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Non-Euclidean

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 21, 2012
43
3
Houston, TX
I decided to get MacX DVD Ripper Pro.

I am ripping/moving stuff from disc to HD for my AppleTV3 library. Current display device is Sony 34" HDTV (KVSH510).

The first few discs I have been just putting them in and using the toAppleTV default. That would be 640x360 Wide-Screen mp4 Good Quality. There was also a 1280x720 Wide-Screen H264 High Quality. When I tried using that, the output looked slightly stretched and the quality wasnt as good as the 640 when I compared the same title side by side. That anime (Ghost in the Shell) was 4x3 original source.

Since those were mostly animated stuff (Heavy Metal, anime), I wasnt too particular. The output quality looked fine on AppleTV3 defaults.

Now I started ripping some 60/70s movies (Harry Palmer), and I had noticed that in a lot of cases, MDRPro was identifying then as 720x480 16x9.
I let Funeral in Berlin get encoded as 640x360 with the AppleTV default.

Now instead for Billion Dollar Brain I selected MP4, it defaults to a higher quality setting (using 1800 kps instead of 1500 bps). In addition, it keeps the video width at 720.

Billion Dollar Brain looks good and so does
Now, should I in general be using the MP4 setting instead, since it seems to be matching the resolution, and not reencoding for a different resolution?
 

lunaoso

macrumors 65816
Sep 22, 2012
1,332
54
Boston, MA
Use Handbrake. It's free and is widely regarded as the best on the market. That should fix all of your problems.
 

mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
Use Handbrake. It's free and is widely regarded as the best on the market. That should fix all of your problems.
+1

I might add though, that HB is not 100% for decryption. It is much easier, in the long run, to rip using MakeMKV (free) to decrypt to an mkv file and then HB to transcode to mp4 file. I know, it's an extra step, but it has decrypted everything I have ever thrown at it.
 

Non-Euclidean

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 21, 2012
43
3
Houston, TX
Thanks for the responses.

I have Handbrake, MKV and MacX DVD Ripper Pro.

It just seemed so easy to pop it in and let MDRP rip and give me an MP4 in one step.

I have read (parts of the) automated DVD ripping and converting sticky in this category.

Yeah, I want the best quality in the rip overall, was just finding my way through these different products..
 
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