k9copy, DVD ripper and shrinker for *nix

[scarecrow]

This is not the only DVD ripper/shrinker for *nix of course, but to my knowledge it's one of the simplest and easiest to use. The rather pretty GUI (QT3) is quite reminiscent to DVD Shrink.
Since its a new project, one should expect bugs... If there's no binary for your preferred distribution, check out the dependencies carefully before trying to compile it:

dvdauthor
libdvdread3
libmjpegtools
libquicktime
mjpegtools
toolame
vamps

The output is still plain files, and not ready-to-burn ISO images, but this is a minor issue.

Here is the homepage (French only ATM).

 

[roadworker]

Interesting project!!
Gonna take a look at it...

Compiling is still way out of my league,so I prefer to hunt for binaries....that's one thing I hate :Linux has too much different install methods,and even if you can find .rpm packages for easy installation,they don't work for all distros....why can't these developers create default install directories for software????

 

[scarecrow]

Texstar may up binaries for that one on the PCLOS repos, but for the moment you can use the source RPM from Mandrake Cooker (use "rpm --rebuild ABCDE.src.rpm" as root to build your own binary- then you can pick it and install it from /usr/src/"your architecture" ), or you may get away with the MDV 2005 RPM's from the unofficial MandrakeClub Netherlands repo:
http://mandrakeclub.nl/sources/official/2005/
(there are also other goodies in there, but most are included in the PCLOS repos).

 

[roadworker]

Cool.....THX,m8!

I noticed that there are a LOT of .rpm goodies for SuSe 9.x,are they compatible with PCLinuxOS?
Would be great if Mandrake/Mandriva and SuSe .rpm's are compatible with PLOS....

 

[scarecrow]

Most SuSE RPM's aren't... SuSE puts KDE in /opt, or at least it did, not in /usr, as PCLOS/Mandriva does.
Many Mandriva RPM's will work fine, but mix things as little as possible, else chances to break something seriously are great!

 

[roadworker]

Many Mandriva RPM's will work fine, but mix things as little as possible, else chances to break something seriously are great!

I'm pretty shure I will break something in the future,because I don't know anything about Linux.....and I want to try to set it up for video encoding and making backups the easy way....

Is there an universal install method without compiling from source??

 

[scarecrow]

Is there an universal install method without compiling from source??

Up to now there wasn't, but it seems that the day is not too far away...
The new package manager which likes to have universal range is named "Smart Package Manager" ( http://zorked.net/smart/doc/README.html ), it tries to use any packed binary on any distro (and largely succeeds). In fact, this thing is the very main reason Mandrake acquired Connectiva- the SPM developer is one of the main Connectiva maintainers.
Likely, Mandriva 2006 AND PClinuxOS 1.0 will use "Smart Package Manager" as default, so your prayers may be fullfilled soon!

 

[roadworker]

Likely, Mandriva 2006 AND PClinuxOS 1.0 will use "Smart Package Manager" as default, so your prayers may be fullfilled soon!

Can't wait......

BTW,I found another shrinking tool,pretty basic,but available @ the latest PCLOS repo,it's called "DvdShrink"
But of course it doesn't look like the windows version......
Do you have any experience with this 1????

 

[scarecrow]

No, I have been using other tools for shrinking under *nix... never this one, though.
I cannot still give any concrete advice, as up-to-date I was ripping with *nix stuff to HD, and then shrinking with DVDShrink run under the Wine emulator (just because it works... even under Wine it worked fine).
So far I have ripped just one DVD with k9copy, and the output was fine- but this does not mean that the product works.

 

[scarecrow]

Yet, another wrapper for dvdauthor that shrinks DVD-9 to DVD-5.
perl based, so not as "pretty" as the previous one, but having more features, and working.
Name is xdvdshrink (not very original, yeah, I know... ) but a good wrapper indeed. Go here for more.
Works with no GUI (bash), but the perl gui is OK too. Precompiled binaries for Mandrake ATM (they will likely work for PCLOS as well), but I had no trouble at all compiling it for Arch Linux (from a PKGBUILD in Arch's AUR) that I'm currently using.