All in One Tool

[MattO]

Hello,

All in one tool.

With all the tools available, either as source code or being actively developed, wouldn't it be possible to integrate them into 1 program.

For example integrating the following would enable us to have 1 tool to perform ripping, audio / video encoding and filtering, and multiplexing to VCD, XVCD, SVCD, MPG1, MPG2, MPG4:
vStrip
AVISynth
DVD2AVI
MPEG2DEC
BeSweet
BBMPEG
XVID

I would be interested to hear anyone's view on this possibility.

[khp]

I would prefer not to integrate everything into one tool. For several reasons:

1. The seperate tools have been proven to work reliably, when you start messing around with the source code for each, you are bound to introduce a ton of bugs.

2. The people who made these tools worked hard to make them, they deserve some credit. If you build everything into one tool with a new name, few people will take any notice of who wrote the code.

3. I would very much prefer not to mess around with other people's code.

I think it would be much better to build a tool, that simply builds on top of the existing tools. By using a command line interface, which most of the tools support. Much like GordianKnot does, but I do think it's possible to take things much futher than GKnot does.

I'am currently developing a perl script which does just this. My goal is fully automated DVD to DivX5 conversion, while still maintaining full configurability of all tools used in the conversion process.
I use the following tools:

SmartRipper
DVD2AVI 1.76 (modified version of DVD2SVCD's commandline version)
Vobsub
Besweet
Mpeg2Dec
Avisynth
Virtualdub
DivX5
Nandub
AviSplitCalc
OggMux
Mode2CD maker

This approach also has the advantage, that I can easily put updated versions, of the thirdparty tools, into use.

[redcane]

Make small tools that do what they do well, and make a frontend for them! Like Xcdroast.... It's a way more versatile approach, with a better result.