:: thoggen
Linux DVD backup made easy.


Latest: thoggen repository migrated to git (17 June 2009)

Index


This page




Documentation

Docs will go here one day.

Also check out the list of known issues.

top


FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Is Thoggen usable right now?

Yes! The current release should work just fine for most people. However, do send us reports about any problems you encounter. There may be issues with certain DVD copy protection schemes though.

What is Ogg/Theora video?

Theora is a fairly new video codec/format. Just like its audio pendant Vorbis, Theora is patent-free and royalty-free, which means that everyone who wants to can implement it without having to pay anyone for that right. Apart from making the world a better and happier place, this means among other things that it is no problem for Linux distributions to ship Theora codecs.

Will I be able to watch my Ogg/Theora videos on XXX with player YYY?

Most likely, yes. All major players on the major platforms support Ogg/Theora video in their recent versions to my knowledge (but don't quote me on that). Windows/MacOSX users might need to download a free decoder bundle though, depending on which player they use.

My DVD drive is not detected - what's wrong?

If you run a Linux 2.6.x kernel, you need to install HAL and make sure the HAL daemon is running. On Linux 2.4.x, thoggen tries to detect DVD drives using a fallback method, but this will probably find IDE/ATAPI/SCSI drives (ie. not USB DVD drives). If you are only running a non-Linux operating system, you'll have to enter the device manually (or set the environment variable documented in the thoggen man page) until someone ports hald over to your OS.

What about AVI? DivX? xvid? MPEG-4? MPEG-2? Matroska? Dirac? XYZ?

Support for some these formats might be added in the future, once Thoggens core functionality has been fully implemented and is known to work reliably (don't hold your breath though).

What about Dirac?

Support for the up-and-coming new patent and royalty free Dirac format will probably be added once Dirac's bitstream specification is stable, the Dirac ogg mapping is also stable, and libschroedinger and the GStreamer elements built on top of it are advanced enough to be usable for Thoggen. This should be ReallySoonNow (time of writing: February 2008).

I've found a bug - where shall I report it to?
I have a patch - where shall I send it to?
I have a feature request - where can I tell you about it?

Please report bugs to the Thoggen bug tracker, patches to the Thoggen patch tracker, and feature requests to the Thoggen feature request tracker. You may also discuss any of these things on the thoggen-devel mailing list (see Thoggen mailing lists for an overview of available lists).

Can I make it faster somehow?

Make sure you have the latest release of the theora library installed (>=1.0beta2), which contains lots of optimisations that should speed up encoding considerably, at least on the most common architectures.

top


thoggen is powered by gstreamer logo

web design based on mark_olson's industrofunk design (don't blame him for the colours though).