When it comes to video conversion then Handbrake has to be up there as a FOSS package that is produced for a variety of platforms. Although it doesn’t have a wide range of output formats (just MP4 and MKV) it is a high quality product that I have had no hesitation about installing on Windows and Linux and getting into for, in the first instance, converting a ripped DVD into something I can play on Linux easily.
The software is of a high standard and has had little trouble in outputting MKVs from VOBs without difficulty although you need to choose the right format and options because some of the encoding options can take a long time to operate. Identical settings (H.264 MKV 1080p 30) on a computer running Windows 8.1 on a Brazos embedded CPU and a Xubuntu 16.04 Pentium G dual core without hyperthreading (disabled in these low end Pentiums) resulted in a huge disparity in the encode time (even after adjusting for the hardware differences) and I can’t help but wonder if the Linux version has some inherent performance advantages.
As some reviews note a strong feature of Handbrake is the presets that enable you to produce various output formats including phones and tablets, which is great if you are looking to produce videos that can be optimised for smaller formats, without wasting space. I may yet play with this to get more of the video clips I enjoy watching onto my tablet for the mobile worship experience that was really valuable last month when I was on holiday.
The initial task I gave to Handbrake with the DVD was set at the highest quality settings for MKV and did indeed excel at producing a great result and quite a lot smaller than the VOB that I fed into it. Great software and part of a growing number of free software packages of high quality for multimedia production on Linux.