Sometimes I have videos in DVD structure. It is a suitable format for burning to DVD disc directly. However, I don't want this high quality format. AVI is enough to reduce disk space usage. My tool is Mencoder again.

mencoder -dvd-device "DVD_input" dvd:// -ovc frameno -oac mp3lame -lameopts fast:preset=medium -quiet -slang eng -o "frameno.avi"
mencoder -dvd-device "DVD_input" dvd:// -ffourcc divx -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=400:vpass=1 -oac copy -quiet -slang eng -o "dest.avi"
mencoder -dvd-device "DVD_input" dvd:// -ffourcc divx -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=400:vpass=2 -oac copy -quiet -slang eng -o "dest.avi"

Tags: mencoder, dvd, divx