townx

Using Linux every day means that I often grapple with how to re-encode proprietary formats so that I can watch them on the computer of my choice. I also do some DVD ripping and creating new DVDs of home movies etc., for which the Linux command line tools work very nicely (more quickly, more consistently and in a more stable fashion than some of the GUIs).

So I've gathered a whole load of tips on encoding, ripping, burning, culled from dozens of forums, websites, manpages etc.. This, then, is the current state of my understanding on this topic, and hopefully distills many hours of pain into an easily-digestible format. It's not very well organised, but hopefully useful. I should mention that this stuff works on Ubuntu, but your mileage may vary. Here goes.

A note on tools

All of the tools I use are easily installable on Ubuntu, either from official repositories or universe/multiverse. You will also need to install the proprietary codecs if you want to work with them. Here's what I tend to use:

• vlc media player
• mplayer media player
• ffmpeg format transformer
• mencoder
• dvgrab
• dvdauthor
• dvdbackup
• growisofs
• mkisofs
• sox
• lame

mp4 to mpg

Use mencoder for this:

mencoder in.mp4 -ovc lavc -oac lavc -o out.mpg

Ripping from a dv camera with dvgrab

dvgrab --autosplit --timestamp --format jpeg

(The camera should be detected automatically, and I think this waits until it detects some input before the capture starts. I use a firewire cable to connect from the camera to the computer.) The files get named after timestamps coming from the film.

Encoding from .avi to .mpg

Use:

ffmpeg -i infile.avi outfile.mpg

(though this produces quite low quality output)

This produces better quality (bitrate = 800):

ffmpeg -i infile.avi -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec mp2 -b 800 outfile.mpeg

Encoding from .avi to .mpg suitable for DVD burning

ffmpeg -i finalmovie.avi -y -target pal-dvd -sameq -aspect 16:9 finalmovie.mpg

If you're in the US, changed pal-dvd to ntsc-dvd.

Ripping DVDs to hard disk

(See http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4linux/single/index.html for lots of good tips)

May need dvdcss decoder to be installed:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

Use dvdbackup to rip a DVD to hard disk.
See http://dvd-create.sourceforge.net/dvdbackup-readme.html for full instructions

# Get info. about DVD
dvdbackup -i /dev/cdrom -I

# Rip whole DVD
dvdbackup -M -i/dev/cdrom -o /media/usbdisk/dvdripping

# Rip main feature
dvdbackup -F -i /dev/cdrom -o /media/usbdisk/dvdripping

# Rip title set (in this case, title set 2)
dvdbackup -T 2 -i /dev/cdrom -o /media/usbdisk/dvdripping

# Rip title (here, rip title 1)
dvdbackup -t 1 -i /dev/cdrom -o /media/usbdisk/dvdripping

Direct DVD copying

This effectively copies the DVD's iso image to hard disk:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=file.iso bs=2048

If the disk is encrypted, this might fail. In this case, it might be worth running this first:

dvdbackup -I -i /dev/cdrom

Then try dd again.

See http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Backup_a_DVD#dd for more details

Note that this produces a mountable DVD image. However, it does not remove encryption, so you would still need to rip to individual VOBs using dvdbackup to get rid of that. However, it is possible to mount the iso and play it as if it were a DVD (see later): vlc is good for this.

Playing a partially ripped DVD

If you've ripped some of the content of a DVD (e.g. using dvdauthor -i /dev/cdrom -F), you can play the partial rip with:

mplayer dvd:// -dvd-device <ripped_dvd_directory>

(vlc might also be able to do this)

Encoding audio out of a VOB file (note that this drops the video altogether)

mplayer -vo null -vc null -ao pcm:file=outfile.wav infile.VOB

You could probably use ffmpeg for this, too.

Creating a DVD using dvdauthor when you don't want the whole disc

If you just have the main feature (a set of .VOB files) and you want to create a playable DVD from them.

Create a dvd.xml file in the top level directory of the ripped DVD (e.g. in VIDEO_TS)

<dvdauthor>
  <vmgm />
    <titleset>
      <titles>
        <pgc>
          <vob file="VTS_01_1.VOB" />
          <vob file="VTS_01_2.VOB" />
          <vob file="VTS_01_3.VOB" />
          <vob file="VTS_01_4.VOB" />
          <vob file="VTS_01_5.VOB" />
        </pgc>
      </titles>
    </titleset>
</dvdauthor>

(Adding another element for each VOB which you want included in your "movie". Note that these can equally well be your own mpg files.) You can also add titles etc.: see the man page for dvdauthor for more details. This works fine for me, though.

Then run it with:

dvdauthor -o <output directory for DVD structure> -x dvd.xml

Burning complete DVD structure to a new DVD

See http://www.linux.com/articles/53702

(I think you might need to have used dvdbackup -M (complete rip) for this to work, or have a DVD structure created using dvdauthor (see above))

growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cdrom -dvd-video <ripped dvd structure>

Creating an iso from a ripped DVD structure

If you've ripped the structure of a DVD (e.g. using dvdbackup) or created your own DVD structure (e.g. using dvdauthor), you can turn it into a single iso file with:

mkisofs -dvd-video <ripped dvd directory> | dd of=file.iso obs=32k seek=0

Mounting an iso filesystem so you can read it

mkdir mountpoint
sudo mount -o loop file.iso mountpoint

Once mounted, you can play the mounted iso (including its menu system) using vlc. For example, if we mounted it on the directory "mountpoint" we could do:

vlc dvd:///path/to/mountpoint

Encode VOB to mpg

If you ripped a VOB off a DVD but you want a smaller mpg:

ffmpeg -i VTS_01_1.VOB -vcodec mpeg2video -acodec mp2 -b 1000 sleeper1.mpg

Ripping RealPlayer streams

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToRipRealaudioStreamsToMp3 for full instructions

Short version:

vsound --timing --dspout --file=myfilename.wav realplay http://url.to.rip

Ruby script for converting from m4a (iTunes format?) to mp3

This is a shell script for converting files from m4a to mp3. It uses mplayer and lame behind the scenes. sox is supposed to do this, but I can never work out how to install proprietary codecs for it. This doesn't retain tags, unfortunately. Sneetchalizer will probably also work.

#!/opt/lampp/bin/ruby
# only works if the script is in the directory with the m4a files
prefix = "new_file_prefix"
Dir['*.m4a'].each do |f|
  new_filename = prefix + File.basename(f).gsub(' ', '_').slice(3..-5).downcase
  wav = new_filename + ".wav"
  mp3 = new_filename + ".mp3"
  `mplayer -ao pcm:file='#{wav}' '#{f}'`
  `lame -h -b192 #{wav} #{mp3}`
  `rm #{wav}`
end

Ruby script for converting from ogg to mp3

Uses ogg123. This script loses all the tags, though. Sneetchalizer would do this, too.

#!/opt/lampp/bin/ruby

filename = ARGV[0]

if filename.nil? or !(/\.ogg$/ =~ filename)
  puts "I don't think that's an ogg file, mister"
  exit
end

base_filename = filename.chomp(".ogg")
mp3_filename = base_filename + ".mp3"

`ogg123 -d au -f - #{filename} | lame - #{mp3_filename}`

mp3 to ogg

Bit basic, this, but you get the idea:

mpg321 -s input.mp3 | oggenc -r -a "artist" -t "title" -b 100 -M 140 -o output.ogg -

ogg to wav

sox is OK for this, as neither codec is proprietary:

sox input.ogg output.wav