Provided by: acidrip_0.14-0.2ubuntu8_all 
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
POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:
Around line 312:
You forgot a '=back' before '=head1'
perl v5.22.2 2016-06-23 ACIDRIP(1p)