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Dvd's onto hard drive

J

johnnyi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 16, 2007
151
0
Glasgow,UK
I am going away to sea for 4months to join the merchant navy, and i have a macbook pro and have a rather large collection of dvd's and would be quite nice if I a could take them with me. Is there some software I can use to transfer my dvd's over to hard drive to store them instead of taking few hundred dvd's with me i am talking about a 1tb external hard drive.

Regards
Jonathan
 
You can use Mac the Ripper (MTR) or RipIt to decode the DVDs to a video_ts / audio_ts folder structure, and/or use Handbrake to encode only the main movie to save space. MTR or RipIt in combination with Handbrake works the best b/c you can run Handbrake in batch mode to encode movies that have been ripped at a time when you are not using the computer. Bear in mind however that it is a slow process in any case. You will need the Handbrake encoding step if you plan to make your movies play in iTunes or :apple:TV, but you can skip it otherwise (if you have the space).
 
Just wanted to mention, that Mac The Ripper seems to rip dvds much faster than Handbrake. I was ripping my mythbusters dvds, and each episode finished in a little under 7 minutes. The handbrake rips took close to an hour each.

If you decide to use Mac The Ripper, I would use the VLC media player to play the files.
 
Congratulations on joining the merchant marines! If you've never lived on a open-ocean boat, I recommend bringing ginger cookies. Traditional seasickness medicines put me into a 16-hour coma while ginger cookies cured my seasickness. I saw the Mythbusters test seasickness remedies and they preferred ginger, so I gave it a shot.

I work on fishing boats in Alaska and I use my MBP to play games and movies. I use mactheripper version 3. The link in the thread above is for the old version and I found that it would not burn some newer DVDs.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/04/09/preview-mactheripper-v30-r14/

With mactheripper, you can decide to rip the whole DVD including special features or just rip the movie. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to burn a DVD, so you have quite a task ahead of you. You'll be happy you did it on those long, lonely nights on the sea. Most boats I've been on have large movie collections, but there is no accounting for taste.

When do you leave?

P.S. You can watch the ripped DVDs on DVD Player, but download VLC too, just in case.
 
If the end goal is to have an encoded file per DVD rather than decompressed folders containing several gigabytes of data per DVD, I don't see the point of hopping through multiple applications when HandBrake rips and encodes at the same time. Maybe that's why HB seemed slower to a poster above. I find options that produce a ~700MB to 1GB MP4, for instance, look good on a laptop display & are more practical than storing multiple decompressed DVD images.
 
HB for me its amazing and puts it all into one file type that you want and at the site or rate you want it. Plus it looks nicer than MTR :) IMO of course
 
Hmmm. I'll have to check out handbrake. Right now a ripped DVD is 5-7GB. If the quality is good enough with handbrake, I could fit quite a lot on my HD.
 
Glueeater said:
I just use Handbrake, I've never had to deal with MTR
Click to expand...
That works fine for only one disc at a time. The problem I have with that is that I must be physically present to change out the disc when HB gets ready for another one (and that may be every few hours). If you rip several discs first you can then queue them all up in HB and let them each process automatically with no user intervention.
 
danny_w said:
That works fine for only one disc at a time. The problem I have with that is that I must be physically present to change out the disc when HB gets ready for another one (and that may be every few hours). If you rip several discs first you can then queue them all up in HB and let them each process automatically with no user intervention.
Click to expand...

Yea thats true!

How long does it take to rip a DVD on a new MBP you think with MTR?
 
I don't have a new MBP but my 2.2 ghz MBP rips them in about 60 min. My hackintosh does dvd's in about 30 min. I attribute this to the faster cpu and optical drive in the hackintosh.
 
Nipz said:
Yea thats true!

How long does it take to rip a DVD on a new MBP you think with MTR?
Click to expand...
MTR and RipIt both rip in about 30m on my MB 2.0 (2006); I think most of this is due to the Riplock in the drive - otherwise it would be <10m). I can rip several this way while I work and then encode them at night with HB.
 
If you have a SuperDrive with riplock on, that is the biggest bottleneck, so you might as well rip & encode all at once.
 
macrem said:
If you have a SuperDrive with riplock on, that is the biggest bottleneck, so you might as well rip & encode all at once.
Click to expand...
Do the math. If I have 2 hours in the evening I can do either:

1) Rip 4 discs & let HB encode them overnight.
2) Rip & encode 1 disc with HB only.

I think I will opt for method #1 thank you.
 
Thanks for all the help guys started getting everything ripped and decoded full dvd is about 1.5gb which is brill size.


voltare said:
Congratulations on joining the merchant marines! If you've never lived on a open-ocean boat, I recommend bringing ginger cookies. Traditional seasickness medicines put me into a 16-hour coma while ginger cookies cured my seasickness. I saw the Mythbusters test seasickness remedies and they preferred ginger, so I gave it a shot.

I work on fishing boats in Alaska and I use my MBP to play games and movies. I use mactheripper version 3. The link in the thread above is for the old version and I found that it would not burn some newer DVDs.

http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/04/09/preview-mactheripper-v30-r14/

With mactheripper, you can decide to rip the whole DVD including special features or just rip the movie. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to burn a DVD, so you have quite a task ahead of you. You'll be happy you did it on those long, lonely nights on the sea. Most boats I've been on have large movie collections, but there is no accounting for taste.

When do you leave?

P.S. You can watch the ripped DVDs on DVD Player, but download VLC too, just in case.
Click to expand...


I start College in Jan and go to sea March/April for 4 months well looking foward to it so my mac is coming with me.

I have a question I am new to the mac family and with the backspace you need to hit it every time you want to go back. Is there a way i push it once and it goes back like 3 spaces don't know if i am making sense here.
 
handbrake is best, but it way take a while to encode. Usually double the length of the movie.
 
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