Recommendations for DVD ripper with Lion

[William.Mantle]

Hi everybody.

I am a long time reader and first time poster!

I can normally find the answers to my questions by using the sites search tools but had a bit of trouble with this one.

Basically Ive bought a new 2011 MacBook Air which came pre loaded with Lion.

I'm incredibly happy with Lion and find it a pleasure to use. Thus changing back to SL is not an option for me.

I travel a lot and love to have my own personal dvds saved onto my laptop - especially for long haul flights.

I want to be able to save all my favourite dvds onto my new air so obviously I need a ripping tool. However, now I have Lion it appears a lot of ripping tools don't work with it yet. Can anyone recommend the best dvd ripping tool for Lion? I don't mind paying something for it.

Also, just to make it clear this is for my own personal collection of dvds that I have paid for in full (mostly the Office - absolutely love this show and always good for passing travelling hours) and I will not be using it to do download pirated internet movies, etc.

Finally, although the Apple superdrive counterpart to the air is very well priced and visually attractive I'm wondering if I can use a none apple external drive - I would rather purchase something a bit more impact resistant for when I do take this with me (camping, biking, etc). Will a none apple external CD/dvd drive work and can anyone recommend anything here?

Thanks to all that take the time to read this thread and maybe even add to it.

William

[dubAdub]

Have you tried HandBrake?

[theIlluminati]

yep, Handbrake all the way wouldn't go with out it!

[William.Mantle]

thanks all

[thatdrewguy]

I have two external dvd drives that I can use with the Air. The Plextor requires two USB cables for it to work with the air, one USB for power. I have a Lenovo external that works just fine with the Air using a single USB cable.

[Sounds Good]

I highly recommend Slysoft's DVD backup products -- but it's Windows only, so you'd need Bootcamp or Parallels or a Windows machine.

[AppleTech22]

I've tried to use different DVD rippers, but like others have said handbrake is the best. It just works, the others have all these presets and they're a mess. Plus not a penny out of pocket.

[Hey Jude]

Another vote for Handbrake --- still works great with Lion.

[William.Mantle]

Hi Guys

I bought a Samsung SE-S084D portable drive from Amazon for £30 with delivery.

Been using handbrake like you suggested the last few hours and it's absolutely amazing!

My new air has become the ultimate media machine.

Thanks again for all your help with this.

[AlecEdworthy]

Originally Posted by William.Mantle

I bought a Samsung SE-S084D portable drive from Amazon for £30 with delivery.

Quick question... Does it use one or two USB sockets to make it work? I know quite a few external drives end up needing two USB sockets to power them properly (one for power plus data, one for extra power) but I wasn't sure if the Samsung SE-S084D was one of the few which don't.

Thanks, Alec

[William.Mantle]

Originally Posted by AlecEdworthy

Quick question... Does it use one or two USB sockets to make it work? I know quite a few external drives end up needing two USB sockets to power them properly (one for power plus data, one for extra power) but I wasn't sure if the Samsung SE-S084D was one of the few which don't.

Thanks, Alec

It comes with a chord that has a main usb and secondary usb - it works absolutely great with just the main plugged in... It works on my 11" air perfectly.

Reading the instructions the second would make burning faster or allow input from a 2nd computer... but as I've learnt it works like a dream with just the 1 main usb.

Get one bro - I've been hugely impressed!

[iperson21]

+1 for handbrake,
just to let you know, one feature of handbrake that i feel like many people go without noticing is its size output.
you can choose around the size of the output, so if you want more movies to fit on a relatively small ssd of the MBA, you can do so.

[xraydoc]

RipIt and Handbrake.

[IrieItes]

Hi, I'm also juggling with this issue since I have my new laptop (with Lion). For number of years I've used Mac The Ripper. Now I have Tried three different rippers: HandBrake, RipIt and Mac DVDRipper Pro. I'm not fully shure If I love the interface/look of HandBrake but as everyone seems to be going for this one, I will try to get use to it.

My question: how about quality of rip? I noticed that both RIP IT and MAC DVD RIPPER PRO convert the files in "dvdmedia" format that weight 7.78 GB for a specific film, when I use HandBrake, the default setting convert it in a "m4v" format that weight 621 MG. I would asume that the quality is much better with the "dvdmedia" extension. But I also noticed that once I drag the mv4 format of 621 MG in Toast 11, the burn file weight is expected to be 4.19 GB (so there is a conversion (my comprehension is expending datas that have been compressed). Any comments/suggestion in order to get the best quality possible?

By the way: In Toast 11, you can drag a "dvdmedia" format to burn it, which wasn't working in Toast 9.

[convergent]

I use RipIt.

[cowensatuic]

I too just bought an apple mac pro with lion os. I downloaded handbreak to convert my DVDs to my harddrive and the conversion is pixelated/blocked. Can anyone help.

[ragu]

Originally Posted by cowensatuic

I too just bought an apple mac pro with lion os. I downloaded handbreak to convert my DVDs to my harddrive and the conversion is pixelated/blocked. Can anyone help.

What are you converting to ? I use regular high profile for my apple tv and it's perfect why not try that setting let me know how you make out?

[johnsu]

I personnally think the best mac lion dvd ripper is currently DVD Ripper for mac v2.0.3. It handles a lot of DVDs others won't and it can recover scratched DVDs that no other software will dare to try. Free trial if you want to give it a go!

[alex39]

RipIt does not detect the volume, when I convert DVD movie to an MP4 for my ipad

[johnhurley]

Originally Posted by Sounds Good

I highly recommend Slysoft's DVD backup products -- but it's Windows only, so you'd need Bootcamp or Parallels or a Windows machine.

Second that and on my mba win 7 partition. The combination of slysoft and anydvd give you a lot of flexibility.

Under Lion it is VLC and Handbrake combination ...

[wrkactjob]

Whats the best way to make an MBA play any region DVD? I have a mix of American Asian and European discs.

Can you just plug in an external multi regional drive or is it all to do with the software on the laptop itself?

[alex39]

wrkactjob, Do you mean Handbrake? you can plug in an external multi regional drive directly.

[Roman2K~]

+1 for HandBrake.

The definition of what software should be. All clean, multi-platform, nothing fancy, open-source. Works perfectly for me, every single time. And it's well architected. Among other things, all the GUI does is build a command line to eventually call the CLI version of HandBrake.

This means, should need / want it in the future, you can fully automate encodes by calling the CLI version from a script (or even an alternative GUI). See <somewhere>/HandBrakeCLI --help.

[pearl151214]

but does HandBrake work on Lion?

[N0ddie]

Originally Posted by pearl151214

but does HandBrake work on Lion?

I tried to rip a few DVDs using Handbrake under Lion and couldn't get it to work.

I ended up buying RipIt to rip the DVD to the iMac then Handbrake to convert it to ATV2 format.