Linux Mint Forums

I'm not sure about Brasero(I use K3B). You can use K3B to make an ISO image of a DVD(copy DVD), and then store it where ever you want on your hard drive. Brasero might also have a similar feature. Then just open whatever media player you use and select "open file"(navigate to your DVD ISO). It should play fine. Since the DVD is already viewable, you just need to get it copied to your hard drive. Just be warned, this will eat up a lot of hard drive space.

I rip all my DVD's with DVDRip. It converts the DVD to an avi file, no dvd menus tho. Keep safe in Iraq.

K9copy is another great ripping tool. It will rip the disk as a DVD .iso file if you want, or it can encode to DIVX, MPEG and a few others I believe. If you've got 1TB of space I'd probably just rip them as DVD .iso files. It will certainly be faster than encoding them as something else. Make sure you have VLC or SMPlayer installed for viewing .iso files as they don't need to be mounted first with either of these players.

Best quality: K3B (or K9copy) to rip an iso of the DVD and then use acetone to play the iso.
More compact: use dvd::rip to rip DVD to an avi (select "no chapters") and use just about anything to play the avi.
Fastest rip: VLC will perform a single-pass rip to avi, very useful for ripping direct to ipod.

Didn't know VLC will play isos directly. Very cool. Learned something new, and VLC is much handier than acetone as I have VLC installed on everything I use.

Since you have 1TB to play with, I'd go the route of ripping whole isos of the discs. That gives you more options for down the road, no loss of quality, and it is pretty fast to rip a full iso.

I know that this is probably too little, too late... and I don't know what platform you will be using in Iraq. But for what it's worth there are 2 Windows programs that I use for ripping DVD's...

DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink

DVD Shrink I think is your best bet as you can choose what from the DVD you want to copy (Just the movie, the movie and the menu, certain subtitles or none at all - etc.) and you can save to ISO. (as far as I know)

You are probably in Iraq now without access to the forum, so this info is probably worthless, but I thought I might as well throw in my two cents.

EchoLynx

I find OGMRip to be a damn good app for ripping and re-encoding DVD's to more reasonable size, uses good default settings, very easy to use.

There is also AcidRip...