ripmake 1.39 review

ripmake is a fully automatic command line ripping makefile generator for transcode. The idea of ripmake is to write a tool which a

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 26K Developer: Christian Vogelgsang

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ripmake is a fully automatic command line ripping makefile generator for transcode.

The idea of ripmake is to write a tool which automatically (i.e. with as few user interaction as possible) selects the best parameters for a given ripping task. It should inspect the source (e.g. a DVD or an AVI file), extract all important information, calculate the missing parameters and generate a parameter set for transcode that will create an output file of high quality.

First I thought of a tool that performs all the necessary steps itself and calls transcode for the real work. But I soon found out that often a bit of manual intervention is required to achieve the best results. So a different approach came to my mind: Why not write a tool that generates a makefile for the rip and that embeds all automatic options as parameters in it. You can then call different rules for different rip tasks (e.g. render a sample, render whole movie...) and you can overwrite the parameters by redefining the make variables.

So here it is: ripmake - A makefile generator for your ripping tasks.
The first version was quite alpha and simply tried to prove the concept. The current version is an almost complete rewrite of the first version and is quite useful.

Current Status

Supported Sources:

DVD disc or image
AVI file (DIVX, MJPEG tested)

Supported Targets/Flavors:

AVI MPEG4 (XviD, Divx4/5)
VCD (PAL tested)
SVCD (PAL tested)

Requirements:
General
Perl 5.x installed at /usr/bin/perl
pgmfindclip - automatic clip region search
chaplin - chapter handling for DVD input
transcode - at least version 0.6.2 (final)
mjpeg tools, toolame, sox - VCD and SVCD processing
ogmtools - for OGM flavor (written by Moritz Bunkus)
mkvtoolnix - for MKV flavor (written by Moritz Bunkus)
mpglen - calculate frame count of MPEG files (written by Glen Harris)

Optional
cpvts - copy complete title sets from a DVD
cpdvd - copy DVD contents to harddisk (with transcode 0.6.2 it really works for most dvds:))
dvdbackup - create exact image of DVD (sometimes works better)

Setup
Unzip ripmake: gunzip ripmake-x.gz
make it executable: chmod 755 ripmake-x
place it in your PATH

What's New in This Release:
New:
added new flavor 'dvd' (requested by all of you :))
currently very basic (no menus, no chapters...)
please test and report :)
input frame ratio can be set (suggested by K. Fitzner, R. Smits)
e.g. use '-x in_asr=[4,3]' to force 4:3 frame size

Fixes:
also support CDXA input (U. Meyer)
deinterlace with -I 3 (T. Neumann)
frame ranges are calculated correctly with fps conversion (J. Braeuer)