over the past few weeks i’ve been tinkering on and off with the various dvd ripping and divx encoding techniques. i think i’ve got the knack of it now. i’m not that keen on watching movies on my computer - my 36″ toshiba and onkyo receiver do a better job - but i wanted to learn more about the dvd format and what all the decss fuss was about (at a more technical level). actually, when done right, watching on the pc isn’t too bad!

the best source is doom9 and the gordian knot program (which packages a lot of the needed tools into one package). clonead’s claddvd xp is really good for the ripping part.

i’ve started to get into the audio encoding as well, such as dolby ac3 5.1 and dts encoded within divx avi files.