GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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AcidRip: Simple GUI for DVD to AVI

AcidRip presents a clean Gnome graphical interface for converting a DVD directly to an avi file (without temporary copies of the DVD). Generally, creating a 1GB file for every hour of video produces a good quality backup. If we specify more than a single file then Acidrip will split at chapter breaks (we can, later on, use avisplit to split a video into smaller chunks, and avimerge to combine video clips--see Section 106.5). The Queue tab of acidrip displays the mencode command line that is generated and run. Extensive use of tooltips provides excellent interactive advice on using the tool.

Figure 28.1: The AcidRip interface for converting a DVD to AVI, showing a sample DVD with the longest title selected and File size reset to 1700.

Recipe:

1. Startup acidrip and it will read the DVD and select the longest title--be patient and pay attention to the status bar at the bottom since it may take a few seconds while it determines information about the DVD;
2. Change the Track title if you like (this is used as the filename stem - the %T);
3. Choose the File size and # Files. Perhaps 1000 for each hour of video to get a reasonable Bits/Px (about 0.2) on the Video tab;
4. Set Info to name the movie;
5. Select a Subtitle if desired;
6. On the Video tab, click the Detect button for cropping to the correct size;
7. On the Video tab, check that the Scale option is off so that you get the original size;
8. On the Preview tab you can choose to watch a bit of a preview of the resulting movie;
9. When you are ready, click the Start button and over the next few hours the work will be done. Note that the main window collapses to a progress window while the work is being done.

There is a bit of a strange interaction between setting the number of files and the file size, and the Bits/Px value. Bits/Px changes if you change the 700 to 1400 with 1 file. But change 1 file to 2 files at 700 and the Bits/Px do not seem to change? Should be the same as 1400 by 1 file, and it is if you change the 1400 back to 700 and 2 files!