Ubuntu contains a number of DVD backup applications (aka "DVD rippers"). To rip encrypted DVDs, you must install libdvdcss2 the same as you would to play encrypted DVDs (see Playing DVDs).
Libdvdcss2 may not be enough for playing DVDs produced by Warner Bros (they have a JACKET_P folder as well as a txtdt file). It would require libudf to be installed on the system.
There are several different utilities targeted at ripping DVDs:
Thoggen (universe)
Rips DVDs and encodes them into Ogg files with Theora video and Vorbis audio.
AcidRip (multiverse)
Rips DVDs and encodes them.
k9copy (universe)
k9copy is a Qt based app that will make an exact copy of a DVD as an ISO file or as the normal DVD folder structure on the destination drive. It can also shrink and/or encode your DVDs to different formats such as AVI/MPEG-4, MPEG-2, Flash Video (FLV), Real Video and QuickTime.
dvd::rip (multiverse)
A DVD ripper that can also encode the ripped DVD to VCD/SVCD or AVI/MPEG-4 and split the file into 700MB chunks on the destination drive.
ogmrip (multiverse)
An application for ripping and encoding DVD into AVI, OGM, MP4 or Matroska files using lots of audio and video formats (Vorbis, MP3, PCM, AC3, DTS, AAC, MPEG-4 ASP, MPEG-4 AVC, Theora). OGMRrip calculates cropping parameters and scaling factors and supports multiple audio and subtitles streams encoding.
HandBrake (third party)
HandBrake is a DVD to MPEG-4 converter. An i386 and amd64 binary is provided on the HandBrake website for Linux users. HandBrake for Linux supports encoding in MPEG-4, including H.264.
RipIt4Me under Wine
If you install Wine then you can try installing RipIt4Me which uses both DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter as backends (these can be downloaded from the RipIt4Me site as specific versions are needed). This supposedly bypasses the current copy protection mechanisms such as RipGuard and ARccOS. Installation works fine under Dapper LTS & Feisty using this guide. As no Linux applications (dvdrip/k9copy) can bypass newer copy protection methods just yet, this is probably the only real option at the moment.
The main ripit4me site has been taken down, and the guide linked to has been removed from the forum, but below is a guide that works. The software can be found by Googling.
Note: The link provided above, www.ripit4me.org, does not take you to the ripit4me site. For more information about ripit4me, take a look at the afterdawn.com forums, in particular this thread.
Install Wine from the official site. There are DEBs for Dapper, Edgy & Feisty. If you use 64-bit, then --force-architecture the installation with dpkg as this works fine.
Install DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15, DVD Decryptor 3.5.4.0 and finally RipIt4Me 1.7.0. You will also need to copy mfc42.dll and msvcp60.dll from a WindowsXP disc into the ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/ directory.
Start RipIt4Me with:
wine RipIt4Me
and use the Wizard Mode button to initiate a disc copy. Choose a target directory and whether you want movie only or full DVD etc, then click next Click the Create PSL file button in the next dialogue then after that, Rip DVD.
This loads DVD Decryptor and tries to autoload the PSL file but it fails as the file is saved in the DVD Decryptor program folder, but Ripit4Me thinks it is in its default directory. Just OK to the error dialogues, then navigate to the DVD Decryptor folder and choose the PSL file from there.
IMPORTANT:
If you only ever used Linux on your PC, the region code will not be set. You can play DVDs in Totem etc without setting region codes. At this stage of the ripping process however, it *will* set a region code of the disc being copied, despite giving an option not to. Use with caution if you intend to rip many different region discs. Use regionset afterwards if you need to set a new region on the drive.
Click on the Decrypt button in DVD Decryptor and wait a while. If you have 32bit IO and DMA enabled this should go very fast, otherwise it may take 25 mins or so.
After this is complete, RipIt4Me will pop up a new dialogue where you can remove various protection techniques, such as tiny cells etc. This is Step 3. In Step 4 of the wizard, you can clean up the VOBs and remove references to unreferenced video. On older discs, such as Fightclub, Gladiator and Titan AE (all tested successfully), you can skip step 3 entirely, and deselect 'remove unreferenced video' in step 4 before cleaning the VOBs. This is because older discs do not have copy protection apart from CSS. On newer discs, such as Casino Royale (ripped very successfully despite being a Sony disc, with newest copy protection mechanisms), that contain many types of copy protection, you should select all options in step 3 of the wizard and all options in step 4 when cleaning the VOBs. These settings are very disc specific and require a bit of tweaking for each film if you run into issues.
After cleaning VOBs, open the movie in DVD Shrink using the button in wizard step 4, then choose the audio tracks and subtitles you wish to keep, then select backup. Auto settings will compress a dual layer disc to fit on one layer. If you do not want this, choose No Compression. Backup takes about 8 minutes on a Core2Duo 7200 on average at this stage.
I recommend ripping discs without menus and just the audio/sub tracks you need and burning it as an ISO in DVD Shrink, because if you plan on ripping to a hard disc archive, then single file ISOs are easier to browse and can be burnt at a later date if necessary. Also, Totem and VLC can play ISO files directly without mounting them first. Menus, I choose to remove because they can still cause some issues: In Gladiator, the menu was soundless and corrupted until I pressed the Menu button on the remote, then it appeared correctly. Also, if you remove some audio tracks/ all subs etc then the menu becomes slightly useless...better to select audio/subs from the DVD player remote.
As for hard disc archives and streaming media from PC to TV, I do not know if ISO is most suitable method.
I have found RipIt4Me to be the most successful method, and it has not yet failed to rip a disc, but I have not tried the Feisty repository versions of dvdrip or k9copy, and these may or may not contain workarounds for RipGuard/ARccOS.
Fair Use Wizard under Wine
One ripping possibility is Fair Use Wizard 2 under Wine. It is not the fastest ripper but it can handle even some of these new protection schemes. Light edition is free and gives good basic encoding options. Just download and install software under wine and make sure that wine can find your DVD drive.
Troubleshooting
Note that with some recent DVD films, *all* current Linux DVD rippers have problems reading the disc due to newer copy protection schemes such as ARccOS or RipGuard. The same is true even of the latest version of DVDshrink on Windows, and only certain tools like DVD2HDD, DVD Decrypter, and AnyDVD (Windows programs) can handle the newer copy protection mechanisms.