# ANDREW README file - Version 1.2
# Copyright (C) 2005 Alessandro Di Rubbo
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
#
# For the purpose of applying the GNU General Public License to this
# document, consider both "source code" and "object code" to refer to
# this file.
# ANDREW README file
#-Index
#---1) Introduction
#---2) Main features
#---3) Use
#---4) Requirements and installation
#---5) N.A.Q.
#-------5a) How can I play DVDs and video files (including .ogm and .mkv)?
#-------5b) What are .ogm files?
#-------5c) What are .mkv files?
#-------5d) What is Vorbis?
#-------5e) What is FFmpeg?
#-------5f) What is XviD?
#---6) F.A.Q.
#-------6a) What does N.A.Q. mean?
#---7) Bibliography
#---1) Introduction
ANDREW's Not a DVD Ripping and Encoding Wizard, but an interactive wrapper or a BASH script to simplify the use of OggEnc, MEncoder and mkv/ogmmerge to create, from a DVD, one or more Matroska or Ogg Media files containing an ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 2 compliant video track, encoded using FFmpeg libavcodec or XviD codec, one or more AC-3 or Vorbis audio tracks, a chapter index and, optionally, one or more subtitle tracks. ANDREW is free software, released under GNU General Public License.
#---2) Main features
- Possibility of splitting movies in several files
- Possibility of encoding few chapters only
- Support for NTSC and PAL video formats
- Automatic removal of video black borders
- Video rescaling on the basis of bit rate and mean quantizer
- Support for VobSub subtitles from DVDs and SRT from external files
- On-the-fly encoding to use as small as possible disk space
- Control of needed disk space availability
- Possibility of halting the system when the job is finished
- Internationalisation by GNU gettext
- Localisation in English, Italian and Spanish
#---3) Use
Invoke ANDREW typing "andrew.sh" in the command line (read the man page to see the available options, type "man andrew"). If there isn't one, ANDREW will create a configuration file and will wait for you to make changes in it; then ANDREW will ask you some questions. When you have answered the questions ANDREW will display summary followed by the last question, "What do you want to do?".
#---4) Requirements and installation
No effort to make ANDREW a portable shell script was done, so it needs, to be invoked, the command language interpreter BASH (tested with version 2.05b.0(1)-release; it should work with versions upper than 2.03-alpha), but also GNU Coreutils (5.2.1), GNU iconv (2.3.2), GNU grep (2.5.1), GNU sed (4.1.2), GNU gettext (0.14.4), Ncurses (5.4.20040208) and less (382). Furthermore ANDREW uses GNU bc (1.06), MPlayer (1.0pre7try2-3.3.5), MEncoder (1.0pre7try2-3.3.5), OggEnc (1.0.1), lsdvd (0.15; >0.10), dvdxchap (1.5; >1.4.1), ogmmerge (1.5; >1.4.1), mkvmerge (1.6.0; >0.9.7) and mkvextract (1.6.0; >0.9.7), whose installation is checked every start.
To install ANDREW type: "./configure && make && make install" (read INSTALL for details); also, you could edit the first line of the script andrew.in.sh, rename the file and move it wherever you like, giving up localised versions of ANDREW and its man page.
#---5) N.A.Q.
#-------5a) How can I play DVDs and video files (including .ogm and .mkv)?
It's simple, use one of the free players listed below: Gnu/Linux
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html
http://www.videolan.org
http://xinehq.de
Windows
http://www.gabest.org
+ http://ffdshow.sourceforge.net/tikiwiki
+ http://tobias.everwicked.com/oggds.htm
http://www.videolan.org
Windows Media Player (non free, not for DVDs and not for every file)
+ http://packs.matroska.org
+ http://tobias.everwicked.com/oggds.htm
Other operating system
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/ports.html
http://www.videolan.org/vlc
http://xinehq.de/index.php/about
#-------5b) What are .ogm files?
"OGM meaning Ogg Media File, was developed by Tobias Waldvogel. It is a container format (for video, audio and subtitles), which can do a few things what the AVI format cannot: chapter support; Vorbis audio support. Just like AVI, it also supports: multiple subtitle tracks, multiple audio tracks, of various formats (MP3, AC3, Vorbis (not in AVI), WAV)." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGM )
#-------5c) What are .mkv files?
"Matroska aims to become THE standard of multimedia container formats [...]. It incorporates features you would expect from a modern container format, like:fast seeking in the file; high error recovery; chapter entries; selectable subtitle streams; selectable audio streams; modularly Extendable; streamable over internet (HTTP and RTP audio & video streams); menus (like DVDs have) [...]. Matroska is an open standards project." (from http://www.matroska.org )
#-------5d) What is Vorbis?
"Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and
streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source. Learn more by
reading the FAQ."
(from http://www.vorbis.com )
#-------5e) What is FFmpeg?
FFmpeg is a project "released under the GNU Lesser General Public License [...]. It includes libavcodec, the leading audio/video codec library [...]" that includes, in its turn, an ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 2 compliant video codec. (from http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net )
#-------5f) What is XviD?
"XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec, so designed to
compress/decompress digital video. It's a open source project, which is
developed and maintained by a handful of skilled and interested engineers from
all over the world."
(from http://www.xvid.org )
#---6) F.A.Q.
#-------6a) What does N.A.Q. mean?
Never Asked Questions...
#---7) Bibliography
- "DVD Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers)" September 13, 2004 revision - Jim Taylor
- "Guida alla compressione DivX" versione 1.40 - Fixer
- "File size & DRF/quantizers Relationship" 11/04/2003, 18/04/2003 - NFJ
- "DVD ripping and transcoding with Linux" versione 0.9 - Moritz Bunkus, tr. Marco Vigogna
- "DVD2OGM Micro-Howto - Backup di un DVD su CD usando linux e il formato OGM" versione 0.1 + dvd2ogm script - ceu@despammed.com
- "Guida avanzata di scripting Bash" versione 2.3 - Mendel Cooper, tr. Emilio Conti
- MPlayer-users mailing list archives
- Used command documents