How to Rip DVDs in Linux with AcidRip

AcidRip, to paraphrase the project's website, does nothing at all. Or, more accurately, AcidRip doesn't actually do anything other than tell other programs what you want them to do. AcidRip uses two other open-source programs, MPlayer and Mencoder, to do the "dirty work." It ises MPlayer to provide previews of what's happening, and Mencoder to do the actual encoding of the disc. AcidRip, therefore, is just a script that makes it easier for the average user (read: most of us!), to rip a DVD to divx, than by typing in an obscure set of commands into Mencoder's command-line interface.

Unlike other DVD ripping tools for Linux, such as Thoggen (which only rips to Ogg Theora files), AcidRip can rip using the lavc codec, as well as xvid or H.264 (one of the more popular "new" codecs). In addition, AcidRip gives the user a great deal of control over exactly what gets ripped, from only the main title, to special features, to everything. In addition, the user can crop the image before encoding, to get rid of any black bars at the top and bottom, and the user can also decide how much space the resulting rip should take up, or simply what optimal bitrate should be used, both for audio and video.