[aclug-L] Re: DVD Ripping

[Donald King <donald.king@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 21 August 2004 11:39 pm, Jonathan Hall wrote:
  [...]
>
> Also, somewhat related, but more generally... if anyone has experience
> ripping DVDs, what encoding software can you recommend?  And do you
> recommend any specific audio or video codecs?  What other things should I
> consider when ripping DVDs?
>

I've had good luck with MEncoder (comes with MPlayer).  Here's the shell 
script I used to rip my Stargate SG-1 box set:

=== BEGIN ntsc-rip.sh ===
#!/bin/sh

set -e

[ -f "$1" ] && exec < "$1"

rm -f rip.avi divx2pass.log frameno.avi

while IFS=':' read t s e title; do
        fn="(CT) Stargate SG-1 S${s}E${e} - $title.avi"
        echo "=== $s.$e $title [Rip DVD track $t] ==="
        nice -5 mencoder -dvd $t -o rip.avi -ovc copy -oac copy -fps 29.97
        for p in 1 2; do
                echo "=== $s.$e $title [Encode pass $p] ==="
                nice -5 mencoder rip.avi -o "$fn" \
                  -info "name=Stargate SG-1 S${s}E${e} \"$title\"" \
                  -info "artist=Ripped by Chronos Tachyon" \
                  -info "srcform=DVD (Region 1, NTSC Telecine)" \
                  -srate 44100 -fps 29.97 -ofps 23.976 \
                  -sws 2 -vop dint,scale=432:240 \
                  -oac mp3lame -lameopts q=4:vol=6 \
                  -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vme=1:vhq:v4mv:vpass=$p
        done
        rm -f rip.avi divx2pass.log frameno.avi
done
=== END ===

I fed it appropriately formatted text files that described which episodes were 
on the DVD.  I was fairly happy with the resulting files (which are in DIVX 
format).  Only complaint was more from the fact that the DVDs were 
telecine-interlaced NTSC, which hurts the quality even if you're just 
watching it off the DVD (the "-vop dint" part helped a bit).  I bought one 
season in PAL format, and those AVIs came out much crisper.

I'd previously tried transcode, but I had major issues with keeping 
audio/video sync.  I suspect its authors are used to dealing with PAL, which 
is much saner than NTSC.

-- 
Donald King, a.k.a. Chronos Tachyon
http://chronos.dyndns.org/ -- WWED?
Guardian of Eristic Paraphernalia
Gatekeeper of the Region of Thud
 07:49:14 up 128 days,  8:52,  1 user,  load average: 0.05, 0.09, 0.04

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