The Vamps Tools are a set of utilities to help duplicating and requantizing DVD on the fly. The main tool is basically both a resize factor calculator and a dvdauthor configuration file generator.
The GUI features a clean HIG-compliant GNOME 2 interface and tries to mimic as much as possible the ergonomy of
DVDShrink.
DVD authoring and duplicating are in their early stages under linux or any other POSIX system. The "traditional" way to rip is performed in 5 steps:
- backup the full DVD on the drive
- demultiplex all the streams
- requant the video
- remultiplex the streams
- author the DVD structure.
The Vamps Tools introduces a new method in which all these steps are performed at once while preserving as much as possible the original structure of each streams (chapters and PGCs). They support many options, from one-to-one DVD backup to fully reauthored DVD with only a subset of the original titles with all unwanted audio and subtitle streams removed. The Vamps Tools automatically calculate any requantizing factor required to make it fit on a DVD-5.
The Vamps Tools are composed of 5 utilities:
- vamps-struct prints all VOB, IFO and BUP files with their size.
- vamps-info prints a description of a DVD, its titles and its audio and subtitle streams.
- vamps-cat extracts a multiplexed mpeg stream of a title (or of a range of chapters of a title).
- vamps-dump extracts a VOB file from a title (or from a range of cells of a title).
- vamps-reauthor calculates any requantizing factor and generates a dvdauthor XML configuration file. This file contains all the required information to perform the DVD backup.
The backup itself is initiated by dvdauthor, the VOB files are extracted by vamps-dump and the streams are requantized by
vamps.