DVD copying workflow?

[Globalksp]

I've always backed up the DVDs I've purchased for when the originals get scratched. On a PC I had a decent workflow that involved a decrypter, a compressor, and Roxio burning ROM.

Now on a Mac I'm a bit lost. I've used handbrake to rip DVDs to be playable in iTunes and have Burn installed, but there seems to be something missing, namely a compression tool and the ability to keep the original DVDs menu structure, etc...

I know about Mactheripper but am lost after that. Shed some light on this for me?

Thanks

27" iMac, Snow Leopard

 

[spinnerlys]

In short: Handbrake is for conversion of MPEG-2 encoded video to MPEG-4 (H264, Xvid) video using the .mkv, .mp4 or .avi container.
MacTheRipper is for making a 1:1 copy of your video DVD.
Burn is for burning data to a DVD and also for making video DVDs.

What where the applications you used in Windows?

Btw, MRoogle will give you hundreds, if not more, threads about this.

1. How to copy the content of video DVDs to your HDD​

As commercial video DVDs use a copy protection scheme called CSS (Content Scramble System), additional software is needed to copy the content of a video DVD to your HDD, which is called "ripping". There are several applications to accomplish this.​

1.1. MacTheRipper 2.6.6 (free)

Insert the video DVD into your DVD drive and open MacTheRipper and click the GO button, after which you can select the place you want the video DVD's content saved to.
As this version of MTR is quite old, it will not read many modern DVDs.​

1.2. RipIt (19.95 USD, trial with 10 rips free)

Insert the video DVD and press the RIP button.​

1.3. Fairmount (free)​

1.4. Mac DVDRipper Pro (9.95 USD)

Insert the video DVD and select a destination folder, then press the RIP button.​

2. How to transcode the MPEG-2 encoded video DVD material for use on your computer after you ripped the video DVD.​

As video DVDs take up a lot of space (up to 8GB), one can transcode (changing the format and encoding) the MPEG-2 encoded video into MPEG-4 encoded video via Handbrake, which might only take 1GB of HDD capacity away, while still looking good.

Handbrake currently offers to read VIDEO_TS folders, the folder on the video DVD with all the material (menus, video and audio) inside, and transcode the footage to something smaller. Currently variants of the space efficient and highly qualitative MPEG-4 codec are used, H264 or Xvid for example.
The current version of Handbrake offers two container formats, .mkv and .mp4, older versions also had the .avi container to transcode to.
.mkv and .mp4 containers accept the H264 codec, also used for the QuickTime trailers on Apple's Trailer page.
Handbrake also offers PRESETS for you to choose from. There are for the AppleTV, iPhone and iPod Touch, iPod and some more.

For more information about properly using Handbrake, either go to the Handbrake Community, read the Handbrake Guide or use MRoogle to find dozens upon dozens of threads about this.​

3. How to transcode the MPEG-2 encoded video DVD material for use on your computer without ripping the video DVD.​

If you don't want to rip the video DVDs first, and just use Handbrake fro Transcoding the video, make sure to install VLC Player to circumvent the CSS we talked earlier about.
But as Handbrake is 64-bit and VLC is 32-bit, you need to download Handbrake in 32-bit too.

VLC Player 32-bit (VLC 1.0.5)
Handbrake 64-bit Intel, 32-bit Intel and 32-bit PPC on this page, so choose the right one
​

from How to backup/copy/rip video DVDs to your HDD and transcode them to another format.

 

[Globalksp]

Thanks for this, but I'm still a little lost.

I can get the ripped DVD onto the computer just fine. It's getting it back onto a DVD-R that I need help with.