Creating high quality avi from DVD

[Brian McKee]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Ben Edwards <list4me2 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2009/1/8 Rashkae <ubuntu at tigershaunt.com>:
>> Ben Edwards wrote:
>>> Any advice would be good, probably best to keep this thread focused on
>>> quality of output rather than other aspects such as
>>> functionality/usability.

Consider the 'tovid' set of tools, todisc, todvd etc.  I've had some
success with them, and they are straightforward to use.
>> Go right to the source.  Mencoder is the program used almost universally
>> to encode the videos.  There is much documentation and examples on the
>> mplayer web page.. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a black art with several
>> options available, so you'll have to be prepared to bite deep and do
>> some experimentation to find combinations that work well for you.
>> A quick note on codecs.  H264 will give you better quality than the
>> traditional Xvid, the downside is that the H264 videos will not play on
>> DVD players that support Xvid/avi.

Just a comment here - I keep seeing that in print, but the stuff I've
tried always worked out better with xvid/avi.  H264 seems to make
horizontal lines at the point of motion that I notice right away and
find objectionable.  Maybe it's just me, or maybe I just haven't ever
got the right settings for H264...  Just expressing my experience.

Quality of output I think is a function of the experience and patience
of the encoder (the person) more than the software. Black art indeed.

Brian