xvidenc is a tiny piece of software that allows users to encode DVD-Video discs to the popular XviD video format under GNU/Linux operating systems. It runs via the Linux command-line and uses the MEncoder utility from the MPlayer project.

The tool is also known as the interactive shell script ripper for encoding a DVD-Video disc or any other video file to a high-quality XviD format thanks to the MPEG-4 codec. XviD is an open source project designed from the ground up to provide users with a codec that is faster and offers a better quality than the commercial DivX codec.

As mentioned, the program can be used only via an X11 terminal emulator or the Linux console, using the xvid command followed by various options, such as encoding in one pass, two pass, or fixed-quant modes.

You can use a pre-defined XviD quality preset, thanks to the 18 different presets provided in the program. Among them, we can mention ultra low quality, medium quality, ultra high quality, near lossless quality, anime, normal quality, very low quality, Apple iPod, and stand-alone HW compatible SD/HD (PAL/SECAM/NTSC).

Under the hood, we can report that the project has been written in Unix-shell technology and supports only XviD 1.1.x or higher codec, as well as MPlayer/MEncoder 1.0 RC2 or later, which can be easily installed on many GNU/Linux distributions.

The project is available for download on our dedicated section (see above) only as a source archive, allowing users to configure, compile and install it on any GNU/Linux distributions, as long as all requirements are met. However, it can also be installed from the default software repositories of many Linux OSes.

Xvidenc is a free, powerful and easy-to-use command-line interface for the MEncoder video encoding, decoding and filtering utility. It lets users to encode DVD-Video files to high-quality MPEG-4 XviD digital video files without much hassle.