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Here ya go :-) http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/
Fixes the "Region Lock" problem.

I have over 100 legally owned DVD's all backed up as ISO's on my personal hard drive just in case... I'm very bad for crushing crap, and my dog is bad for chewing on shiny things...

I have seen this problem in dvd::rip before, however, you should give it a second chance and check out http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/doc/gui-gui_transcode.cipp#gui_tc_aud_targtrack which may guide you to properly discarding the other tracks when ripping your DVD.

I have been using dvd::rip for a long time, and it really is a great tool. If you ever set up a cluster, you will get some serious encoding power! I currently have three machines working in parallel to encode my rip, works blazing fast.

http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/ Looks a little intimidating at first but considering its immense filtering, output and batch-clustering options, it's a pretty simple interface.

http://exit1.org/dvdrip/

Never had a problem with it.

Or keep it in, and use your cluster to break the encryption, rip and recode the Blueray disk.

As per:

http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/index.cipp

The PS3 cluster uses Fedora, so how about it someone (more talented than me)?

dvd::rip: http://exit1.org/dvdrip/

I've build and configure an alpha cluster, in my University http://genesis.fcfm.buap.mx

May be it doesn't rocks like yours. I betchmarked it using http://www2.exit1.org/dvdrip/
and I've ripped several movies using that little cluter.
With your cluster. You will be able to rip all the movies of Blockbuster in about a month.

Alfonso Balandra A.

/me waves.

Yeah, terabyte media servers are cheaper and nicer every single day. And so easy to get, too. If you know where to look, a pair of 500GB IDE drives will run you about $200. Throw those in an older computer, make sure you've got plenty of cooling in the case, and top with a Linux distro of some kind. For best results with a Windows client PC, get DVD43 and the latest Handbrake to rip your collection. OSX just needs Handbrake, and Linux, I imagine, just needs dvd::rip.

Probably the best ripper on linux is DVD::rip - it should be in your distro repository.

On windows, I like Nero recode - comes with Nero Burning Rom (commercial) - lets you shrink DVD9 to DVD5 and choose which tracks you want, or to mpeg4 or H.264 if you want to store on a media pc.

The best free windows one IMO is dvd shrink - a bit less point-and-clicky, but still pretty simple. Yes, you can get technically better results with the proper multi-pass CCE rippers; but for most purposes the point-and-click recoders do a plenty good enough job, and they're much, much faster.

Oh, if you get a DVD these guys can't handle due to braindead copy protection, usually DVD Fab free or DVD decrypter (if you can find a copy on say, mrbass.org, it is technically illegal to distribute since it was acquired and shut down by macrovision) can remove the copy protection and save it as files, then you run dvd shrink on the files to get it down to a DVD5.

Good luck!

You mean DVD::Rip ?

Maybe not the easiest but still...

http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/

I still can't understand why people even bother with Windows/Mac anymore for anything.

You mean something like dvd::rip ?

Damn why didn't I preview my links :/. Here's the link to DVD::Rip. Sorry

Do you watch DVDs? Do you dream of squeezing all your DVDs onto a harddrive and streaming them to a media PC attached to your TV?

You could copy the DVDs at ~8GB each to some large harddrives or you could transcode them to much smaller formats with all the garbage removed and go from ~8GB/movie to less than 4GB/movie. But to do this you need lots of processing power. A cluster works very good for this and the software is already there for you:

http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/doc/cluster.cipp

For the cost of some overpriced Dell crap video editing PC you could build a decent diskless cluster. Who needs harddrives, monitors, video cards, keyboards, mice, etc. At least more than one set. ;)

burnin

Yes, I regularly watch entire DVDs on my PDA.
I transcode them with dvd::rip to ~400MB XviD4.
They are stored on my 512MB SD card.
I'll eventually upgrade to a 1GB or larger card and have multiple to choose from.

Oooh. I'd use it for dvd::rip. One of my fondest dreams is to be able to do a rip and transcode in less than real-time.

-Peter

dvd::rip

You're right, it is absurd to directly compare a laptop to a PDA and vice versa.

I will say, however, that I can and do watch MPEG & AVI videos and even full DVD movies on my Tungsten|T3. I put the video (DVDs transcoded using dvd::rip to ~400MB XviD AVIs w/96kbps MP3 audio @ ~320x240 resolution) on my 512MB SD card and watch it using MMPlayer. Works pretty damn good actually, especially in widescreen. I stick a few on my 20GB Neuros and load 'em up whenever I want using a portable card reader and whatever PC I happen to be at.

Also, portable keyboards, like the Stowaway work well and allow quick entry and retaining maximum portability. I had one for my Prism and used it a lot during meetings. I have yet to need one for my T3 since I don't do a lot of data entry any more and the virtual qwerty keyboard is sufficient for what I do (though I long for the IBM ATOMIK layout I had on my Prism).

Many people can and do "pick up" grafiti quickly. I think it took me about 1 hour to get the general hang of it and maybe 2 days to be really comfortable and proficient... Grafiti2 is even easier! Of course, I still prefer tapping out letters on a virtual keyboard; or better yet, using my stowaway (when I had it) for a lot of typing, such as word processing with WordSmith.

I have even transcoded entire DVDs down to ~400 MB using dvd::rip, put them on my 512 MB SD card and have watched the entire movie on my PDA in Landscape widescreen. The resolution is excellent for a PDA and the 400 MHz X-Scale CPU is very quick. Battery life is OK, but with the BoxWave miniSync (w/Car and Wall adapters) I never worry about it.

The best part is the price of my setup:
$300 PDA
$80 Ericsson T68m BlueTooth Phone
$99 512 MB SD Card
$40 BoxWave miniSync + Accessories
$40 Iambic Agendus Pro
$40 SnapperFish SnapperMail Standard
$50 SplashData SplashWallet
$35 Mapopolis 1-year North America w/o GPS Support
$30 BlueNomad WordSmith
$15 MMPlayer
$12 ZLauncher
$10 PDAMill Solitaire
$0 OliveTree BibleReader+
$0 BigClock
$0 MyCheckbook
$0 HandyShopper
$0 HandZipperLite
$0 IconMgr
$0 SeaTraffic
$0 TuSSH
$0 upIRC (limited shareware)
$0 Warfare, Inc. (shareware demo)
====
$751

I actually paid $611 total for all the above because I purchased many of the software items listed above long ago for my previous PDAs, but the above is what someone would pay to buy it now.

Besides the obvious (and ridiculously awesome) nethack, one of the most important and continuously updated CLI programs I use daily is transcode.

It converts between video formats, and does so quickly and with very good quality. I use it to make XVID backups of my DVDs to play on the road or in my XBOX running MythTV. It's very scriptable, which is why I like it. It also has a great perl-gtk frontend called dvd::rip. You can crop and zoom, as well as browse the various video and audio tracks before you encode. It even supports subtitles.

Gordian Knot's a pig of a thing to use. However, if you've got a Linux system (maybe it works on BSD or what have you as well, I don't know) then there's a program called DVD::Rip which does the same job and is an absolute joy to use. I'd thoroughly recommend it.

DVD::Rip will utilise a cluster

webvcrplus for scheduling/recording, mplayer for playback, avidemux for commercial removal, mencoder for postprocessing (deinterlacing, audio syncing, etc.), and transcode with DVD::Rip for backing up DVDs.

My primary goal for this is to make backup copies of media for when I travel. When I watch live TV on my computer, I use TVTime. I am looking more into something like MythTV, because of the possibility of streaming content, and the fact that it is getting toward the point of being able to remove commercials on the fly.

That said, I have been very happy with my current configuration. Webvcrplus works like a charm, downloading listings through xmltv and scheduling them for recording.

XviD is a great alternative, which looks just as good as DivX (About 5mb per minute gets you very good quality if encoded properly. 10mb per minute is near DVD quality.)

I use XviD exclusively as my video format. If you haven't checked out dvd::rip it's hight time you do so.
Just run "perl -MCPAN -e shell" and "install Video::DVDRip". Gives you a nice GUI for dvd ripping that also provides you with a lot of information about what it is doing".

For the bitrate, use 0.25 bits of video data per pixel of video.
Example: If your video is 640x380 x 25fps, you have 640*380*25 = 6080000 pixels per second. Multiply it with 0.25 i.e. 6080000*0.25 = 1520 Kbps and that is the best level of quality/bitrate you will get for the compressed video.

DVD2AVI is a piece of piss under linux. It's easy than Windows in fact. I use dvd::rip... four clicks and my DVD is ripped into OGM format (Xvid, vorbis) -- or AVI divx,mp3 if you prefer. mplayer can play just about anything, and mencoder works pretty well. transcode converts anything into anything else (just about).

So will it play the .ogm files (xvid and vorbis codecs) that I get when I rip DVDs using dvdrip under Linux?

That would fucking rule...

I have a medium-sized collection of DVDs. Among the movies it contain are favorites, like Barcelona, GhostWorld, and Annie Hall, that I sometimes want to watch just for a certain funny or intriguing scene.
I also prefer (not owning a large TV) to watch movies on a computer screen. I think would prefer this even if I *did* own a large TV, which is (drumroll) one reason that I don't. Ahem.

So I have been compressing my movies into DiVX;) using the excellent software dvd:rip and enjoying the results.

This is a very slow process, and it's the first thing in a while which has specifically made me want to upgrade both processor (a 600MHz Athlon otherwise still feels very fast to me, and I'm in time-machine-based negotiations to lease a fraction of its power to the U.S. Space program circa 1962) and hard drive (because movies are big, even compressed).

timothy

So, what you want is a linux program that does everything without you going out and having to download 6 other programs, to get the job done that can be done by 1 program in linux? keep dreaming... ha ha...

but seriously, cinelerra Heroinewarrior.com
is a nice piece of video editing software. Doesn't really do exactly what you are looking for, but nice none the less. What i think you are really looking for is something like DVD::RIP which does pretty much the whole process for you, except making the Mpg files into bin/cue files. Oh but that only works for dvd, it won't really do much for recorded video... damn. Why can't someone just make good software for linux...

something else that I think Linux is missing - an easy to use set of video capture and compression tools, complete with (dare I say it outloud) a non-command line DVD rip program

DVDRipis an amazing gui based dvd ripper for linux. One of the easier and most powerful multimedia tools I've used on Linux. The DVD equivalent to GRip, and it works...

I recommend you take a look at transcode and dvd::rip With these tools, it is possible to make a backup copy of your DVD's onto one or two CD-R's in DivX format. The ripping process takes about 15 minutes, and the encoding can take a mere 2 hours on a newer processor, depending on your settings. A high-quality, two-pass encoding session takes less than 8 hours on a 1-GHz machine. The resulting video is virtually indistinguishable from the original MPEG-2 video.

You may not want to download a 7-gigabyte file and pay for two DVD-R's to burn it on, but downloading a 1.4-megabyte file and burning it on two 25-cent CD-R's is not nearly as extreme.

What you fail to realize why the MPAA freaked out about DeCSS. They knew that DVD's were going to be around for a long time. They knew that while it was infeasible for technology at the time to make copying DVD's impractacle for the average consumer, it would get there in the next 5 years! They knew that video codecs and video encoding software would become more efficient and easier to use. They predicted that the .mp3 equivalent for movies would emerge, and bandwidth for the average end user would continue to increase. They didn't want to see another Napster in the movie realm.

And that's why they are fighting this tooth and nail. If they can get the courts to pass the laws that would keep people from copying their films, then they can reduce the number of movies that people obtain copies of movies without paying for them. They count on the fact that if something is illegal, fewer people will engage in that activity than if something is legal.

But to point out a flaw in your argument: people make a moral distinction between physically harming other people and copying a DVD or a CD. They are much more likely to use DeCSS to copy a movie that they didn't pay for than they are to bash in a stranger's head with a baseball bat.

Watch this post get modded up, and not my qualified response to the From Coder to Game Designer question. Humbug!

Anyway, as brought up in the last Ask Slashdot remotely similar to this one (Archiving DVD's with Linux), dvd::rip, which is a Perl+GTK front-end to transcode, has a fairly insecure cluster mode, whereby it will split up the video transcoding task among however many machines you can coerce into doing it, and rip and mux the audio with the video on the host machine.

Sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Now someone go mod up that other answer of mine. Please?

Watch this post get modded up, and not my qualified response to the From Coder to Game Designer question. Humbug!

Anyway, as brought up in the last Ask Slashdot remotely similar to this one (Archiving DVD's with Linux), dvd::rip, which is a Perl+GTK front-end to transcode, has a fairly insecure cluster mode, whereby it will split up the video transcoding task among however many machines you can coerce into doing it, and rip and mux the audio with the video on the host machine.

Sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Now someone go mod up that other answer of mine. Please?

You may want to do what I did - rip the DVD with DeCSS, rip it to a VCD, and watch it in your DVD player. I found that this particular title suffered almost zero quality loss through the whole process.

Disclaimer: by doing this you are violating copyright law and can be prosecuted. Consider yourself forewarned.

transcode is a fantastic app. It can convert just about any kind of video stream to any other kind. It supports cropping, resizing, etc etc. Careful with the current prereleases, there are some nasty A/V sync issues. 0.6.0pre1 & 2 work best for me.

It's pretty tough to get right on the commandline, so grab dvd::rip, a nice perl/gtk frontend. Most useful, dvd::rip has a nice gui for using transcode's cluster encoding. That's right, you can build a dvd-ripping cluster. I have a 4-node setup, and it only takes a few hours to rip a dvd, using two-pass DivX 4.02. Careful with the newer prereleases, there are some nasty A/V sync issues. 0.6.0pre1 & 2 seem to work best for me.

I would suggest using one of the MPEG-4 variants (DivX 4.x, or XviD) in two-pass mode. In my experience, this produces very good quality. I rip my movies to one 1.4gb file, which I then split onto two CDs. You might be able to afford slightly larger file sizes, to do AC3 audio pass-through, for example.

If you double or triple your storage capacity, consider just storing the unencrypted VOB files - you'll get superior audio & video, as well as all the alternate audio & subtitle tracks.