Transcode DVD Tracks
Dual-pass Encoding
If you want to encode a track from a DVD try this:
$ mencoder dvd://1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1 \ -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o /dev/null $ mencoder dvd://1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell:vpass=2 \ -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o chapter1.avi
The playback quality of ov dual-pass MPEG is awesome, but the encoding takes a long time.
Windows
To encode a video so that Windows Media player can understand it do something like this:
$ mencoder dvd://1 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=wmv2:vbitrate=2048 \ -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=3 -o chapter1.avi
Or to make an MPEG-1 video that will play in a presentation:
mencoder dvd://2 -ovc raw -oac pcm -ss 00:49:53 -endpos 46 -o clip1.avi ffmpeg -i clip1.avi -target ntsc-vcd clip1.mpg
Another favorite option of mine is to specify a new size for the video:
-vf scale=640:480
Copying Specific Clips
A commercial regular DVD is arranged into chapters and using -ss and -endpos will start at a specific time and end in so many seconds. Here I'm using ffmpeg to create a MPEG that can be embedded into a presentation:
$ mencoder dvd://2 -ovc raw -oac pcm -ss 00:49:53 -endpos 46 -o clip1.avi $ ffmpeg -i clip1.avi -target ntsc-vcd clip1.mpg
If a DVD has been created by recording from a video tape then the proper indexing may not exist on the disc, so an index file needs to be created:
$ mencoder dvd://1 -ovc copy -oac copy -o movie.raw $ mplayer movie.raw -forceidx -saveidx movie.idx $ mencoder movie.dvd -loadidx movie.idx -ovc raw -oac pcm -ss 00:25:22 -endpos 61 -o clip2.avi $ ffmpeg -i clip2.avi -target ntsc-vcd clip2.mpg