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Best Mac setup for ripping DVD/BluR movies for personal use

S

skal725

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 8, 2012
5
0
I recently acquired the new iPad, household is all Mac/iPhone/Touch...and I have a collection of 300+ dvds / blurays that we now want to watch on the ipad / iphone etc while on the road. I am looking to setup an environment at home where I can rip/encode the movies, but do it such that each DVD does not take me all night to do and is single threaded.

Need some guidance on what is the recommended Mac hw/sw setup to achieve this (including a juke box setup if there is one). I am willing to spend upto $3k'sh on putting this together and would prefer this to be all Mac.

thx!
 
skal725 said:
I recently acquired the new iPad, household is all Mac/iPhone/Touch...and I have a collection of 300+ dvds / blurays that we now want to watch on the ipad / iphone etc while on the road. I am looking to setup an environment at home where I can rip/encode the movies, but do it such that each DVD does not take me all night to do and is single threaded.

Need some guidance on what is the recommended Mac hw/sw setup to achieve this (including a juke box setup if there is one). I am willing to spend upto $3k'sh on putting this together and would prefer this to be all Mac.

thx!
Click to expand...
For hardware, I'm under the impression that a fast CPU and an SSD are the two most important ingredients. If you're going for an Apple solution, Mac Pro should be your best option. But maybe a top of the line iMac upgraded with third party parts would be a more attractive and cheaper solution?

For software: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/805573/ :)
 
Really any of the quad-core macs will get the job done fairly quickly. Of course, a faster CPU will encode faster, but things can get expensive quite quickly. A SSD will speed up your system response, but at least for me, my SSD didn't appreciably accelerate the encode times. And for the number of movies you have, you'd be better off with a SSD/HDD hybrid setup.

Don't buy the current generation MacPro, as it's basically a year-old system. The current 27" iMac with the SSD option would be great, and if you want portability, the 15" Pro is a great solution. Even my 13" MBP 2.3 i5 with 8GB of RAM can encode a movie in around 25 - 35 minutes.
 
@8281, thx for the tips. I am considering both the iMac 21" and the Macbook Pro 15"
 
I wouldnt suggest a Mac Pro for just ripping discs, unless you have other uses for it. Spending all that money on a huge Mac Pro for simply ripping discs is a waste IMO as you will not need the higher end graphics etc.

I would suggest a Mac Mini with an i7 processor - preferably the quad core i7 (server version) - or an iMac with a high end CPU.
A SSD will do nothing with increasing speed of encodes - a HDD will be fine. SSDs are only used to speed the system up in terms of boot time, and the time taken to open applications. A HDD will be perfectly fine in keeping up with encoding and saving speeds. Of course, if you have the cash for a SSD then even better! Although the sizes may be a limiting factor for you.

You need to look out for a fast CPU since encoding is very CPU intensive - other then CPU other hardware shouldnt really be an issue in this day and age.

Along with the above I would also suggest a large storage solution. Whether this is local to the MAC and shared out, or whether its a NAS.
For example, I have a Synology NAS, which houses all my movies. I then use a free app on my iphone and ipad and stream movies straight across to them successfully over the wireless. No stuttering or hickups, just smooth steady streaming.
 
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My...friend....went through this process recently and found that downloading high quality copies was both easy and fast. Much faster than any ripping combination. Even older movies from the 80s were extremely easy to find. In particular, my friend struggled for days looking for software to rip a number of movies which were somehow encoded to delay copying or make it impossible altogether. Not to mention the large number of movies with scratches making the ripping impossible or unpredictable.
 
LaunchpadBS said:
Assuming your using an external blu ray drive...what software do you use to encode bluray?
Click to expand...

I am considering MakeMKV - recommended by the post at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/805573/

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Ifti said:
I wouldnt suggest a Mac Pro for just ripping discs, unless you have other uses for it. Spending all that money on a huge Mac Pro for simply ripping discs is a waste IMO as you will not need the higher end graphics etc.

I would suggest a Mac Mini with an i7 processor - preferably the quad core i7 (server version) - or an iMac with a high end CPU.
A SSD will do nothing with increasing speed of encodes - a HDD will be fine. SSDs are only used to speed the system up in terms of boot time, and the time taken to open applications. A HDD will be perfectly fine in keeping up with encoding and saving speeds. Of course, if you have the cash for a SSD then even better! Although the sizes may be a limiting factor for you.

You need to look out for a fast CPU since encoding is very CPU intensive - other then CPU other hardware shouldnt really be an issue in this day and age.

Along with the above I would also suggest a large storage solution. Whether this is local to the MAC and shared out, or whether its a NAS.
For example, I have a Synology NAS, which houses all my movies. I then use a free app on my iphone and ipad and stream movies straight across to them successfully over the wireless. No stuttering or hickups, just smooth steady streaming.
Click to expand...

Yea I was considering a Macbook Pro for more than ripping, of course. But in any case, the first option I considered was the Mini though I was not sure if it could handle the tasks efficiently. But well worth looking at it again, I agree. I am looking fwd to the Sep 12th announcements to see if any new Mac HW updates are in the offing. I have a 4yr old NAS from Thecus currently.
 
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