Using mencoder based solution to format video for my iPod

I was having trouble converting the videos I downloaded from my ReplayTV DVR into a format I could watch on my iPod. So, of course, google and ubuntu forums are indispensable. I tried a few ways, first using VLC which didn't produce any sound. Second I tried getting ffmpeg functional for this task. Finally the solution I settled on was found in this how to and here are the commands:

sudo aptitude install lsdvd mplayer gpac zenity mencoder
sudo wget http://diveintomark.org/public/2007/06/podencoder.txt -O /usr/local/bin/podencoder
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/podencoder
podencoder foo.mpg
podencoder foo.avi
podencoder foo.wmv
podencoder
podencoder --help