My Geek Notes

Taking one of your DVDs and putting it on your iPod is relatively easy on Debian Linux (Lenny) using the very powerful applications; vobcopy, cat, and ffmpeg. Be prepared to install some new apps if you don’t already have them, but that is really easy with aptitude (apt-get).

First you’ll need to modify your sources.list file to add the debian-multimedia.org repository.

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

and add …

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main
deb-src http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

Then run the following:

apt-get update
apt-get install debian-multimedia-keyring
apt-get update
apt-get build-dep ffmpeg
apt-get install build-essential subversion
apt-get install ffmpeg

Finish up with this:

apt-get install libdvdread3 libdvdcss2 vobcopy

Put your DVD in and run the following which will create some .vob files on the same directory level where you ran it:

vobcopy

Combine the .vob files by running:

cat *.vob > full.vob

Now run ffmpeg, tweaking any settings you need to (first remove the comments):

ffmpeg \
-i full.vob \   # input file name
-f mp4 \        # output file format
-r 30 \         # frame rate
-vcodec mpeg4 \ # video codec
-maxrate 1000 \ # maximum video bitrate tolerance
-b 700 \        # video bitrate in kbit/s
-qmin 3 \       # minimum video quantiser scale (VBR)
-qmax 5 \       # maximum video quantiser scale (VBR)
-bufsize 4096 \ # rate control buffer size
-g 300 \        # gop (group of pictures) size
-acodec aac \   # audio codec to use
-ar 44100 \     # audio sampling frequency
-ab 192 \       # audio bitrate
-ac 2 \         # the 2 stereo channels
-s 320x240 \    # output resolution
-aspect 4:3 \   # aspect ratio
~/new.mp4       # filename for output

Where credit is due - the site(s) where I got help and info:
- http://ramblings.narrabilis.com/wp/howto-encode-dvd-video-for-an-ipod-ffmpeg/

Multimedia Debian, DVD, ffmpeg, iPod, vobcopy