www.makemkv.com

No, I rip them on my Win7 machine and upload them to my Suse machine to process them further.
Yes, I know I should read the docs, but I'm very lazy But will do. Thanks!

Ah, I'm beginning to understand. I can use x264 to extract the video file and recode it, then use mkvmerge to remerge it?

for example:

x264 input.mkv output.mkv && mkvmerge input.mkv output.mkv (more or less off course)

Thanks, but I already had the x264 command on my machine.

I'm only looking for the command which:

• extracts the video stream
• recode's it
• merges it back again

That's kinda awesome indeed- To only recode the command

x264 <input>.mkv --preset slow --crf 18 --tune film --colormatrix bt709 --output <output>.mkv

should be enough?
and the mpeg2 stream is recoded into H.264?

I'll try that.. and report.

I have made .mkv's of a few DVD's, but I don't want to keep them in the shitty mpeg2 codec. Is there a (preferable linux command line based) easy way to (batch) recode them?