PS3 Video Encoding From DVD on Linux Using Handbrake CLI

I found this method of encoding movies to the Playstation 3 to be the easiest and most reliable method. After quite a bit of trial and error and trying various applications I gave Handbrake a try. The only version for linux available is through the CLI, but that ended up fine with me since I wrote a little script to make life easier. The only thing you need to download for this project is the handbrake CLI which you can find here.

Once you have that downloaded and untarred, it uses a build process I found to be quite easy called Jam. This is a tool that your distribution probably has a package for, at least ubuntu does: sudo apt-get install jam. Jam will fetch all of the dependencies for ffmpeg as well as various patches and compile Handbrake for you, a 30 minute process on my machine. Change into the untarred Handbrake CLI directory and type jam.

After Hanbrake CLI was built I move it into /usr/local/bin and went to read the documentation for it, a guide you will probably find very used at this location. My command to encode from my dvd drive looks like this:

/usr/local/bin/HandBrakeCLI -i /media/cdrom/VIDEO_TS -o /home/brian/ps3/moviename.mp4 -B 160 -R 48 -E AAC -e x264 -f MP4 -m -p -b 2500 -x level=41

I encode at a decently high bitrate, which is why most of my movies are over 2Gb, but the quality is near DVD. So I hate typing that long command out each time so my dvdtops3.sh script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/HandBrakeCLI -i /media/cdrom/VIDEO_TS -o /home/brian/ps3/"$1" -B 160 -R 48 -E AAC -e x264 -f MP4 -m -p -b 2500 -x level=41

Using that script I just have to type: "dvdtops3.sh moviename.mp4" to run the encode.