MacX DVD Ripper/Video Converter Pro VS. Mac DVDRipper Pro VS. DVDRemaster 8

[evenstill]

Hi all,

This is my first post here at MacRumors.

I'm considering purchasing a product for my relatively new (to me) iMac to substitute for the multi-purpose all-in-one programs like AnyDVD or DVDFab for Windows. The three products I've narrowed it down to at this point are the MacX DVD Ripper/Video Converter Pro package (http://www.macxdvd.com/mac-dvd-video...rter-pro-pack/), Mac DVDRipper Pro (http://www.macdvdripperpro.com/), or the new DVDRemaster 8 (http://www.metakine.com/products/dvdremaster/). I've already searched this forum and the internet at large regarding these programs but would love to get some hands on feedback from those of you who have experience using one or more of them regarding their capabilities, pros/cons, similarities, differences, etc. These three programs seem to be the best of the more or less simple one stop options.

Thanks,
~ Nathan

[DP812]

I use Mac DVD Ripper Pro and it's been great. My movie collection consists of about 500-some DVDs and I was able to rip almost all of these without any real difficulty (the only problem movie was The Color of Money, which would never rip for some bizarre reason, even stranger considering that it's an older DVD and unlikely to have the kind of copy guards that are on newer ones). There is one kink, though. In the past, despite saying they can't rip DVDs with a region code other than my SuperDrive, I was able to rip Region 2 DVDs just fine. Since the latest update, though, when it scans anything other than a Region 1 disc, it crashes.

[frank4]

I've recently ripped a few DVDs with HandBrake, it's free and worked very well so it will likely be my main video processing tool. VLC video player needs to already be installed as Handbrake uses some VLC facilities. It can read DVDs as well as various formats of video files on hard drives. Can be set to optimize output files for iPad, Apple TV, etc.

You can easily tweak HandBrake for the quality/size of resulting video files with the "RF" parameter which is default 20, setting it to 22 or 24 results in almost the same quality and reduces file size significantly. Also you can set it to encode just a segment of the input video. It can be set to process a batch of input jobs. There are lots of other settings that can be adjusted to get HandBrake to do the best job.