As tovid is not available in the repositories, you will have to use the pre-packaged .deb package.
Note: There is a guide in the forums that is good for beginners, as well as avid tovid-users, and shows you the basics on using tovid: here
Grab the latest .deb package from here (tovid is architecture independent, so no special packages for AMD 64 or PowerPC machines needed )
Save it somewhere convenient (e.g. if your user name is nick, save it to /home/nick/tovid/ )
If you're using Ubuntu dapper 6.06 or above, just double click the package to install it. (If you're using Kubuntu, then right click on the package in konqueror and select 'Kubuntu Package Menu' then click 'Install Package'. Provide root password when necessary.
Alternatively, you could fire up the terminal and cd to the directory tovid is saved:
$ cd /home/nick/tovid $ sudo dpkg -i tovid_[version].deb
This will install tovid, but not any dependencies. You will need to enable extra repositories to install some of these dependencies (only for edgy and older releases); after doing that, use this command to install all the core dependencies:
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder mjpegtools ffmpeg python python-dev python-wxgtk2.6 python-wxtools python-imaging python-cairo
Use this command to install all recommended dependencies:
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install imagemagick dvdauthor dvd+rw-tools vcdimager transcode sox normalize-audio txt2tags
To run tovid, please check out Using the tovid command-line or Using the tovid GUI
If the above methods do not work for you, you may have to install from the source tarball; follow the main instructions here: Installing tovid
From RPM
If you have any problems with the .deb, you may try building your own from an .rpm package. First, install Alien with dpkg:
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install alien
(You can also use Synaptic or Adept to install Alien.) Now use Alien to convert your RPM to a Debian file and to install the deb package:
$ sudo alien -i tovid_[version].rpm