Decent DVD-Ripping Solution For Linux? 501
supersloshy writes "I'm a user of Ubuntu Linux and I have been for a little while now. Recently I've been trying to copy DVDs onto a portable media player, but everything I've tried isn't working right. dvd::rip always gets the language mixed up (for example, when ripping 'Howl's Moving Castle,' one of the files it ripped to was in Japanese instead of English), Acidrip just plain isn't working for me (not recognizing a disc with spaces in its name, refusing to encode, etc.), Thoggen is having trouble with chapters (chapter 1 repeated twice for me once), and OGMRip has the audio out of sync. What I'm looking for is a reliable program to copy the movie into a single file with none of the audio or video glitches as mentioned above. Is there even such thing on Linux? If you can't think of a decent Linux-based solution, then a Windows one is fine as long as it works."
Handbrake has a Linux GUI (Score:4, Insightful)
I use it on my Mac and it produces pretty decent encodes, even with the presets.
Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
BitTorrent. Its probably faster and definitely easier.
DVDShrink + Acidrip (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DVDFab (Score:3, Insightful)
The submitter was asking for a Linux solution. I can't say I'm an obsessive purist, but if a piece of software needs to run on Wine, I'd rather just do without.
Re:Funny you should ask... (Score:1, Insightful)
RTFS!
The OP specifically stated that Acidrip does not work.
Re:This will help. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DVDFab (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? I think the idea is that windows developers can build their software against a stable wine version and then you have software for linux as well. Google knows this and it seems to work well. There are many suitable solutions through wine, all functioning just fine.
Re:k9copy + k3b, my friend (Score:1, Insightful)
K9Copy is GREAT! I have tryed so many different apps to copy DVD's and the only one that works right for me is K9Copy. I especially like the fact that I can copy a DVD to an ISO file and set the file size I want. Even after shrinking the DVD the quality is as close to perfect as you can get.
Re:Command Line Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
bronco@ubuntu:~$ dvdbackup -v -i
And this will burn what was ripped:
bronco@ubuntu:~$ growisofs -speed 1 -dvd-compat -Z
DivX players are cheap. MKV players are scarce. (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of the time, you still get XviD with MP3, in a AVI container.
To be clear, "Xvid" is an encoder (like DivX) and it makes MPEG4 ASP video streams. Calling a file an "Xvid" file is like calling a photocopy a "Xerox". It might have been created with a genuine Xerox machine but just looking at the paper, you wouldn't know or care.
MKV is still the bleeding edge. The reason AVI/ASP/MP3 is popular is because over 100 million DivX certified devices can play those files. DivX DVD players start around $30 at Wal-mart and are by far the cheapest way to move video from your computer to your living room.
There are also "DivX Ultra" devices that play AVI/ASP/AC3 with chapters, interactive menus, multiple audio and multiple subtitles. Other than the ASP codec, DivX Plus offers most of what you want.
Just recently "DivX Plus" was launched which is MKV/H.264/AAC/AC3. Some day DivX Plus devices might also cost $30 but for now MKV is only useful for people with a PC connected to their TV. Sure it has a lot of advantages over AVI/ASP/MP3 but broad compatibility trumps minor improvements in compression ratios.
Re:DVDFab (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't say I'm an obsessive purist
Then what IS the reason? I run Linux exclusively, and I independently reached the same conclusion as AC: The best Linux DVD ripper is DVDFab.
If DVDFab isn't a "Linux solution" because it requires WINE, then KDE isn't a Linux solution because it requires Qt.
Re:DVDFab (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:DVDFab (Score:2, Insightful)
I realize that there are about a thousand other posts saying something similar, but...
I think Wine might be the best thing that can possibly happen to Linux. The fact of the matter is that a small project just isn't likely to have the means of producing functional software on multiple platforms (at least not without sacrificing performance to go with Java or some alternative), and Wine makes it so that they don't have to by creating a target that will work equally on *nix and Windows. While I realize that similar projects exist to allow for Linux-based software to run in Windows, none of them are able to run as cleanly or transparently as Wine, and there just isn't as much demand for software going in that direction. Plus, as it gets better and more software actually performs better under Wine than Windows (I have seen it with a few things), it could become a wedge for FOSS to embrace extend and extinguish on Microsoft, and that's just funny.
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you want chapters, menus and all that why would you use a 700 - 1400MB file size? You're better to go with a full DVD rip at around 5+ GB and get an exact copy of the disc."
Hear, hear - I was thinking the exact same thing: just make an ISO of the DVD and mount that whenever you want to play it.
The only criteria that this doesn't meet is the file size... big deal, get another 1TB drive... they're stupid-cheap now. On the up side, you're not re-encoding anything and if something better comes along down the line, you can still transcode from that ISO to that format without any further quality loss.
But I guess GP was talking about downloads (torrents/otherwise), in which case he probably doesn't have the original (DVD) media to begin with; in which case, sure, you may prefer the high quality MKV over a low-ish quality DiVX.. if you can't find the ISO anyway.
Re:DVDFab (Score:5, Insightful)
The 1990s called: they want their benchmarks back.
Re:DVDFab (Score:2, Insightful)
After wasting several days of my life on this issue, I gave up, ordered an iMac, and since switching, have spent more time doing what I want on my computer and less time at the computer overall. I no longer have to spend time trying to make sure the tools taht are supposed to help me are set up properly or if I'm using the right settings.
You know, you could've compiled ffmpeg and vlc if it was that much of an issue. Surely, if you've given up several days of your life, downloading the source and opening the install file should've occurred to you.
Yes, the packages may be broken, and yes they shouldn't be. But what have you done in several days that couldn't be solved with ye olde ./configure && make && make install ?
Enjoy your mac.
Re:DVDFab (Score:5, Insightful)
That's Linux for you and the reason why I switched to a Mac. Linux is a fantastic OS but many of the applications that run on it are just not mature enough to be used by laymen.
Re:DVDFab (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the many reasons Linux packaging standards are needed. Distros should be offering the same exact software that you can get easily online. If they want to modify a program, they need to change it's name, but if it's simply distros having different package names then they need to fucking stop it. Metapackages are fine, but fucking around with software names just so you can make your repository be proprietary is wrong. Until Linux users are really free to choose what software to install no matter their distro, and the focus is shifted to making the default software work correctly for all Linux users, you sadly will have more freedom in some ways on a proprietary OS.
Thank you distro wars for giving everyone less freedom and making Linux suck more.
Re:Rips as fast as your DVD drive.... (Score:2, Insightful)
MKV and OGG are both containers, and not audio/video formats! Another thing is that usually in OGG is Vorbis Audio stream.
Re:DVDFab (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh! hohohohoh! (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking a likely -1 Offtopic mod for violating "Do not feed the trolls"... ...But I have to speak on this.
Companies that want to be commercial dickheads and force you to pay for content you already own are at fault here, not linux.
First we have the patent holders on the codecs. They get royalties, both from the media stampers that produce the media, as well as the companies that make the hardware that plays said media. You pay for both of these, on top of the part of the sales $$$ that actually goes to the companies that create the content. A classic case of rent seeking, let alone how much the actual creative people themselves are getting screwed over and are effectively sharecroppers using the company roster as a field.
Then we have the content producers themselves. By making outlandish EULA's and enforcing abusive DRM, they force you to buy the same material multiple times if you want to move it around between formats. That's what DRM does, it makes it a pain in the ass to do anything but bend over and pay $$$ for multiple copies of the same stuff, just in different formats. Yet more rent seeking.
Linux, by being FOSS, is shut out in the cold because it doesn't dirty itself with such stupid palm-greasing fiddle faddle.
Unfortunately, if you're a saint in a corrupt world, you will be left out of lots of stuff if you aren't willing to play dirty.
So rant and rave all you like, but don't blame linux. It's just an innocent bystander in the civil war that is corporate america.
Personally, I'm glad linux isn't getting involved in it.
Re:DVDFab (Score:5, Insightful)
A Mandriva user shouldn't have to install Ubuntu just because OMGAwsomeGame version 5.125.53.325 that they want or need for some reason isn't in Mandriva's repos. These distro companies aren't caring about this problem because they want the size of their repos to *cause* this to happen, for users to switch just for their access to software. That barrier is opposed to Linux's principals and to truly free software. Not to mention, you know, it makes Linux *suck*. Unless you use Ubuntu. But even then, things still suck, and user's freedoms are very much lessened.
And of course again, yeah yeah, you can compile, but only like 5% of users really care about that, and they're mostly developers. Linux needs more features, and this is a big one. Software packages "just work" on Windows and OS X, Linux users can and should have that same freedom, and there is no reason whatsoever that it's not possible and can't be solved through better programming and standards.
Re:DVDFab (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DVDFab (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you talking about DVD Rippers or FFMPEG and Mencoder?
It took me 3 days to find a set of parameters that would let me process the weird Quicktime format from my digital camera and be able to play it on my PS3 and DirecTV DVR.
Device profiles, anyone?
Re:DVDFab (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullcrap. While being able to muck around with all that crap is certainly useful, I don't think anybody would deny that, the *real* problem is that the vast majority of video applications don't have sensible defaults.
That is to say, if you put in a DVD and hit "rip", it'll either spit out a useless file (all-black video, no video only audio, no audio only video, video and audio out-of-sync) or, even worse, you can't even hit "rip" until you've already fiddled with 3 dozen options you don't give a flying shit about.
Look, all iPods are the fucking same. All Zunes are the fucking same. Just have ONE BUTTON that says "Rip to iPod". Period. The reason Handbrake is popular is because that's what it did back when it was a Mac program: you put in your DVD, you hit "Rip", and it worked every time, with every disk.
It's obviously possible, Handbrake *did it*! Years ago!
(Stupidly, Handbrake now almost never works, especially on Windows. They got their working program and made it into shit. Meaning there's now *no* simple way to just insert a disk, and hit a button that says "put this on my iPod.")
Re:Command Line Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
MythTV using MythVideo will play .iso files just fine. Technically on the backend it's mplayer, vlc, or xine that's playing it, but still they play.