[MPlayer-users] I wrote a mencoder mini-guide for DVD ripping

[Ralph Slooten]

Hi there Nico (and of course the rest),

Firstly I must say "thank you" for writing quite a usefull guide to 
mencoder. This is not because I don't know how to use it, but because I get 
bomboarded with general questions by people regarding the howto with dvd 
ripping ;-) I too generally tell them to use mencoder and RTFM first before 
asking me, and not I can tell them to read your work.

One BIG thing I must point out here about your script you included in your
guide... it's totally wrong ;-) Yes I see where you are going with it, but
I will explain.

You are going about your calculations in Kb, and not kb (note the K-k) as
you state. There is a difference... a BIG difference. 1Kb (as used with
your CD size) = 1024 bytes, agreed, however both mp3 and DivX (version 4
upwards, including open-divx, xvid, libavcodec, blaah blaah blaah) work in
kb's ... as in 1kb = 1000bytes.

This makes your equasion a hell of a lot more complicated, trust me, I
know..  as I'm the author of DivX Calc
(http://tuxpower.f2g.net/divxcalc.php) and origionally I had made the same
mistake you have, and it took me a day or so to work out a suitable
calculation. At the end of it I was working out everything in bytes,
including the CD-Size... :-/ Basically you are forced to convert everything 
to bytes.

I tried your script to show you the difference. I took an example from The
Matrix, which is 131 minutes. With your script it tells me to use 584b/s.  
Given your calculation this would give me a film size of 684MB's, which is
reasonable, BUT incorrect. Actually this bitrate would give a total
filesize of 668MB's, using a correct calculation.

To get a filesize of of 684MB's you would actually need a bitrate of 601, 
and not 584. Looks like little, but is a lot on a 131 minute film.

Hope this helps correct things ;-)

Greetings
Ralph

-- 
Homepage: http://tuxpower.f2g.net/