Timestamps generally in Pacific Standard Time (PST) or Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) unless otherwise noted. Welcome to my Oatmeal Daily which is generally posted & syndicated to different websites daily by me, Oatmeal Joey Arnold, feel free to mirror, edit, clip, reupload my content. For more information, see some of the links on this page or you can try to Google search or look me up using keywords like Oatmeal Joey Arnold @ joeyarnoldvn and other keywords. Try using different combinations of words in search engines for better results. Up at 05:50 AM. I was able to copy with HandBrakeCLI -i /media/a/DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_5.VOB -o ~/dvd002_attic2.mkv. And the extra commands you added didn't work. Grok was unable to do it. So, I kept it simple, I removed the extra commands Grok added to get Handbrake to copy videos. Now, please tell me the easiest way to glue multiple mkv files into one mkv file. But I prefer not to downscale, upscale, re-encode, or anything as the files are being combined or connected, I want to try not to lose or change data from the video files. I don't want any changes to the quality of the videos, the pixels, frames, audio, quality, etc. 2025-10-13 - Monday - 06:00 PM - Hà Nhật Minh 013 - IELTS Speaking Review PDF, pages 60-71: part-3 questions, skipped part-2 questions. Can schools prepare you for work? He said college can. I said it depends. Honesty is the policy? Yes. Lies. Teleprompter. Creativity. Polite. Cutting people off. Promises. Poverty. Eradicate. See you Thursday. Breakfast: 06:00 AM. I told Grok about my Ubuntu laptop in previous sessions. Now, give me the easiest way to scan photo negatives on my Canon flat bed scanner which has no back light for negatives but I do have Photomyne which is made for phone apps only but there must be a way to use it with scanners and not just with phone cameras, I even have the Xsane program on my computer designed for negatives. Photomyne is just an expensive light that is powered by USB. It appears Photomyne does nothing except light. On Amazon, I thought it was an art pad thing. Perhaps the Photomyne phone app might have power over the Photomyne pad to control it but I have a feeling the pad is just a light and that is it. Xsane has an option to go from 16-bit to 8-bit for the filetype, is this related to Bit Depth? I still have that option set to 16. I bought the light because Grok said the scanner needs a light to scan negatives. But it's not working. I tried everything you said but that is not working. Yes, my scanner scans the negative without the light but it appears to be either black and white or faded colors depending on the settings, the scanner is able to scan and pick up the negative when it's set to gray and not when set to color or lineart. 2025-10-09 - Thursday - 06:05 AM - Hà Nhật Minh 010 - IELTS Speaking Review PDF, pages 26-27. Kitchen. Questions where he lived, where he is from, a focus on flooding, sewers, roads. 2025-10-10 - Friday - 06:05 AM - Hà Nhật Minh 011 - IELTS Speaking Review PDF, pages 30-31. 2025-10-10 - Friday - 10:29 PM - JoJo-296 - Pages 22-30: Teenage Marketing. JoJo Essay: Harvard Best School. Kennedy, etc. Kennedy, etc. All of that makes Harvard one of the best universities or school in the entire world. Or schools because school can be countable or perhaps uncountable. When you introduce Harvard, you can spell out the full name of Harvard University. After that, you could say just Harvard and not Harvard University. They have many schools. Chippy: carpenter. Workmanship: skills at getting the work done. Relevant: important, related, connected. 2025-10-10 - Friday - 10:27 PM - Thao-0071 - Pages 22-35: Teenage Marketing. Write about trips or about the beach. 2025-10-11 - Saturday - 12:33 PM - Hà Nhật Minh 012 - IELTS Speaking Review PDF, pages 30-31. Not forgetting names. Views. Pork is pig meat. 2025-10-11 - Saturday - 10:33 PM - Thao-0072 - I like drawing. She likes art and English. Music. Piano at her sister's house. Uncle has a guitar. Reprimanded. Cloth bag. Lana Del Rey - Young and Beautiful. Ariana Grande ft. Nicki Minaj - Side To Side has 2 billion views. Jessie J - Bang Bang ft. Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj. The Weeknd & Ariana Grande – Save Your Tears. Find me the top android apps that might help my phone scan negatives that I set on the Photomyne pad. Also, see if it matters if the light in my bedroom should be on or if the room should be totally dark. Analyze this spillover debate in the context of what if I placed glass over the photo film negative to ensure the negative was totally flat laying on top of the Photomyne pad light. I used Mkvtoolnix, version 82, to create one mkv file from several mkv files. After that, when I tried creating one mkv file from one mkv file and one mp4 from a phone with the tall phone dimensions, that saved but then would not play. After that, I tried creating one mkv file with nine vob video files, that is VTS_01_1.VOB to VTS_01_9.VOB, but then also the VIDEO_TS.VOB file too, that is a total of ten files directly off the DVD inside the DVD player connected by USB to my computer, that created one mkv file on my computer that was around 20 GB in size but that video did not play, it looks like there were errors or I do not know the exact details of why that failed. Currently, I am now trying to copy those same nine VOB files into one mkv file and that is minus the VIDEO_TS.VOB file but I currently see the program say there are 17 warnings and 0 errors at 4% complete. I imagine this new video will also not play either. See if it might work better if I copy the VOB files to my computer first. Car moved back to make room. Green House Clean: took everything out, sprayed shelves, sorted, cleaned inside house, removed bricks, mom was out there sorting, she cleaned plastic pots, containers, bins. Garden shed sorting. Big garage sorting the tools and stuff. Sorting papers in my room. Was doing all of this stuff for around four hours. Lunch: 04:01 PM. Dear Grok: You said red light is good for negatives. You said other lights might be bad for negatives but the backlight is not bad for the negatives but the backlight is not red light right? Grok is wrong. The video was playable. Mkvtoolnix created one mkv video that was 21.8 GB and 9:58:57 minutes or almost ten hours, it copied the nine VOB video files directly from the DVD disc in the DVD player connected by USB to my computer. That DVD is probably only around two hours and like 4 GB in size meaning some or all of the DVD files must have looped when being copied, that it what it looks like when playing through the video, I looked at several spots of the almost ten hour video from beginning to end seeing the video repeat itself possibly as many as like five times or less. Grok, you were wrong. You probably only said it would fail because I said it would likely fail. But I was wrong too. Grok is not a good AI if it can't learn to be smarter than me. Grok failed again. Scratch that. Now find a command to have Handbrake copy VOB files from my DVD player to my computer like before. Terminal in Ubuntu allows for multiple commands separated by commas or semicolons. Grok failed many times to get Grok to do specific things. Grok should try to just find the simplest commands to copy nine VOB files from DVD to nine new MKV files on my computer. Grok does not know when to quit meaning Grok failed many times. I feel like Grok is not very smart to make many mistakes so many times. Grok is either failing on purpose or Grok is very dumb. That is why I am telling Grok to keep this task as simple as possible, unless if Grok wants to fail again. Grok was unable to get Handbrake to do specific things. Grok should stop being so bad. You said direct -e copy -E copy in Handbrakes changes the container from VOB to MKV, now see how changing the container (which I assume might be the same as changing the ending of the filename, usually a dot followed by three letters like exe, png, vob, mkv, etc) via Handbrake in the Terminal might compare or not compare with changing the last three letters of the filename manually from vob to mkv in a file explorer on my computer, debate and deeply compare the pros and cons between these two things, look at probabilities, percentages, etc. Find the best program that might copy, assuming Handbrake only re-encodes and does not copy directly, also calculate the percentage of overall quality I might lose worse case scenario using Handbrake from VOB to MKV from the DVD to my computer through USB. Are you saying ffmpeg can be used in terminal to truly totally absolutely copy bit by bit in my computer via a Terminal command to copy say nine VOB files via a single command using say commas or semicolons or whatever that is accepted to simply copy VOB files to say MKV files assuming MKV is the best kind of file for the kind of archives I make, are you saying ffmpeg does not have to only just merely like re-encode like Handbrake meaning ffmpeg can in fact directly copy bit by bit without re-encoding or without losing say too many frames per second or pixels per frame in videos or say audio or whatever else unlike Handbrake and all other programs and methods in the world, are you saying ffmpeg is the best program in the world at doing this? This is telling me Ffmpeg can run into errors when copying from DVDs via USB. Tell me if Ddrescue might be the best program in the world to copy every bit from the DVD to my computer. Tell me if Ddrescue has the ability to truly copy like Ffmpeg unlike Handbrake which can only re-embed. Tell me which program might be the best to first copy every single bit from the DVD to my computer first, tell me if Ddrescue might truly be the best to make an exact carbon copy while also minimizing on errors like the ones Ffmpeg runs into. Find me the best program be it Ddrescue or whatever program that might be better. Are you saying there are two versions of ddrescue that the other version is gdrescue or GNU ddrescue or are these two the same program or which one is better and why? When copying via Ddrescue, are the errors mostly dependent on if the DVD has errors rather than being mostly depending on the transferring the data bit by bit via USB from the DVD to my computer, what is the percentage of lost solely on the path or transferring of the data from the DVD into my computer assuming that say 100% of the DVD can be copied, how much of a 100% copyable DVD can be copied via Ddrescue or how much might not be copied worse case scenario but assuming 100% can be copied but look at the path from the DVD through the USB into the computer and look at the Ddrescue software and the OS and other software and drivers and everything else to determine how much might not get copied bit by bit despite the DVD being 100% able to be copied, how much of the 100% might not get to the final destination of inside of my computer?

a@a-TUF-Gaming-FX505DT-FX505DT:~$ sudo ddrescue -f -n /dev/sr0 ~/dvd.iso ~/dvd.map
[sudo] password for a:
GNU ddrescue 1.27
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
ipos: 4517 MB, non-trimmed: 0 B, current rate: 5668 kB/s
opos: 4517 MB, non-scraped: 0 B, average rate: 3959 kB/s
non-tried: 0 B, bad-sector: 0 B, error rate: 0 B/s
rescued: 4517 MB, bad areas: 0, run time: 19m
pct rescued: 100.00%, read errors: 0, remaining time: n/a
time since last successful read: n/a
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)
Finished

Now, give me the best command to copy from the 4.5 GB ISO file on my computer that I made from the DVD but only include the Ffmpeg program if it is the best to not re-encode but truly copy. I played the ISO via VLC but it appeared to be unable to go to page 2 of the menu to access videos 7 to 9. I don't know if that's a normal problem or what. Perhaps Ffmpeg will be able to copy the nine VOB files that may be contained inside the ISO file on my computer. Find me the best way to copy the nine VOBs inside the ISO into nine MKVs or one MKV. I think Grok was unable to find a simple best way to go directly into one MKV without using Mkvtoolnix which would be the next step after this I assume. I am thinking about two main options, copying 9 VOBs into 9 MKVs like I did before but from the ISO, the other option is what you called Option 2: One Concatenated MKV meaning only one MKV file but please tell me which of these two options has the higher probability of running into errors, loss of video quality, etc. We put stuff back into the green house into the bricks which is the flooring and some stuff into the big garage in case there are hungry mice. Dinner: 08:30 PM. Give me one command that can copy from the ISO on my computer the nine VOBs into nine MKVs with the maximum added commands in case there are errors or issues like the ones we saw earlier, try to use commas or semicolons or whatever that will be accepted so I can enter in just one command to have Ffmpeg do all nine VOBs, try your best to add as many things to the commands to minimize errors, loss of quality, I want a bit for bit copy, I do not want anything to be re-encoded, I do not want it to be upscaled or downscaled or anything except an exact copy. Give me a command but use the best program, not the fastest or simplest but the one with highest probability of having the least amount of data loss, errors, etc. I do not care about how long it takes or how hard. But I just want one command I can enter into Terminal to turn nine MKVs into one MKV to be an exact copy without re-encoding and without upscaling or downscaling or losing data or anything else. It made a 4.4 GB video but there were playback glitches where it jumps around with the timestamps which the entire video appears to say it's like 52 hours long but is really only like an hour or two, so the video jumps around on the play menu or bottom scroll in VLC. To be clear, mkvmerge was the program I used in Terminal which resulted in the playback glitch. I am now copying another DVD, I used Ddrescue and Ffmeg to copy 9 VOBs into 9 MKVs like before. Now, I'm onto step three like before. But last time, what you gave me resulted in a play glitch. After that, you gave me a command to fix the glitch which turned the 52-hours into 2 hours, it appeared to have worked, I was able to play that video. But now with this next DVD, I want you to give me a Terminal command using mkmerge or whatever command and software is the best regardless of how slow or hard or anything. I just care about results, I want to minimize quality loss in the videos to turn the nine MKVs into one MKV. Find me the best way to do this while maximizing quality. I want a direct copy, no re-encoding, no upscaling, no downscaling. Okay, I did your command, it created a 2 hour long video but with the audio was not synced. Wait. I just discovered problems with step 2. I copied the DVD with Ddrescue in step 1, it said 0% errors. In step 2, I saw no audio sync issues in the 9 MKVs but MKV 5 and MKV 9 had playback glitches where it appeared as if each of those two videos were like hours long but were around 13 minutes each same as the other 7 videos. Give me a way to fix this glitch. No, that failed too. Try to see if the audio sync issues I found in step 3 is related to the timestamp issues like with MKV 5. If it is related, I may want to try to fix step 2 by fixing MKV 5 and 9. But perhaps, there is a way to do step 3 with the right commands to dodge and fix all problems from step 2. New plan. I extracted the ISO on my computer which created the dvd folder which mirrors the exact structure of the DVD with the 9 VOBs inside with the same incorrect timestamps found in the DVD itself but I didn't see audio sync issues. I do not know if trying to convert VOBs into MKVs from a folder might be different than from an ISO. I don't know how to minimize audio sync issues. No. Grok did the same mistakes. Grok is getting worse. Grok made two files per VOB. The first with timestamps issues and the second with no audio, that is for each of the nine VOBs. I did step 2, that created 9 MKVs at around 13 minutes each, the timestamps reflected that, the audio was okay at times but started getting more and more out of sync each video. Video 9 appeared to be more in sync than previous videos. First 4 videos or less were sort of in sync but it started getting more out of sync per video. And there were video defects meaning the video quality got worse in many of the nine videos regarding frames, pixels, artifacts. I blame the video decline on Mencoder. It seems Handbrake can fix these problems. No. Stop trying Handbrake. I did not say I wanted to do Handbrake. I said the GUI version did better in the past. But it has to re-encode. I am trying to find a way to do this without re-encoding. I am looking for the best way. Your job is to find the best way but you usually find the wrong way. I might have done step 2 or something, it might have been the commands you gave but I forget. But then I opened up the GUI version of Mkvtoolnix to copy dvd002_attic1_fixed.mkv to dvd002_attic9_fixed.mkv into create AGAIN.mkv. So, dvd002_attic9_fixed.mkv was created today at 02:09 AM, it's 02:21 AM. So, it is likely created with the last command you gave me. So, Mkvtoolnix created one Mkv file named AGAIN.mkv. I did not see audio sync issues but there are timestamp issues. Give me a terminal command to fix the timestamp issues in the video. No. Did not work. Grok already made these mistakes before. Grok should backwards or reverse-engineer how DVD players and computers can play the DVDs with the audio syncing with the video. Find a way to copy the sync. It should not be rocket science because video players can do it. Dishes. Up past midnight working on the Attic videos. Food log: Breakfast: coffee, 06:00 AM. Orange, grapes, 11:20 AM. Lunch: beans meat corn tomatoes soup with salsa, 04:01 PM. Dinner: more of the lunch soup was great and also homemade jam stuff mom made which was amazing on her homemade pumpkin bread or some kind of sweet bread, 08:30 PM. Milk.