AcidRip is a Gtk2::Perl  application for ripping and encoding DVD's. 
It neatly wraps MPlayer and MEncoder, seeing as MPlayer is by far the best 
bit of video playing kit around for Linux (and FreeBSD). As well as creating 
a simple Graphical Interface for those scared of getting down and dirty with 
MEncoders command line interface, It also automates the process in a number of 
ways:

 o Parses DVD into contents tree
 o Finds longest title
 o Calculate video bitrate for given filesize
 o Finds black bands and crops them
 o Gives suggestions for improved performance

WWW:	http://untrepid.com/acidrip/