Ripping Audio CD’s or DVD’s to a nice compact size is becoming more and more important for legal movie buffs not just for hackers and freeloaders.  Most Linux Traditionalists have used command line programs such as Mencoder or Transcode, but it is time to join the 21st century and use a GUI Ripper in Linux.

And in walks AcidRip.

To install it you need to enable multiverse repositories in Debian or Ubuntu, open Terminal and type;

sudo apt-get install acidrip

AcidRip is the entire package with MPlayer and MEncoder. Acidrip itself doesn’t do the encoding, Mencoder does the real work, AcidRip is just the front end.

Most useful is the nifty bitrate calculator. If you want to end up with a 1GB .avi file, working out what the bitrate and resolution should be is a real chore. With Acidrip, you plug in the destined file size and it does the work for you. If it looks like your bitrate is going to be too low and your movie is going to look terrible, Acidrip warns you about it. Likewise, if your bitrate is very high, it lets you know that you could save a little more space or pump up the resolution.

Another cool feature is the automatic selection of the longest DVD title. No more guess-work about which title is the right one. If you’re looking to rather rip the special features or some other part of the DVD, it shows you the contents tree of the disc and you can preview it to make sure you’ve got the right title.

Just for good measure, it also crops black bands from the movie, so you don’t waste file space on wide-format movies.

If you’re a foreign film buff, Acidrip makes it easy to grab the subtitles, which can either be placed in a separate .vob file or rendered directly onto the movie itself.

Acidrip is really basic, and not much on fancy graphics, but is dead simple to use and works well.

Tags | General, Linux, Ubuntu