DivX encoding under Linux

Well, I am jealous of all those windows folks who have amazingly good GUI apps for video format conversions / transcoding. I've always wanted some good idea of how to do this under linux. How could you rip DVDs and convert them to DivX files so that you can save a copy even if the flaky and trashy optical medium dies out after a while?

Stumbled across this link while searching online.. Looks good, though a bit dated.

Title: DVD ripping and transcoding with Linux
http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4linux/single/
http://www.bunkus.org/dvdripping4linux/

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How to Rip and extract vob files from a css encrypted DVD

Refer to my previous post
Playing encrypted video DVD on linux
about installing libdvdread

Once you have libdvdread/CSS installed,
then apt-get install vobcopy, then just running the command

vobcopy -o [outputdirectory]

Will extract a decrypted version of the vob files into the mentioned output directory !

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Note: I'm not responsible for your indiscretions / violations of applicable law, if any,
in using the software mentioned above. Please ensure you have the right to copy
before ripping a dvd in the above fashion.

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playing encrypted video dvd on linux

I had rented some movies from the College Library at the UW-Madison, and tried playing them on my dell vostro 1310 running ubuntu 9.04. However, none of them would play :(

I was using gmplayer (www.mplayerhq.hu), and so I always thought it was a problem with my disk drive, like it was not reading the disk properly or something. I couldn't imagine mplayer not having the required codecs, and besides the error I got was something like "seek failed".

I tried with other linux media players too, but ditto ! So I gave up.. But then, lately somehow this sudden enlightenment flashed in my mind (don't exactly remember the nature of the apple that struck my head), and I realized that the disc could probably be encrypted for copyright protection.

I searched "play encrypted video dvd on linux" and bingo, this is the link I got..
http://theos.in/desktop-linux/linux-playing-encrypted-dvd/

Basically what it says I should do is, as superuser/root:

$ cd usr/share/doc/libdvdread[N]

where [N] is an integer; for me it was 4. And then run the script "install-css.sh"

$ ./install-css.sh
or
$ sh install-css.sh

Make sure you are plugged into the internet ;) and the system will fetch and install the necessary packages.. Once that is done, all those dvds which wouldn't play till now would miraculously start playing !! Yeah !

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