How to put DVD's onto my MAC

[Sir Peter]

I am new to the MAC world, in fact I have not picked up my G4 yet it is in the store and will get it tomorrow. I have a couple of questions that I need to answer.

My wife has a collection of exercise DVD’s from around the world, all DVD regions that she would like to watch on the computer. What is the best way to have these DVD on the computer as I have been told that you can not turn the built in DVD player on the G4 in to a multi regional player.

Can I put the 18 DVD’s on to an external hard drive? If so exactly how would I do that, I am not that computer wise so would appreciate any set by set process.

Thanks

Pete

 

[desenso]

You seem like a nice enough person who has taken the time to write out a coherent request for information. However, you should have searched first. There are literally dozens of threads on this.

Mac The Ripper for ripping the DVDs as raw VOBs.

Handbrake if you want to encode them into smaller files.

 

[Eraserhead]

Take a look at Handbrake.

 

[HLdan]

If Apple's DVD Player won't play all regions you can download and install the free "VLC Media Player". VLC plays nearly everything.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

[Eraserhead]

You might also prefer MPlayer instead of VLC, options are good after all.

 

[ryanmcd02]

Get the 3 programs that have already been suggested.

When you use MactheRipper to rip the dvd, you can save it to your desktop, and then manually drag and drop the files onto a folder on your external drive. BUT, DVDs (especially with all of their menus) will start to eat up space quickly. Each DVD is about 6.5 GB, so for 18 DVDs you will need lots of room. With MactheRipper, you can select to only extract the title track, but this can sometimes make mistakes if you are extracting TV shows.

If you are only going to watch the movies on your computer you can use handbrake to reduce the size and then delete the old files. 1 GB of DVD video can be reduced to a ~200MB file that is still nice to watch on a computer. You should also go into the "audio" section and reduce Dolby sound to stereo (on handbrake). This whole process will take a while and may make your iBook CPU run hard, but will save you hard drive space. Also, you can then load these files into your itunes rather than having to use VLC, and then onto an ipod/iphone if you have one.

 

[Eraserhead]

@ Email Question

THanks for your reply to my question about what I should do with all the DVD's that i currently run on the PC. Do I need to convert them on the PC or do I do that on the MAC, I am really not that parfay with all the computer stuff so any basic help would be great.

You should probably convert them on the Mac, and the software suggested is for the Mac, though you could do it on the PC if you wish, though the software may be harder to use, and I can't recommend any.

 

[trevor2522]

No need to bother with ripping programs. Why make it complicated and pay money when it's simple and free?

1) Right-click the DVD image on desktop

2) Left-click 'Copy DVD Video Recorder'

3) Right-click and paste the item to desktop

4) Wait 15 minutes for it to complete while the disk spins

5) Name a new folder with your movie (right click on desktop)

6) Highlight and drag the 'DVD Video Recorder' files to your named folder

7) Drag the named folder to your external hard drive or wherever and drag the 'DVD Video Recorder' folder to trash.

8) Download VLC media player to play it. Click on 'Video TS' and play the biggest 4 files. Just click each segment as required. Only need to rip it if you're bothered about continuous viewing.