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Can you share what tools / scripts / arguments you use for this?

I've not found any way to do it without a massive headache.

I use Windows and AnyDVD, which removes all protections from both DVD and BluRay, but if you only use DVD, pretty much anything will work to get the content into the right format. I would recommend something like DVD Shrink to quickly grab only the main movie and the soundtracks and subtitles that interest you.

After that, I prefer semi-manual means instead of an all-in-one system, so I use DG Index to feed into AVISynth. You don't need anything fancy in AVISynth, but you will want to use something like SmartDecimate to de-interlace the movie back to the original 24fps. Apply other filters as you see fit.

Then, to convert to H.264, something like x264 --preset slower --tune film --crf 18 --output "MovieName.264" "MovieName.avs" will do the job fine, giving you filesizes averaging about 700MB/hour. Eventually, you can learn more about x264 and do some fancier things, but all they will buy you is a smaller filesize for the same visual quality.

Then, rename the MovieName.264 file to MovieName.h264 and use mkvmerge or the GUI front-end to combine the original audio and subtitles from the DVD with your newly encoded video. This will get you movies you can watch. If you want to add things like chapters, or modify the original audio, you'll have to use a few more tools, but those are completely optional steps.

I agree with you for the most part, but just a couple corrections on your terminology (I am a digital broadcast technician).

DVDs are 480i (to follow the NTSC standard). If you have a progressive DVD player and a TV that can handle a progressive signal they get converted to "pseudo progressive". I say pseudo progressive because once they are sampled as interlaced they can't really be un-interlaced, but you can redraw the same line a second time as you are scanning down the screen. You will end up with deinterlacing artifacts, but they aren't as noticeable as displaying the interlaced signal. The 480 comes from the NTSC standard 525 lines minus the 45 lines that are the vertical blanking interval.

Second - 720p and 1080i are both considered high def. Each one is useful for different things. 720p is better for fast motion things like action movies and sports. Since it is a progressive signal it doesn't have interlacing artifacts. 1080i is higher resolution (1920x1080 vs 1280x720)

I use VirtualDubMod (http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net) and AVISynth (http://www.avisynth.org) extensively for video processing. They're the two big reasons why I keep a Windows XP partition on my computer.

You can find a large collection of AVISynth filters at http://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/. I don't do much filtering in VirtualDubMod (I use it mostly for viewing AVISynth output, writing AVISynth scripts, performing compression, and muxing), but you can find a good starting list of VirtualDub filters at http://neuron2.net.

The doom9 forums for AVISynth development are also a good place to look for software and hints.

"We've considered archiving our video in some kind of compressed streaming format like AVI, Quicktime, or MPEG-2, but none of these offer lossless codecs that are appropriate for us, and we're unwilling to accept using a lossy compressor."

Try Huffyuv. Fast, free, and comes with full source. I'm sure any capable programmer can make it work under Linux.

Actually, ffmpeg, which is a video codec library for Linux, already supports it completetly: both encoding and decoding.

Actually, the FFV1 lossless codec in ffmpeg compresses better than huffyuv.

And the text above should also provide some initial insight in why stuff like this is not in the filesystem, and better taken care of on application level...

One thing it could be very handy for is compression. Video compression is, of course, the first thing that springs to mind, but I guess other types of compression could work too, as long as there is a data path back out of the GPU, to the hard drive or wherever else you want that compressed data to go.

For applications like that, the back channel isn't that much of an issue, because the data coming out of the process is so very much smaller, ie - a lot of data is being thrown away in the GPU

Conversely, on the way in, the data is big. I capture video at 922x576, 25 fps from a dedicated TV card using Huffyuv - a lossless codec, and I get about 7.3 MB per second of data going into the capture file. That works out to about half a gig per minute. If I was to use no compression, it balloons out to about 25 MB/sec

Then I use VirtualDub to run it through a filter or two, resize it with a biCubic transfer and compress it with xVid - With a 1 Gig Duron, the data's going in at about 750 KB per second, getting processed at about 1.8 frames per second and then going back out at (get this) 50 BYTES per second.

If, instead my graphic card could up that by a factor of fifty rather than just sitting there (mostly) idle, I think it'd be great - no more waiting an HOUR to render down a 4-minute clip. If , instead of going TV-card->processor->hard drive it went TV-card->GPU(compress)->processor(filter)->hard drive, the recording could be done all in one hit.

By the way - I can get an hour's worth of video into just under 75 MB and it's still quite watchable - About par with slightly older VHS tapes.

For a lossless codec, try HuffYUV; its a damn sight better than uncompressed frames, though still quite huge compared to any lossy format; mostly its good for intermediate editing.

Towards the storage-heavy end of the cpu/storage spectrum, you could check out HuffYUV, a lossless video codec. It is especially handy if you have little CPU power and absolutely need a lossless codec, since it seems to compress to a higher ratio and at a faster rate than any other lossless codec available. Also, it's free, so have fun with it.

These Indeo 5.1 encoded master clips are virtually identical to the original MPEG-2 video on the DVD...

they used Indeo codec... if uncompressed uses too much space all sources must be compressed with Huffyuv. now that would be a identical master clip. simple as that.

Won't work, sorry.