Multimedia :: dvd to avi

I am trying to backup my personal dvd's (dvd to dvd and/or dvd to avi). Does anyone have, or know where I can get mencoder? I found a nice 'how-to' to make a VCD from a dvd

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub....es.html

Or, if anyone knows another way to convert dvd to avi I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

DVD::Rip and avidemux are good programs
under a larger distribution than DSL.
The ftp server of Debian-marillat has many Debian packages
for video, some of which may be illegal in your particular country.
You would have to Google for it.
But generally speaking, these programs have huge dependencies,
and are not well suited to DSL.
I'm using Xine, Mplayer, Avidemux,DVD::Rip, Xawtv, and XdTV
under SuSe quite happily, but it has been difficult getting there.

Btw, mencoder is part of the full mplayer package or it's depends,
the mplayer site may have more info.....
I have never looked to see if it is in the .dsl package.

not sure about ke4nt's extension, but the xfree86 mplayer doesn't have mencoder.

I also use DVD::Rip, also in Suse. It works pretty well, although seems to be unpredictable with disks containing even the slightest error (I'm beginning to wonder if DVD manufacturers intentionally put errors on disks for this reason).

original here.