AcidRip is a Gtk2::Perl application for ripping and encoding DVD's. It neatly wraps MPlayer and MEncoder, which I think is pretty handy, seeing as MPlayer is by far the best bit of video playing kit around for Linux. 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:

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