[SATLUG] DVD transcoding with a slight twist.

[Tom Weeks]

On Sunday 17 February 2008 00:00:15 FIRESTORM_v1 wrote:
> Good afternoon all:
[...]
> Once I get the files to AVI, I can generate my own menu structures and
> press the DVD, it's getting them from the unencrypted VOB files to AVI (or
> MPEG) files is the trick I don't remember.

If you really want to mess with all that manually.. You can I suppose.. But I 
do all of that with MythTV now (it has mencoder, ffmpeg, libdvdcss, 
mythttranscode, and more).

I just pop in a DVD.. rip it.. rip a few more.. then use MythArchive to select 
what shows or movies I want to create a new DVD with, pump up the compression 
if I need to.. and poof.. An hour later I have a shiny new DVD with whatever 
TV shows and/or DVD titles I want on it.. with cool DVD menus and all built 
in. Plays on any DVD player.


> And of course, I'd like to do it in Linux. :)

But of course. :)


> a tip to those of you that subscribe to digital cable and have a motorola
> high definition settop (either DCT5100 or DCT6200) depending on your
> settop's firmware and your cable company, you can use the firewire port to
> stream/encode whatever the DCT is watching on the fly.  I tested this on
> Windows, and I'm pretty sure it's a ton easier in Linux.

Oh yeah.. In fact that's what we recommended in the "Linux Toys II" book if 
you have an all digital cable/DSS/TV setup (to use pure firewire from the 
tuner box that is).  Saves you $$ on not having to get analog tuner card (or 
mess with them).. plus since firewire is bi-dir, you can use the same 
connection to "change channels" on the tuner instead of having to mess with 
crappy RS-232 or IR hacks to try to control the tuner box (what a mess!) or 
messing with crappy DRM-laden HDMI (High-bandwidth Digital Content 
Protection) or such freedom killing crap... 
Firewire.. err..IEEE-1394 rocks!

Tweeks