There are several simple dvd-ripping tools available. vobcopy can be used. First you'll want to mount your dvd (assuming the mount point is /mnt/dvd and is set up in your /etc/fstab):
Code:
$ mount /mnt/dvdThen you can rip the main title using vobcopy:
Code:
vobcopy -i /mnt/dvdThis will rip the main title only, similar to IFO-mode in DVD Decrypter. if you want to rip the entire disc preserving structure, use
Code:
vobcopy -i /mnt/dvd -m.You can also use dvdbackup from the dvd-create project to rip dvds in a similar fashion.

2. How can I backup a DVD using fast (compressed-domain) transcoding, like DVDShrink?

StreamDVD is a native linux application for transcoding DVDs on the fly. Its advantages are that it does not require the dvd to be ripped, demultiplexed, transcoded, and remultiplexed, rather it reads directly from the DVD and writes a valid DVD vob to standard out that can be piped to dvdauthor. It also has a good quality accurate transcoding engine. Its disadvantages are that it does not handle full discs or menus, but does single titles only. StreamDVD's usage is quite easy (as quoted from the documentation):

When using dvdauthor to build the dvd structure, you can generate a new dvd with only one step. You can pass the complete streamdvd commandline (followed by a '|') to the -f switch in dvdauthor.
i.e.: lets say your dvd drive is accessable at /dev/dvd, the saving directory is /movies/movie1 and you want to backup title 1, all chapters with 1st video and 1st audio track:

Code:
dvdauthor -t -o /movies/movie1 -f 'streamdvd -i /dev/dvd -t 1 -s 0xe0,0x80 |'After that, build the missing ifo files with:

Code:
dvdauthor -T -o /movies/movie1Note that this also requires dvdauthor to be installed, available in many distributions.

At this time streamDVD does not internally support chapters or subtitles. However you can use spumux from the dvdauthor project to mux subtitles, but this will require a full copy of the DVD to your hard drive and more time. As far as chapters go if you extract the chapter points they can be specified in the dvdauthor step, but must be determined beforehand.

You can also encode with streamdvd via the lxdvdrip script.

Additionally, DVDShrink works fairly well under wine, see the section on wine and windows programs emulation for more information.

3. How can I fully reencode a DVD, like DVD-RB under windows?

Unfortunately there is currently no full-disc DVD reencoder comparible to DVD-RB under linux. As far as main movie only reencoding, there are two major mpeg2 encoding libraries (libavcodec and mpeg2enc from the mjpegtools) and many frontends for encoding with both (mencoder, transcode, lxdvdrip, avidemux2, dvd::rip).

4. How can I manually reencode a DVD to DVD-5 or SVCD?

If you're looking for a GUI application, dvd::rip is a great graphical frontend. It can perform the full encoding process for you and even burn SVCDs directly. It's also a good starting point if you want to encode via CLI to get an idea of the steps involved.

For CLI reencoding, there are several steps, and a full guide is outside the scope of this FAQ. But here's a primer on the basic steps: first, rip the DVD to your hard drive as described in question 1 of this section. You can then use mencoder to reencode the video and audio simultaneously, using the -of mpeg switch to output to the MPEG container format. If you're encoding to SVCD remember to reencode the audio to MP2. If you're converting to DVD and want subtitles, demux them from the DVD by using spuunmux from the dvdauthor project, which can then be muxed with your MPG using spumux. Finally create your image file by using vcdimager for (S)VCD's or dvdauthor for DVDs.

5. What options are there for authoring a DVD under linux?

dvdauthor is a full featured dvd authoring toolkit supporting many different DVD options. The command line interface is fairly easy to use for simple authoring tasks and dvdauthor also supports XML configurations for advanced projects. There are also GUI frontends available, check out dvdstyler and qdvdauthor.

6. Are there any advanced DVD/IFO editors available?

PGCEdit by r0lZ is a Tcl/Tk IFO editor that runs natively under linux. The (very simple) installation instructions are available on r0lZ's homepage, and in recent versions the preview will be enabled if you have wine installed (make sure Preview > Use Preview is enabled).

VobBlanker by jsoto, although a native windows program, emulates very well under wine. In recent versions, the preview will work correctly if the overlay is disabled (Settings > More Settings > Check "Do Not Use Overlay").