xvidenc

xvidenc is a tiny piece of software that allows users to encode DVD-Video discs to the popular XviD video format under GNU/Linux operating systems. It runs via the Linux command-line and uses the MEncoder utility from the MPlayer project.

The interactive shell script ripper for encoding DVD-Video

The tool is also known as the interactive shell script ripper for encoding a DVD-Video disc or any other video file to a high-quality XviD format thanks to the MPEG-4 codec. XviD is an open source project designed from the ground up to provide users with a codec that is faster and offers a better quality than the commercial DivX codec.

As mentioned, the program can be used only via an X11 terminal emulator or the Linux console, using the xvid command followed by various options, such as encoding in one pass, two pass, or fixed-quant modes.

Provides 18 different presets

Furthermore, you can use a pre-defined XviD quality preset, thanks to the 18 different presets provided in the program. Among them, we can mention ultra low quality, medium quality, ultra high quality, near lossless quality, anime, normal quality, very low quality, Apple iPod, and stand-alone HW compatible SD/HD (PAL/SECAM/NTSC).

Under the hood

Under the hood, we can report that the project has been written in Unix-shell technology and supports only XviD 1.1.x or higher codec, as well as MPlayer/MEncoder 1.0 RC2 or later, which can be easily installed on many GNU/Linux distributions.

The project is available for download on our dedicated section (see above) only as a source archive, allowing users to configure, compile and install it on any GNU/Linux distributions, as long as all requirements are met. However, it can also be installed from the default software repositories of many Linux OSes.

Bottom line

All in all, xvidenc is a free, powerful and easy-to-use command-line interface for the MEncoder video encoding, decoding and filtering utility. It lets users to encode DVD-Video files to high-quality MPEG-4 XviD digital video files without much hassle.

What is new in this release:

• Don't append '- chapter [id]' to output filename when user encodes only specific DVD chapters
• Change bad default bitrate value in DTS audio encoding to 384kbps.

What is new in version 8.1.7:

• Fallback to undefined audio language in the AUDLANG[$i] variables if we detect unknown language from MPlayer's output
• Added support for bitrate-based ABR Vorbis encoding in addition to quality-based VBR. ABR mode in Vorbis resembles quality-based VBR except the encoder averages a given nominal bitrate
• Updated the Vorbis part of the video bitrate calculation code
• Added new function ratio_and_pixels_func() which calculates and displays the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR), Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) and total pixels from resolution
• Bugfix for track 1 in the internal audio encoding code. If using aacplusenc to encode audio, the case statement had a wrong selection value (aac instead of aac+) resulting in displaying a failed message and forcing an exit even though the encoding may have succeeded
• Simplifications to the internal audio encoding code which reduce code duplication

What is new in version 8.1.6:

• Bugfix: array variable TRACKID[1] was missing for single file encodes. This results in erratic behavior of the audio code
• Bugfix: second/third audio tracks were ignored by the OGM muxing code if audio codec is MP3

What is new in version 8.1.5:

• Converted most of the variables in the video_subtitles_func() function to arrays. Moderately reduces some code duplication
• Use array variables ${SUBFILE[2]} and ${SUBFILE[3]} instead of ${OUTPUT%.*}_sub2 and ${OUTPUT%.*}_sub3 when dumping the second/third DVD subtitle
• Simplified the MKV cover art importing code
• Major audio code restructuring and partial rewrite. Converted virtually all audio variables to array variables. This reduces a lot of code duplication and makes the audio code much easier and extensible
• Added support for a third DVD audio track
• Added support for per track audio codec for DVD encodings
• Use external flac encoder to encode to FLAC audio as doing it through mencoder is terribly broken. This updates the config file to version 7 and adds the 'flac' encoder as dependency
• Use only one named pipe when encoding audio tracks to neroAAC/AAC+/Vorbis/FLAC
• Updated and optimized the containers muxing code to support the above audio changes
• Updated the bitrate calculation code for target size to support the above audio changes
• Disallow autocropping, if enabled in the config file, for directory batch encodings
• Disallow automatic detection of audio sample rate for directory batch encodings
• Added support for MP4 hinting for RTP/RTSP sessions
• Updated the man page

What is new in version 8.1.5:

• Converted most of the variables in the video_subtitles_func() function to arrays. Moderately reduces some code duplication
• Use array variables ${SUBFILE[2]} and ${SUBFILE[3]} instead of ${OUTPUT%.*}_sub2 and ${OUTPUT%.*}_sub3 when dumping the second/third DVD subtitle
• Simplified the MKV cover art importing code
• Major audio code restructuring and partial rewrite. Converted virtually all audio variables to array variables. This reduces a lot of code duplication and makes the audio code much easier and extensible
• Added support for a third DVD audio track
• Added support for per track audio codec for DVD encodings
• Use external flac encoder to encode to FLAC audio as doing it through mencoder is terribly broken. This updates the config file to version 7 and adds the 'flac' encoder as dependency
• Use only one named pipe when encoding audio tracks to neroAAC/AAC+/Vorbis/FLAC
• Updated and optimized the containers muxing code to support the above audio changes
• Updated the bitrate calculation code for target size to support the above audio changes
• Disallow autocropping, if enabled in the config file, for directory batch encodings
• Disallow automatic detection of audio sample rate for directory batch encodings
• Added support for MP4 hinting for RTP/RTSP sessions
• Updated the man page

What is new in version 8.1.4:

• Simplifications to the MKV tagging code which reduces some code duplication
• Bugfix: FAAC acodec2 variable has wrong mpeg value. Must be mpeg=4 instead of mpeg4. This results in failure in encoding of the second audio track when one selects FAAC as encoder
• Bugfix: FLAC audio was ignored for the second track due to missing value in the selection of the case statement
• Added support for tagging of MKV files when doing a directory batch encoding
• Replaced the IMPSUB1, IMPSUB2 and IMPSUB3 variables, used to import subs when input type is file/directory/vcd, by array variables EXTSUB[1], EXTSUB[2] and EXTSUB[3]. This allows for less code duplication as these array variables are shared by all input types (including DVD) and thus we only need to do a small loop and add their values if not empty to the MKVSUBS, MP4SUBS and OGMSUBS variables
• Use as temp directory $HOME/.xvidenc/job
• Added new function audio_stream_copy_func() which will print a warning that audio stream copy in directory batch encoding mode is not recommended unless the user is certain that the files have a supported audio codec by the MKV/MP4/OGM containers
• Group audio filters under a submenu similar to how the video filters are grouped
• Some small cleanups

What is new in version 8.1.3:

• Added support for per track audio bitrate for DVD encodings
• Added support for per track audio normalization and volume adjustments for DVD encodings. Updated functions audio_volnorm_func() and audio_volume_func()
• Added support for per track audio resampling for DVD encodings. Updated functions audio_resample_filters_func() and audio_resample_func()
• Updated the video bitrate calculation code to support the above audio changes
• Added support for per track AAC profile settings (LC/HE/HEv2) when using the neroAacEnc audio encoder
• Small modifications to the MKV/MP4 tagging and muxing code to support the per track neroAacEnc AAC profiles. This also includes optimizations to the way the tagging code handles different AAC profiles. If LC profile is chosen, audio will be tagged as LC-AAC (along with channels info). For HE and HEv2, audio will be tagged as HE-AACv1 and HE-AACv2 (along with channels info) respectively
• Moved the MKV tagging code inside the MKV muxing code
• Converted the EXTSUB1, EXTSUB2 and EXTSUB3 variables, used to import external DVD subs, to arrays so we can easily check different files for their file extensions
• Only allow SRT subs as import into OGM. If another subs format is provided, the subs will be skipped. For MP4, do not allow ASS/SSA subs since it's not supported yet by MP4Box. For MKV, do not allow SUP and TTXT subs

What is new in version 8.1.2:

• Update to the video_subtitles_func() function: for DVD encodings, added support for importing up to three external subtitles into MKV/MP4/OGM. Also added support for hardcoding an external subtitle into the movie
• Updated the MKV/MP4/OGM muxing code to support imports of external subtitles
• If dumping of the second and/or third DVD subtitle fails and user has selected to import the subs into MKV/MP4, force an exit since container conversion will fail as the muxing programs will complain about the missing subs. If no container conversion is chosen or user has chosen not to import the subs and dumping of subs fails, just continue since there's nothing critical in this case
• Use mplayer -really-quiet option instead of redirection to /dev/null when dumping audio to a named pipe for neroAAC/Vorbis/AAC+ encoding
• Some small updates to the man page

What is new in version 8.0.9:

• Use the same name for the log file as the output file name
• Force using the libmpeg2 decoder when encoding DVDs/VCDs (works slightly better in specific cases compared to ffmpeg2)
• Added support for IVTC 59.940 -> 23.976 fps

Requirements:

• MPlayer
• XviD
• LAME