Handbrake - Multiplatform, Multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 Converter & Transcoder

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter. This software application therefore lets you compress DVDs so that they take less space on a hard disk.

HandBrake is a console (command-line interface) & GUI based  tool. The application requires many switches and variables to begin the conversion of a DVD to an MPEG video file.

Features include:
Supported sources:
Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software), and some .VOB and .TS files PAL or NTSC AC-3, DTS, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks

Outputs:
File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Misc features:
Chapter selection
Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
Integrated bitrate calculator
Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
Grayscale encoding

Installing HandBrake
It is extremely easy to install HandBrake on Ubuntu 9.10 , HandBrake provides easily installable .deb file for Ubuntu 8.10. To install HandBrake issue the following command in the terminal window (Application >> Accessories >> Terminal)

wget http://handbrake.fr/rotation.php?file=HandBrake-0.9.4-Ubuntu_GUI_i686.deb
sudo dpkg -i HandBrake-0.9.4-Ubuntu_GUI_i686.deb

This should install HandBrake onto your system , you can launch HandBrake from (Applications >> Sound Video >> HandBrake ).

OpenSuSe user can use "1-click" installer to install Handbrake - here

Using Handbrake
The first time you launch Handbrake you should see a number of predefined presets on right hand side of the Window , allowing you to easily configure Handbrake to convert videos to format capable of being played on number of devices.

Once you have selected the device you want to convert video for, configure/tweak the settings further and select source to select the source video which you would like to convert to suitable format, Also select the destination where you would like to save the video. Now , press Start button to start encoding the video.