Provided by: acidrip_0.14-0.2ubuntu7_all bug

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'