21 of the Best Free Linux DVD Tools

The venerable DVD is a removable media format that was conceived over 15 years ago. However, it still remains today the ideal format for many uses, although blu-ray is starting to make significant inroads in the field of multimedia playback.

DVDs remain the most popular removable format for Linux distributions, primarily because CDs do not have the capacity to carry a large number of applications, and blu-ray discs and players remain expensive.

This article focuses on selecting the best free software which relies on the DVD format. We select the best of breed Linux software to play DVD multimedia, to create DVD videos, software to write to them, as well as applications that copy video content from DVD media to a hard disk. Furthermore, we also examine software which helps users to catalogue their DVD collection, as well as software which offer a textual version of dialog.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 21 high quality Linux DVD tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wants to revel in multimedia.

Now, let's explore the 21 DVD tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

Players
xine	Powerful multimedia program, specializing in video playback
MPlayer	Very popular movie player
Totem	Official movie player of the GNOME desktop environment
VLC	Multimedia player and streamer
Burning
Brasero	Easy to use CD/DVD burning application
GnomeBaker	CD/DVD creation in the GNOME desktop
K3b	Sophisticated KDE CD/DVD burning application
Ripping / Transcoding
AcidRip	Ripping and encoding DVD tool using MPlayer and Mencoder
dvd::rip	Perl front end for transcode
HandBrake	Multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter
Thoggen	DVD backup utility ('DVD ripper'), based on GStreamer and Gtk+
Authoring
DeVeDe	Create video DVDs
K9Copy	DVD backup and authoring
KMediaFactory	Template based DVD authoring tool for KDE
Q DVD-Author	GUI frontend for dvdauthor and related tools
Cataloging
GCstar	Manages a movie collection
Griffith	Film collection manager
Tellico	Collection manager for KDE
Subtitles
Gaupol	Subtitle editor for text-based subtitle files
GNOME Subtitles	Subtitles editor for the GNOME Desktop environment
Subtitle Editor	Graphical subtitle editor with sound waves representation