Ripping DVD video via MEncoder/AcidRip on Ubuntu 7.10

Forrest Sheng Bao http://forrest.bao.googlepages.com

MPEG-4 are also called DivX, which is a proprietary standard. So there is an open source standard been developed, called XivD. Funny, just reverse the order of numbers. Thanks to those open standards and open source developers, now I can have a total video ripping solution and playing solution.

MEncoder is the video encoder accompanied to famous open source media player MPlayer. There are two ways to rip the DVD to the hard drive. One is called the 2-pass method. Another is called the 3-pass method. The difference is that in 3-pass method, audio encoding takes place in a separate pass. But I don't recommend the 3-pass method, coz I have found much quality difference. The MPlayer official website has provided an example

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-mpeg4.html

One easy way to forget these detail is to use a GUI of MEncoder called AcidRip. It has a very easy to use GUI.


I think it better follow the later example, coz in most of the time, we don't need AC-3 audio. MP3 is enough. Here is my coding script example:


forrest@narnia:/forrest/2pass$ cat 2pass.sh
#/bin/bash -x
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/dvd -aid 128 -info subject="The Blue Planet - Season of Life" -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=3239:chroma_me:vhq=4:bvhq=1:quant_type=mpeg:pass=1 -vf pp=de,crop=704:480:10:0 -o "/dev/null"
mencoder dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/dvd -aid 128 -info subject="The Blue Planet - Season of Life" -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=3239:chroma_me:vhq=4:bvhq=1:quant_type=mpeg:pass=2 -vf pp=de,crop=704:480:10:0 -o "/forrest/2pass/blue_planet_disc1.avi"

This is another better script.

http://axljab.homelinux.org/Mencoder_DVD_to_MPEG-4

You can also get the subtitles while 2-pass coding. See example 13.5 on MPlayer official doc.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-extractsub.html

Other references:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Rip_DVD_mencoder
http://web.njit.edu/all_topics/Prog_Lang_Docs/html/mplayer/encoding.html
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/video-codecs.html
Making a high quality MPEG-4 ("DivX") rip of a DVD movie: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-dvd-mpeg4.html
Encoding with the Xvid codec: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-xvid.html