DVDs to Hard Drive

[D3AD]

I have been trying for a few hours now to figure out how to put my DVDs onto my hard drive i dont want to burn them i only want to watch them from my computer without having to carry around my numerous dvds i used mac the ripper but when i tried to play the movie i only could open the audio and video folders

how do i watch the movies without the disk?

 

[Oryan]

You can use DVD Player: File menu -> Open Video_TS Folder. Or you can use VLC to play them (and skip all the stuff at the beginning of the disk).

 

[iTwitch]

It doesn't hurt to have VLC as well as DVD Player. Every now and again I have a MTC ripped DVD that won't play in DVD Player.

MPlayer works also.

 

[the kid 05]

i think you want hand brake, it copys the dvd to your hdd, i have doom, friday night lights, variouse concerts, scarface, and the complete south park season 1 on mine and they play with out a skip

hope this is what you mean

tim

 

[ArkabaS]

The previous posters are right. The two best options for you are:

1. Use MacTheRipper and rip the entire DVD (usually ~4 or ~8 GB) onto your HDD. Next open Apple's DVD player, then File > Open DVD Media > the VIDEO_TS folder inside your ripped DVD folder. Another easier way is to simply drag the desired VIDEO_TS folder onto the DVD Player icon in the dock. There is also software out there (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20141, I have never used this software, use at your own risk) that adds extensions onto the ripped folders and then automatically opens DVD Player when these files are opened.

2. Use HandBrake and rip the video into .avi or .mp4. This will save LOTS of space and retains quality video and sound, but you will lose all menus, subtitles (unless ripp them into the video file), and extras. It also takes a lot more CPU/battery power to play highly compressed .avi or .mp4 files. And worst of all, it takes lots of time to rip the videos, around 3 hours for most movies on my iBook G4.

Hope this helps. If there really is some incompatibility issue between MTR and your DVD, use the HandBrake option

 

[steamboat26]

Wow, i am really stupid, i thought that hand brake could only compress video files. This entire time i have been ripping with MTR and compressing with Hand brake 😱

 

[ArkabaS]

Yeah dude, I think HandBrake can rip + compress. Pretty amazing app considering the simple interface and the low price of $0.00. My only problem with it is the brightness of the resultant video. For some reason, no matter what settings I use, every DVD I compress with HandBrake is darker than the original. Nothing too terrible but nonetheless annoying.