AcidRip
"Written" by Chris Phillips (acid_kewpie)
AcidRip is a
Gtk2::Perl
application for ripping and encoding DVD's. It neatly wraps
MPlayer and MEncoder, which I think
is pretty handy, seeing as MPlayer is by far the best bit of video
playing kit around for Linux. As well as creating a simple Graphical
Interface for those scared of getting down and dirty with MEncoders
command line interface, It also automates the process in a number of ways:
- Parses DVD into contents tree
- Finds longest title
- Calculate video bitrate for given filesize
- Finds black bands and crops them
- Gives suggestions for improved performance
- Other stuff!
AcidRip looks something like this...
(via 'antspotlight' xscreensaver module)
As well as obviously needing MPlayer and MEncoder properly installed
with all the things you like for it, AcidRip also requires a little c program I
also am writing, called
lsdvd which reads and prints the
contents of a dvd to your terminal in plain, but very parsable, English. Lsdvd
in turn uses libdvdread, the most popular dvd reading library for *nix, which
should be available
here. It would be nice to be able to use MPlayers libdvdread hack, mpdvdkit,
but that's not going to happen as yet...
Please use the
Sourceforge project page for downloads, that way I can track downloads easier.
Drew Bentley has been kind enough to write a decent little
HOWTO on installing
acidrip. Please have a read through it for information such as howto
enable MP3 support, which you probably want. Thanks Trickykid.
Acidrip is fundamentally a wrapper application. This means that
is is written in order to provide an easy and logical method to use another
more complicated applciation, i.e. MEncoder. This means that, in theory, if
MEncoder can do something, acidrip should be able to do it too. However this
is aimed specifically at DVD to divx encoding, so features not based around
this are not included.
Acidrip is *NOT* an encoding program. It does not do a single
bit of encoding by itself. It can not do anything complicated that MEncoder
can not do, e.g. output to VCD format etc... Feature requests are always
welcome but please be very sure that is within the "jurisdiction" of my
program.
You're joking right? The application *should* be obvious enough
to not need documentation, and most things that might be confusing are probably
down to MPlayer, so read their very very detailed documentation.
While AcidRip is coming on pretty well, a few areas haven't
been touched on too much yet:
- More audio features, e.g. mencoder's preset values
- Caching for subtitles
- Improved VCD support
- Encoding from file
- Credit cutting
- Probably many other things i've forgotten
Seeing as I assert my moral right to be recognised as the author of this
software, i also want to make some other things clear:
- This is the very first Perl program I have ever written (save for a solitary "hello world" I guess), and as such it is badly written, is inefficient and badly set out...Unless you want to give me a job, in which case it's perfect!
- This package has absolutley nothing to do with any legally questionable decryption methods. That'd far to complicated for me. Any decryption is done so via MPlayer, which this package naturally has no control over... well not in *that* sense... ahh forget it.
- I rock.
Naturally this project is heavily based around MPlayer, and
their site is
In the spirit of open source, I give you the competition! dvd::rip http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip
AcidRip uses MPlayer and dvd::rip uses the much more in-depth
transcode
VobCopy's source code was really useful for parts of lsdvd.
The best Linux help forum in the known universe, my regular haunt,
http://linuxquestions.org
And seeing as they've been on a DVD at some point in the past...
http://henson.com
I could add more, but seeing as most decent links are on their pages as well....
Any and all
feedback is gratefully
received, as long as you don't 5p311 Lik3 th1z
mail me.
Project information for AcidRip is hosted on
sourceforge... and is
likely to have more up to date files.
