HackingHardware

xvid is a great way of compressing DVDs for back-up purposes. mencoder provides a 2 pass xvid encoder. However, xvid and lame must be installed when mplayer is compiled.

0) compile xvid:-
cd build/generic && ./configure && make && make install && ldconfig

1) compile lame
./configure && make && make install && ldconfig

3) compile mplayer

./configure && make && make install && ldconfig

To be sure that xvid gets compiled check that xvid is shown in the configure output as follows:
Enabled optional drivers:
Input: vcd dvb
Codecs: xvid libavcodec faad2 libmpeg2 l mp3lib libtheora

mencoder dvd://2 -dvd-device /dev/dvd -mf fps=25 -o /dev/null -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1:bitrate=3000 -vf scale=320:240,eq2=1.5 -alang en -oac copy
mencoder dvd://2 -dvd-device /dev/dvd -mf fps=25 -o output.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=2:bitrate=3000 -vf scale=320:240,eq2=1.5 -alang en -oac copy