Aegis DVD Backup Documentation

Aegis DVD Backup copies DVDs from an attached optical drive to a folder on your computer. It discovers your drives, identifies the disc in each one, copies the disc into its own folder under a target directory you choose, and reports live progress while it works.

Everything happens locally. Nothing about your discs or your collection is uploaded anywhere.

Installation & Setup

Aegis DVD Backup is available as a Snap or as a Debian/Ubuntu .deb package from the download page.

Snap

Install from the Snap Store, or in a terminal:

sudo snap install aegisdvdbackup

Snaps run in a sandbox. To let the app read your optical drive and see which discs are mounted, connect these interfaces once after installing:

sudo snap connect aegisdvdbackup:optical-drive
sudo snap connect aegisdvdbackup:removable-media
sudo snap connect aegisdvdbackup:hardware-observe
sudo snap connect aegisdvdbackup:mount-observe

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

Download the package, then install it with apt so its dependencies are pulled in:

cd ~/Downloads
sudo apt install ./aegisdvdbackup_*_amd64.deb

Reading a disc directly from the drive requires membership of the cdrom group. Log out and back in afterwards:

sudo usermod -aG cdrom "$USER"

Aegis DVD Backup does not include any software for reading copy-protected discs. See Copy-Protected Discs.

If a permission is missing, the drive's card in the app says so, rather than a backup failing partway through.

Your First Backup

1. Insert a DVD and launch Aegis DVD Backup.
2. Each attached drive appears as a card showing its vendor, model, disc label, filesystem, capacity and mount point. The list refreshes automatically as you swap discs.
3. Select the drive and start the backup.
4. Watch the progress panel: percentage, bytes copied, speed, elapsed time and time remaining. The activity log explains what the app is doing and why.
5. When it finishes, the result is reported as complete or incomplete. Complete means every byte was read.

You can press Cancel at any point. Whatever has already been copied is kept on disk.

Where Backups Go

Each disc is written to its own folder inside the target directory, named after the disc's volume label. An existing folder is never overwritten — a second backup of a same-titled disc becomes MY MOVIE (2).

Backups/
└── V_FOR_VENDETTA/
    ├── VIDEO_TS/            (or V_FOR_VENDETTA.iso, depending on the mode)
    │   ├── VIDEO_TS.IFO
    │   └── VTS_01_1.VOB
    ├── JACKET_P/
    └── disc.json            what was copied, from where, and whether it was complete

The default target directory is ~/AegisDVDBackup with the .deb package, or ~/snap/aegisdvdbackup/common/Backups with the Snap. You can change it under Configure.

Backup Modes

How Auto decides

Auto first checks whether the disc is copy-protected by reading sectors of its title files. If it is, see Copy-Protected Discs. Otherwise it samples the navigation files (.IFO/.BUP) and video files (.VOB):

• Everything reads — the disc is copied file by file.
• All video refused, navigation fine — the drive is withholding the video until authentication; the disc is treated as copy-protected.
• Mixed failures — the disc is damaged; the app switches to a sector-by-sector image, which salvages what is still readable.

The reason for the choice is written to the activity log.

Copy-Protected Discs

Most commercial DVD-Video discs are scrambled with CSS. Aegis DVD Backup detects this and records it under copy_protection in disc.json.

Detection works by inspecting the sectors themselves, not by testing whether they can be read. That distinction matters: most drives serve scrambled sectors without complaint, so a plain copy "succeeds" with files of exactly the right size that will not play.

Aegis DVD Backup contains no descrambling or decryption code of its own, and does not ship or install any. If a third-party library for reading CSS-protected discs, such as the open-source libdvdcss, is already installed on your system, the app will use it through the standard system interfaces. If no such library is present, a scrambled disc is reported as such and the backup is refused rather than writing out a folder of unplayable video. Unprotected discs — home videos, data discs and many independent releases — are unaffected.

Damaged Discs

A backup is only reported as complete when every byte was read. If anything could not be read, the run is reported as incomplete, and disc.json records exactly what was missed:

• Unreadable files (VIDEO_TS copies) are listed by name.
• Unreadable sectors (ISO images) are written as zeros and counted. An image with gaps is not a faithful copy, so it is reported as incomplete rather than looking valid while silently containing holes.

Why a damaged disc can be slow

A drive only gives up on an unreadable sector when its command timeout expires — often a full 30 seconds on a USB drive. Aegis DVD Backup bounds each read by time as well as by attempts, does not repeat reads that were refused outright, and keeps progress and the activity log updating throughout, so a slow patch never looks like a frozen application.

When the app stops early

Some discs are refused by a drive across most of their surface. Imaging such a disc end to end could take days, so when recent damage is both dense and expensive the app stops, keeps what it salvaged, and reports how long finishing would have taken. A disc with only occasional damage is imaged through to the end.

Drives differ in what they will read. Trying the same disc in another drive is often the quickest way forward.

The disc.json Report

Every backup folder contains a disc.json file recording:

• what was copied and which backup method was used,
• which drive it was read from,
• whether copy protection was present,
• whether the backup was complete, and if not, exactly which files or sectors were missed.

Keep it with the backup. Years from now it will tell you whether the copy can be trusted.

Settings

Open Configure to change these. They are remembered across restarts.

Command Line

Two headless modes are available for scripting, or for checking a drive without opening the interface:

aegisdvdbackup --mode discover                  # list attached drives and their discs
aegisdvdbackup --mode backup                    # back up the first disc found
aegisdvdbackup --mode backup --device /dev/sr0 --target ~/Backups

Add --backup-mode with Auto, VIDEO_TS folder or ISO disc image to override the configured mode.

Troubleshooting

My drive does not appear, or shows a permission warning

With the Snap, make sure the interfaces are connected — check with snap connections aegisdvdbackup. With the .deb, make sure you are in the cdrom group and have logged out and back in since adding yourself. See Installation & Setup.

A copy-protected disc is refused

Aegis DVD Backup has no built-in descrambling; protected discs can only be read if a suitable third-party library is installed on your system. See Copy-Protected Discs.

The backup is reported as incomplete

Open the folder's disc.json to see what was missed. Clean the disc and try again, or try it in a different drive — drives vary a great deal in how well they read marginal discs.

Logs

The application log can be viewed inside the app under Log. It is also saved as gui.log in the app's data folder (~/.AegisDVDBackup/ with the .deb, ~/snap/aegisdvdbackup/current/ with the Snap), next to launcher.log, which records startup and crash diagnostics. Please include both when reporting a problem.

Contact Support