ripping an unfinalized video DVD

how to rip a video DVD that was not finalized by the DVD recorder

suppose your DVD drive is visible as the /dev/dvd block device on your computer

list all tracks on the DVD

you can use the excellent dvd+rw-mediainfo to list the content of almost any DVD, finalized or not

$ dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/dvd
... info about the drive and disk ...
READ DISC INFORMATION:
 Disc status:           appendable
 Number of Sessions:    1
 State of Last Session: incomplete
 "Next" Track:          1
 Number of Tracks:      8
READ TRACK INFORMATION[#1]:
 Track State:           reserved incremental
 Track Start Address:   0*2KB
 Next Writable Address: 0*2KB
 Free Blocks:           12272*2KB
 Track Size:            12272*2KB
READ TRACK INFORMATION[#2]:
 Track State:           complete incremental
 Track Start Address:   12288*2KB
 Free Blocks:           0*2KB
 Track Size:            456984*2KB
 Last Recorded Address: 469271*2KB
... remaining tracks info ...

this disc cannot generally be read since its status is appendable, and its last session is incomplete

but as long as the tracks are complete incremental, they can still be accessed/ripped

rip a track

let's rip the second track

$ dd bs=2048 skip=12288 count=456984 if=/dev/dvd of=/tmp/track2.vob
456984+0 records in
456984+0 records out
935903232 bytes (893 MB) copied, 424.368 seconds, 2.1 MB/s

that's it. the /tmp/track2.vob file is a VOB with the second track, which is pretty much just MPEG with a header with timestamps

you can ffmpeg it into MPEG using just -vcodec copy -acodec copy