Hi,
I've been ripping DVDs using mencoder for the past couple of days and have been noticing some weirdness. The exact same script and options produce vastly different results with identical DVDs (in terms of aspect ratios, definition etc.).

Is there a simple script or FAQ that someone can point me to, which explains how to set the encoding options for mencoder?

I've used dvdrip in the past, but had problems with the rips it produced (huge lags in audio etc.), so I'd prefer to use a CLI-based tool like mplayer/mencoder.

Thanks!

mencoder has audio sync issues too, so unfortunately it won't always be better in that regard.

Other than reading the man page, I haven't found much else. There are a couple of very basic tutorials buried in the documentation package. I'll look around and try and find it again since I can't recall where they were off the top of my head.

If you're looking for a new program to use, Handbrake has both a CLI and GTK interface.

If you just want to rip to VIDEO_TS then k9copy is best.

Otherwise, for re-encoding to h.264, Handbrake is probably best.

Thanks guys - I'll give Handbrake a try. Otherwise, it's time to pore the man for mencoder!

Install the mplayer-doc package and look at the following files:

/usr/share/doc/mplayer-doc/tech/encoding-guide.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/mplayer-doc/tech/encoding-tips.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/mplayer-doc/HTML/en/mencoder.html


They probably won't be a lot of help, but this is about all I've found other than the man page.

Thanks all, I tried HandBrake - works great! The CLI is incredibly easy to use so I'm going to stick with it for now. I'll mess around with mencoder when I find the time (or a good reason) to do so.

I tried the GUI version but it involved installing a bunch of GNOME components which I'm trying to avoid.

HandBrakeCLI seems to be the best solution out there. I ran into a few bug:

1) 0.9.3 seems to have problems with certain AC3 sources. This issue was resolved for me by building from a SVN snapshot.

2) Multi-channel FLAC support is terribly broken in HB. I have many encodes with FLAC and AC3 audio with the AC3 track marked as default. The problem is that HB selects the first audio track and ignores the "default" tag. This can be worked around with some basic scripting to fully automate thing.