README for Devidify 1.14
====== === ======== ====

(See below for REQUIREMENTS, INSTALLATION, UNINSTALLATION, and NOTES ON USE)

Devidify is a humble little hack for extracting audio tracks from DVDs.
I wrote it because I had a few concert DVDs laying around, and wanted to
get their audio tracks into my portable music player. At the time, existing
Linux-based tools meant ripping the video first, then extracting the audio.
They made none of this easy. Who has time for such nonsense? Devidify makes
things easy. Feed it a shiny disc and it spits out WAV, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis
files.

The current version of Devidify has undergone extensive testing under Ubuntu
Linux. It should work on other Linuxes, assuming a few dependencies are met
(see "REQUIREMENTS" below).

BUG REPORTS, PATCHES, AND COMMENTS ON, CRITIQUES OF, AND ADVICE REGARDING
THE CODE ARE WARMLY WELCOMED BY THE AUTHOR! I am a self-taught coder, and
this is only the second GUI application I've written. As such, much of the
code may be frightfully wrongheaded. Devidify is released under the GPL
(version 2), and as such carries NO WARRANTY! Devidify could break your
computer, trash your data, and ruin your whole day! You have been warned!

Devidify's home page on the Web: http://www.mahnamahna.net/devidify

Please address all e-mail regarding Devidify to: devidify@mahnamahna.net


REQUIREMENTS
============

Devidify runs on Linux systems. It requires Python and PyGTK, the MPlayer
media player, and the lsdvd command line tool. Lame is required for MP3
encoding, and oggenc is required for Ogg Vorbis encoding. On an Ubuntu Linux
system, ensure the following packages are installed and you'll be all set:
python, python-gtk2, mplayer, lsdvd, lame, vorbis-tools. On other Linuxes,
package names will of course vary.


INSTALLATION
============

Devidify itself consists of just two files: devidify and devidify.glade. You
can place these files together in any folder you like and run the program from
there, or, if you have superuser rights, you can install Devidify system-wide.
(Doing so will also add a Devidify entry to your desktop environment's menus.)
To do so, extract the Devidify archive to a folder; then, on the command line,
with that folder as your working directory, issue the following command as root
(Ubuntu users: put 'sudo' in front): python setup.py install


UNINSTALLATION
==============

If you installed Devidify system-wide, delete /usr/local/bin/devidify,
/usr/share/applications/devidify.desktop, and the /usr/local/share/devidify
folder.


NOTES ON USE
===== == ===

Devidify should prove simple to use: (1) Insert DVD. (2) Click 'Scan DVD'.
(3) Select tracks for audio extraction. (Right-click for an option to watch
the video for a given track.) (4) Click 'Rip Audio Track(s)'.

Select Edit, Preferences from the menu bar to reach a dialog where you can
specify the format for generated audio files, as well as the folder they are
dumped into.

There are three Preferences options not made available via the GUI. Edit
~/.devidifyrc instead to alter them. (Devidify will create that file if
it does not exist.) These options are:

      device  --  Defaults to /dev/dvd. If your DVD drive lives somewhere
                  else, say so here (i.e. 'device = /dev/hdd')

 mp3_bitrate  --  The target variable bitrate for generated MP3 files.
                  Default is 192. This value is passed to lame at encoding
                  time.

 ogg_bitrate  --  The target quality rating for generated OGG files.
                  Default is 6. This value is passed to oggenc at encoding
                  time.