mplayer/mencoder 

Saturday, January 17, 2009

I'm not saying you should copy DVDs... but if you really want to, and you find that the copy protection is proving a little too challenging for your favourite DVD ripper, then mplayer has a very simple way of extracting video from the DVD.

For example, to extract the first title, and save it in a file called out.mpg:

mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile out.mpg

eyetv  ffmpeg  handbrake  MPEGStreamClip  mplayer/mencoder  vlc 

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A quick summary of apps I find essential for editing and converting video.

• EyeTV – for recording DVB broadcasts. OK this one isn’t free, but I’m not aware of any equivalent free app.


• MPEGStreamClip – for editing, and a bit of conversion. It’s editor is much more accurate than EyeTV’s. (Windows version also available)


• VLC – can play a wider range of video formats than anything other app I’ve found. It can also do conversion, and act as a streaming server… all of which requires a much more detailed post sometime. (Windows & Linux versions also available).


• Handbrake – for ripping DVDs and converting to MP4 or DivX. (Windows version also available)


• ffmpeg – general purpose video converter, covered in many of the examples on this site. Also ffmpegX, a Mac GUI for it, although I’ve never really got on very well with that – not sure why, just personal taste probably.


• mplayer – another “play anything” player, and MPlayer OSX. This is one of the few tools which can play the horrible RealMedia format, and can capture Real streams from the web. The other thing I use it for is ripping individual titles from DVDs (more on that another time).