[Solved] Linux video converters?

[Cecilia2690]

I am currently using Linux Mint 13 Maya. I burn a good amount of DVDs & recently had to switch to Linux because of a Windows virus that made Windows unusable. I need a program that will convert/shrink my video files. I was using Cucusoft & then Freemake. I loved Freemake. I tried downloading it for Linux using Wine but I just couldn't get it to work. I googled Linux video converters & it said Linux had a good one called FFmpeg, but I couldn't find it in the software manager. Can anyone suggest a Linux program that might perform some of the same actions as my previous Windows video converters?
Thanks.

[BrianD]

I'm not familiar with your previous (Windows-based) video converters or disk creators...

You might check out DeVeDe (it's in the repositories). You tell it the type of disk you're creating and drop your video files (avi, mp4, mkv, etc), you can create a dvd menu, etc.

[Cecilia2690]

You might check out DeVeDe (it's in the repositories)..

This might be stupid, but what is the repositories? Is that the Software Manager?

[HughT]

hi Cecilia2690, good to see that you are up and running now. Don't forget the forum rules

Forum rules
There are no such things as "stupid" questions.

I'd agree with BrianD - check out DeVeDe. The repositories are the places where program 'packages' are stored, ready for you to download and install. As is common with Linux, there's more than one way to install programs from the repos - Software Manager, Synaptic and command line. They all use the same repos, just different approaches. Try using the Software Manager first, it's in the Administration menu. Just type DeVeDe in the search space, click 'install' and it'll do everything for you. Once Software Manager has done its thing you'll start DeVeDe from a new menu entry which I guess will appear in Applications>Sound & Video. No need to turn your laptop off and then back on again. Hope this helps, regards

[rich2005]

I don't use LM much these days but from memory if you installed from the DVD it comes with most of the necessary codecs. Fire up synaptic and see if mint-meta-codecs is installed. If not install it. Also make sure, that libdvdcss2 & libdvdread4 packages are installed

DeVeDe as previous will take video files, convert, shrink if required and author to DVD. A sound application.

ffmpeg on its own is command line which can be a shock to win users. (most win apps use it as well)

A good front end for ffmpeg is Winff, it is in the repo.

Similar to ffmpeg is mencoder, again command line but a good front-end is divxenc if you want avi's or xvid's

A simple editor / convertor is Avidemux. Worth installing. converts to mpeg, avi, mp4...

Shrink a DVD - try DVD95

On that track, the win apps DVDshrink and DVDdecrypt do work with WINE, but might need a little tweaking to work.

All sorts of things available, best is not to think windoze and just explore Mint.

[Cecilia2690]

Thanks so much for the responses. I had checked the Software Manager prior to posting & I guess I just didn't know what I was looking for. Thanks for the quick help.

[JOHHANSEN]

I use WINFF it is great for me and you can download new presets on WINFF homepage

[rsxhawk]

Try Handbrake. I loved this program when I was using Windows full-time. What I used to do was take a DVD and re-author it inside of DVD Shrink so that it would only rip the actual movie file, none of the extras like menus and special features or previews. Once DVD Shrink gave me that output file (I believe it was a .vob file) I would take it and put it inside handbrake and convert it into an .mp4 or .m4v. You can tell the program what quality you want the compressed file to be, so obviously the greater the quality the bigger the file. I made a ton of mp4's around a gig a piece, possibly lower if I needed it and the quality is still pretty dang good.

Try the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

[Mozenrath]

WinFF is a great FFmpeg frontent that makes it fairly easy to batch transcode videos.

Avidemux is an awesome tool that will also work, but you might only be able to transcode one video at a time.

[noone606]

Try Handbrake. I loved this program when I was using Windows full-time. What I used to do was take a DVD and re-author it inside of DVD Shrink so that it would only rip the actual movie file, none of the extras like menus and special features or previews. Once DVD Shrink gave me that output file (I believe it was a .vob file) I would take it and put it inside handbrake and convert it into an .mp4 or .m4v. You can tell the program what quality you want the compressed file to be, so obviously the greater the quality the bigger the file. I made a ton of mp4's around a gig a piece, possibly lower if I needed it and the quality is still pretty dang good.

Try the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

Linux noob i admit but i get errors when i try this as follows any idea what i am doing wrong?

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-releases
You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
These are the official HandBrake releases for Ubuntu. Official web site http://handbrake.fr/

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
More info: https://launchpad.net/~stebbins/+archiv ... e-releases
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/add-apt-repository", line 160, in <module>
sp = SoftwareProperties(options=options)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py", line 96, in __init__
self.reload_sourceslist()
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py", line 584, in reload_sourceslist
self.distro.get_sources(self.sourceslist)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptsources/distro.py", line 87, in get_sources
raise NoDistroTemplateException("Error: could not find a "
aptsources.distro.NoDistroTemplateException: Error: could not find a distribution template

[Orbmiser]

I use DVDshrink last 7 years on windows it's free. And install thru wine and works great.
As a lot easier to use for me.
http://www.dvdshrink.org/
Easy to install thru wine just run the .exe and showed up in the menu.
.

[noone606]

Managed to get it installed by using these links
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1725026&page=2
probably no the best way but it worked i had to install some of the dependencies as debs too but what the hey it worked