MakeMKV + Handbrake

Handbrake is a great transcoding tool, but I've come across situations where it refuses to format shift some DVDs. To get around it, I installed MakeMKV which knows how to do such things.

The process is a little more drawn out though, here's how I did it:

1. Download the MakeMKV binary and source as per the MakeMKV Linux wiki page.
2. In a command prompt, execute the following commands (assuming version numbers are the same):

$ tar xvf makemkv-bin-1.8.5.tar.gz $ tar xvf makemkv-oss-1.8.5.tar.gz $ cd makemkv-oss-1.8.5/ $ make -f makefile.linux $ sudo make -f makefile.linux install $ cd ../makemkv-bin-1.8.5/ $ make -f makefile.linux $ sudo make -f makefile.linux install $ makemkv

3. The last command starts the newly installed makemkv GUI. The GUI is fairly easy to work through, but this guide for using it is pretty good. I didn't need to change any of the default settings, just let it do its thing.
4. Once MakeMKV has ripped its stuff, it will create an MKV file. You can then load this file into Handbrake and transcode into any other format as normal. The MKV can be deleted after transcode if you don't want it anymore (it can be pretty big).

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Update for MakeMKV 1.8.10 Beta (14 Jun 2014):

Current instructions on the wiki page work fine, not sure why I had slightly different process above. You also need to register a key to use the beta.