Mac the Ripper question?

[southpaw17]

I ripped a dvd to my hard drive of a season of entourage episodes (they are mine). I am taking a trip and read somewhere that it is better to rip dvds so that the optical drive isn't spinning and wasting battery. The Problem is that one season (8 episodes from 2 discs) took up 12 gb. What is a program I can use to compress them. I would like to maintain good quality but they are just for me to watch on my computer, but 12 gb? is there any way to make these files smaller?

thanks

 

[jsw]

There are many options. I like HandBrake for DVD conversion (it'll work with ripped DVDs).

I highly recommend trying out some settings to see what works best instead of converting the whole batch and finding out it wasn't what you thought.

You should be able to reduce those episodes substantially with little noticeable degradation.

 

[iHerzeleid]

HandbrakeCompresses Videos in general.

DVD2OneCompresses Duel Layered To Single

iSquintCompresses to iPod Formats

 

[PlaceofDis]

Handbrake or Popcorn can compress them i believe.

 

[ghall]

You could convert the episodes to Mpeg 4 video using HandBreak, but there really is no way to compress the actual DVD files.

 

[madog]

Yes there is. How do you think toast does it?

With gypsy tears?

 

[Dimwhit]

iSquintCompresses to iPod Formats

Assuming you'll be rip to, and watching on, a laptop, I'd go with this ine. iSquint will take a DVD and rip it to an iPod file, which would be very viewable on a laptop. And a typical 1 1/2 hour movie will compress down to about 500-600 MB.

 

[Blubbert]

Assuming you'll be rip to, and watching on, a laptop, I'd go with this ine. iSquint will take a DVD and rip it to an iPod file, which would be very viewable on a laptop. And a typical 1 1/2 hour movie will compress down to about 500-600 MB.

The size of the movie coming out of iSquint is tiny, its perfect for watching on an ipod, not a fullsize laptop screen. I would reccomend you use Handbrake, and set it that every episde takes about 175 or 200 megs. That paired witha two pass setting should give you a very nice video, that is not insanely huge in size.

 

[southpaw17]

what is 2 pass encoding. i did it at 1000 bitrate but when I try to go large on my mbp cd 15 it is really grainy. should I just deal with the small screen. i am trying the next episode at 2 pass. maybe that will be better.