Ripping and encoding on linux

As you probably know, we first have to extract the correct movie files from the DVD onto the harddisk and then get to work on them. If you don't know then you need to understand that a DVD has a lot of other stuff apart from the movie. we are interested in the .VOB files in the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD. So what do we need apart from the DVD itself?

We need the following stuff:

1.Transcode: Transcode is a set of tools that allow encoding from a broad list of formats to a broad list of other formats including DVD to AVI. Get transcode from www.transcoding.org. Make sure that it compiles with Xvid support as well as with support for Mplayer's post processing functions. You will find installation instructions in the documentation.

2. dvd::rip : This is a frontend GUI for transcode. Get it from www.exit1.org Installation instructions are included.

3. Mplayer: To play your converted DivX files. Even Xine with DivX pulgin will do.

4.libdvdread: A DVD library that generally comes with most distributions. If not, get it from the Ogle project page.

5. DivX codec for linux

6. Lame: short for Lame Ain't an mp3 Encoder (actually it is!). It encodes MP2/WAV audio to the MP3 format.

7. Crackers and milk or popcorn or a copy of a movie or whatever coz we will need lots of it :D

Start dvd::rip by tuping dvdrip. Choose ' Edit | Preference' to enter your paths. The first is the path to the DVD device and not the mount point. /dev/dvd is a symlink to the real devide.

Now start a new project ('File | NewProject'. In the 'Storage" tab, again enter the correct paths. Go to the ' Rip Title' tab and click the 'Read DVD Table of Contents' button. The list will be populated with the titles you want to rip ( you can select multiple titles by holding [ctrl] and clicking on them ). It should be the one with the longest duration. Leave 'Specify Chapter Mode' on 'NO'

Last step: 'Rip selected Title(s)/Chapter(s)'.

Now is the time to munch some popcorn. :P

After the DVD is ripped, Click on the 'Clip & Zoom' tab and enter a frame numbersuch as 300 into the 'Grab Frame from ripped VOB'. After a few seconds the three views below show the frame you requested. A drop-down list-box below the three preview windows offers presets for you to work with. Simply selecting one of those gives you a place to start. You can still change the values manually after selecting such a preset. The big frame, Medium frame and small frame parts refer to the final image size that is to be achieved. Big keeps almost full DVD resolution, medium is somewhere between 500 and 600for the width and small is somewhere around 350.

This is the tricky part. If you are familiar with digital video then you should not have a problem.But let me clear a few things still. We will be encoding (read compressing) both the video and the audio stream in the movie. The keyword here is bit rate. Both video and audio will have an optimum encoding bit rate for best results. For video, the Divx codec at 750kbps and for audio, MP3 at 128kbp/44KHz should be good for fitting a movie on one 700MB CD-R.

You must also need to know aspect ratios. Normally there are two types: Cinema movies have a ratio of 16:9 (those are the ones where you have the black bars at the top and bottom) and TV has 4:3 where the entire movie is full screen.

In the 'transcode' tab, Select the video codec you want to use - in our case it is DivXs for Linux. dvd::rip will autodetect your frame rate. 'use YUV internal' should always be yes. For best results always choose the two pass encoding.

The audio options are simpler. you choose either to encode the audio to MP3 using the specified but rate or to use the original AC3 sound without encoding.

The audio options are simpler. You choose either to encode the audio to MP3 using the specified nit rate or to use the original AC3 sound without encoding. AC3 audio provides with surround sound and great quality but will surely will not fit into one cd. so it's actually up to you to decide. If you use MP3 then makes usre that the MP3 quality settings is at 2. Lame is used here to provide MP3 converstion.

In the upper right is the bit rate option. Here you can specify the number and size of CDs on to which you want to ultimately burn your converted movie.

Now let dvd::rip encode a small portion of the movie for you to see the results. Provide a Frame Range to encod, like a 60 second sample which would be 750 frames at 25fps (number of seconds x fps = number of frames to encode) somewhere in the middle of the movie (say 200-950). Give an output filename and click 'Transcode'. This will creat the converted AVI file for you. Play the file on Mplayer or Xine to see how it came out.

One problem that you may see is audio out-of-sycn with video. Don't fret. You can give transcode a frame offset for audi-video sycncronization. Do that by providing the patameter -D nr in the transcode options input line on the transcode tab. The nr is the number of frames the audio has delayed. This number can be negative. Now regenerate the sample video and check the audio again. If required, redo this until you're satisfied.

When you are satisfied with sycn, start encoding process for the entire movie. Click on 'Transcode'or 'Transcode + split' if you want your files to be slit automatically according to the settings under 'Video Bitrate Calculation'.

Take out that book now, because patience is a virtue and I sugget that you have lot of it. ;) Depending on the engine you have below the hood, the encoding can take 30mins to 3hrs.