. menus etc.
• serilain: Agreed. If you want a 1:1 copy of the menus (VIDEO_TS) and all, image the disc; otherwise, defer to ffmpeg.