[MPlayer-users] Ripping DVDs Directly to MPEG Files

[Alexander Roalter]

On 12/14/2009 11:18 PM, James Board wrote:
> Yes, 'mplayer -identify' will work, but it also tries to play the video.  Can I tell mplayer to simply display that same information, then exit (so I can capture the output into a file and right a Perl script to RIP the file correctly)?

mplayer -frames 0

stops before playing anything

> 
>>> Can I assume that 'alang en' will always work right and select the english track?

The thing is, it will work most of the time, but sometimes there is a
Stereo and a surround mix present, and mplayer gets the first it
encounters, so you'd have to go with identify, get the 'en' tracks and
from them get the 5.1 (if any).

Of course, e.g. with the Seven DVD there are two 5.1 tracks (alongside
the 6.1 dts track), one being the score only, but also in 5.1... In this
case, playing the lowest-numbered 5.1 track will work, but there's no
guarantee.


One other thing remains still: you'll have to decide which title to rip.
I have dozens of DVDs with rated and unrated versions of the same movie.
While on DVD they only take a small overhead (for the differing scenes),
there's no way for it on a ripped file to have two different variants in
one file. And forced subtitles also are probably not available (not
really important for RC1 dvds since all of them I own have fixed
burned-in subtitles on the master, but a lot of the UK DVDs I have
don't... So when watching the godfather, you either understand italian
for certain scenes or burn in the subtitles there...


-- 
Cheers,
Alex