@Tinkster

As far as I recall, once I tried to copy multi-gigabyte file on FAT32 partition, and copy process only got to around 2GB... Curious, the file size limit on FAT32 is indeed supposed to be 4GB. I may be wrong... but, for me, it is an issue hardly worth looking into.

Have you used mencoder at all? It can rip and re-encode a DVD movie to an avi file (or other outputs...I think...I just use avi). You can scale the size (and quality, of course) down so you don't have 4-7gb chunks sitting around. Then you can just play the avi normally in xine, mplayer, kaffeine, etc.

The big mencoder command I use is:
Personally I've dumped that into a script, created the necessary target directory of /usr/share/video/ripped/, then I just run "ripdvd American-Beauty 850", where ripdvd is the script name, the first parameter is the movie name, and the second parameter is the bit rate (higher is better quality, but bigger size, normally I do 700-950). Normally takes 30 minutes to 1 1/2 hours depending on the computer, drives, etc.

Good luck.

EDIT: mencoder script junk

Two possibilities:
It was FAT16, not 32
You were copying via Samba which didn't have large file support enabled.


Cheers,
Tink

@ Vgui
I have read many times that mencoder is the best tool for encoding videos and I know at least one of the apps I tried used it.
The main problem I've had with mencoder is that there are so many different commands I've seen dotted around that it confused me too much and I decided to concentrate on just trying find a simple gui way of doing rather than look into all the seemingly hundreds of mencoder commands and what they were doing.
I thought of it as something I would look into later when trying to refine the process.
You're post has simplified it greatly and I'm going to try it shortly. Thanks for that.
I have just moved everything off my multimedia partition (not too much, fortunately as I had only just started moving all my media stuff onto it it).
I was just about to reformat as ext3 or ntfs, hadn't decided. Although I don't really use windows it would be handy to have the partition read/writable by windows just in case I go off linux in the future.

<EDIT>
If I may ask a little question about that mencoder command, I've put it into a script, with my own output path and run the script. It started without errors and is currently running.
I ran it as you suggested like this - copydvd godzilla 850
Now that's easy enough but what if I wanted to simplify it even more?
I'll play around with the bitrate a bit and once I find one that prodeces the best result for me, could I put that into the script, for example simply add 850 after the $1.avi ?
Then I could just run copydvd godzilla. Even the missus could do that without having to remember numbers.
Hmm, what if I could click on an icon pointing to the script and it asks me for the filename and that's it? I'm not saying she's dim, she just point blank refuses to type commands and if she's not comfortable doing something in linux I always try to find another way for her.

Hey, I'm glad to hear it helped out. I agree that mencoder is hard to learn initially, but once you get a line like the one above you can just keep using that.

For the bitrate, if you don't care about changing the quality, then yes you could modify the script so it has a preset number. The option you want to replace is:
with
or whatever number you decide on. Then you can just use 'copydvd godzilla' and end up with godzilla.avi. Subtitles or anything fancy like that will need further options in mencoder, but for all your general DVDs you should be set.

As for putting in a title through a popup, I'm not sure what you would use for that. Maybe something like xdialog to show the input field. Or you could use an xterm and then 'dialog', which can create command line inputs. I imagine Gnome or KDE might have something built in for creating simple GUIs.
Another option would be to try to extract the title from the DVD itself, but again I'm not sure on that.

It looks like I would be able to use kdialog to it and the options seem simple enough. Having said that, maybe I'm playing nursemaid a little too much. I mean, how much easier can it get than "copydvd godzilla"?
Thanks very much for the mencoder command. Godzilla took just under 45 minutes with a file size of 941MB which is good. The quality was decent though not that great in full screen mode but I tried a bitrate of 800 to start off with so I'll play around with it a bit more.
So, all in all mencoder is doing exactly what I wanted to do in the first place so once again, thanks muchly.

Ah perfect, KDE does have something built in. I do imagine that the script will be easy enough though, it isn't like she'd be typing in the full mencoder line each time, hehe.
Glad to hear that Godzilla ripped fine. Quality wise some movies turn out great, and others not so well. I think it depends on how much motion and action there is. It's good that the command worked and did what you wanted

@Tinkster

Wasn't Samba, and surely it wasn't FAT16 (I'm familiar with FAT16 restrictions)... that's what I'm sure of... Don't know what it couldn't have been (maybe the restriction in the FAT32 driver). Like I said, it was some time ago, so the only thing I could be wrong about is the file size (although I doubt it).

@shame
There are no options to make the file smaller with 'cat'. It makes an exact copy, byte for byte.