NAME

       acidrip - a Gtk2::Perl wrapper for MPlayer / Mencoder

SYNOPSIS

       acidrip

DESCRIPTION

       AcidRip is a Gtk2::Perl application for ripping and encoding DVD’s and
       other media files. It neatly wraps MPlayer and MEncoder, which is
       pretty handy, seeing as MPlayer is by far the best video player
       software. As well as creating a simple interface for those scared of
       getting down and dirty with MEncoders command line interface, It also
       automates the process in a number of ways:

       ·   Parses DVD into contents tree

       ·   Finds longest title

       ·   Calculate video bitrate for given filesize

       ·   Finds black bands and crops them

       ·   Divides long films into multiple files

       ·   Other stuff!

USAGE

       Some simple steps to ripping with AcidRip:

       1 - Load DVD or file

           To load a DVD, press "Load" with the disk in your drive (after
           checking that the device is correct. You might want to symlink it
           to /dev/dvd).  To load a file, or a whole directory, enter the
           location in the "Path" box and hit Load.  This loads contents and
           displays it as a tree of tracks (and chapters for DVD). The longest
           track, assumed to be the main feature, is automatically selected
           for you. If you wish to only encode certain chapters of a DVD
           title, just expand that branch and click on the first and last
           chapters you want, while holding shift.

       2 - Choose correct file name and desired size

           The name of the output file is defined by a number of variables:

           ·   %T - Title of the track, as in the editable box above

           ·   %N - Number of the selected track - useful for batch encoding

           ·   %L - Length of the selected track

           ·   %f - The first letter of the title [useful for organisation]

           ·   %b - bitrate of the video stream

           ·   %l - language of the audio track

           ·   %w - width of the video output

           ·   %h - height of the video output

           For example, "/var/film/%f/%T-%N-%wx%h" might be evaluated to
           "/var/film/s/simpsons-2-480x360".

           Also select a file size. This is used to calculate bitrates for the
           codecs you are going to use. If the codecs you choose do NOT
           support a bitrate option (e.g copy, rawrgb etc. for video) then the
           given size can NOT be enforced at all.

           A film can be split into a number of files by setting a value in
           the relevant box. The created files are split by chapter
           boundaries, so the chapters must be suitable.

           You can also add additional information, akin to the ID3 tag’s in
           MP3s. Choose the field in the combo box and enter the correct
           value.  Few players other than mplayer use this information though.

       3 - Choose audio track

           Select the language for the audio. You may also have the option to
           encode directors commentary etc., however the tracks will only be
           listed as such if the description is actually on the DVD itself,
           which doesn’t seem to happen that often.

       4 - Choose audio output

           Use the combo box to choose how to encode the audio. normally this
           should be an MP3 stream. If you do not have mp3lame listed in the
           codecs combo box then you need to compile it into mencoder, it is
           nothing to do with acidrip at all. If you choose mp3lame set your
           options in the box below. See the mencoder manpage for a list of
           options (look for "lameopts").

       5 - Choose video output

           Select the desired video output. lavc (FFMpeg’s avcodec libraries)
           is the default choice. Despite what you might assume "vcodec=mpeg4"
           relates to divx4/5 encoding, trust me on this one..! Many people
           prefer Xvid encoding, it’s up to you of course. Set any options
           specific to the selected output in the options box below. See the
           relevant entries in the mencoder manpage for the full selection.
           Only defaults for lavc are provided. The three main codecs can also
           use 2 pass encoding, select the option if you wish to encode the
           film twice to improve quality.

           You should also check the bitrate here. This value is based on the
           desired file size and the selected audio bitrates. You may wish to
           enter your own bitrate and lock the value using the check box to
           ensure that it is not changed. This naturally means that the file
           size can not be guarenteed.

       6 - Crop film

           Assuming you are using a proper encoding codec (lavc / xvid / divx)
           then you should want to chop off any widescreen bars and such like.
           These bars just soak up disk space, leaving less for the actual
           film. Just pressing the "Detect" button should suffice, but it’s a
           good idea to check the results to make sure, and adjust the values
           accordingly.  Pressing the "Detect" button uses mplayer to pick
           frames throughout the DVD and analyzes it for unwanted areas. Note
           that the values for cropping are not related at all to the output
           size, but instead the size of the DVD itself (720x568 for PAL,
           720x480 for NTSC).

       7 - Scale film

           The final output dimensions of the film can now be set. By default
           the height is locked against the width setting in line with the
           aspect of the video (including any cropping to be applied). The
           scaling of the film is most likely to affect the BPP (Bits Per
           Pixel) values of the file. For a typical divx film you want about
           0.17 - 0.20. A value higher than this just wastes space: divx just
           doesn’t *need* it..., a lower value and the output is blocky and
           poor. By adjusting the width of the film you can affect the BPP
           value directly. Obviously file size and crop values can also affect
           the BPP among others.

       8 - Filters

           You can now enter any flags for processing the film, such as
           deinterlacing, deblocking etc. See the mencoder manpage for
           details.  There are no set options other than a default "pp=de" as
           you should only use the options if you know what they are there
           for. rtfm!

       9 - Encode

           Everything should be set up now so press the "Start" button and
           make some tea.

       That is all that should be required to rip a DVD or file(s). However
       you should not need to perform each step every time. By saving your
       settings they will be automatically loaded next time, and if "Autoload
       media" is selected in the "Additional settings" dialog then the DVD /
       file / directory will be automatically loaded for you. Further more is
       autoload is set, and cropping in enabled then it will be cropped
       automatically too. After this, all you should ever need to do is that
       press start. One button!

QUEUE

           Acidrip has the ability to build and process a queue of events.
           Clicking on "Queue" rather that "Start" will take the current
           encoding settings and create the commands as normal but then add
           them to an execution queue which will not be executed until the
           "Start" button is pressed. The queue can also be exported to a
           standard bash script (~/acidrip.sh) to execute outside of acidrip.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

           There are a number of other additional features in the "Additional
           settings" dialog window. These are:

           Mencoder / Mplayer / lsdvd entries: Change the default program
           names / locations. Allows you to set default parameters not handled
           elsewhere, or set something such as changing "mencoder" to "nice
           mencoder" to run the program via nice.

           Cache DVD / Delete Cache: Values used in caching a disc. Firstly
           the directory to place the cached track in, wether to cache at all
           and wether to automatically delete the cache after encoding. NB.
           you do NOT NOT NOT *need* to cache a DVD at all, you jsut might
           want to.

           Language: The default ISO639 language code or full language name to
           use, e.g. en, de, English...

           Overwrite files: Movie files will be overwritten if they aleady
           exist.

           Shutdown: Attempt to shutdown system after completion.

           Compact progress dialog: Hides the main window while encoding, and
           only shows the encoding box by itself. There is no "Stop" button
           etc, so as well as the smaller footprint you can’t stop it by
           mistake.

           Enforce size check: The file size value set will turn red if there
           is apparently not enough space in the provided output directory. As
           the file size value is only used as an estimate and does not
           guarentee a fixed output size, you may well know something acidrip
           doesn’t, so you can allow the program to encode regardless if you
           wish.

BUGS

       Please report any bugs or functional inconsistencies by email or on the
       sourceforge.net tracker.

SEE ALSO

       mencoder(1) lsdvd

AUTHOR

       Chris Phillips <acid_kewpie@users.sf.net> http://acidrip.sf.net