[MPlayer-users] Ripping DVD Audio tracks to MP3

[Scott Baker]

I want to rip the directors commentary track from some of my DVDs to MP3 so 
I can take them to work and listen to them.  Is there a simple way to do 
this with Mplayer?  It looks like:

mencoder -dvd 1 -aid 128 -dumpaudio

would dump whatever audio track to a file.  Is there a way to dump the 
audio to a pipe?  Right now it's a two part process, rip the audio, and 
then recompress the audio.  Is there a simpler way?

What's the best AC3 reader/encoder?  Freshmeat doesn't show a lot.