Question about DVD's

[Skippy440]

Sorry for such a basic question, but I never had the chance to get involved with DVD movies and laptops before as my previous Dell wasn't DVD capable.
I purchased Roxio Toast 10 Titanium for burning CD's and DVD's.

My question is I've heard about DVD decoder programs for protected disc's.
What are they used for and is there any good programs that you would recommend for this.

 

[jmann]

Sorry for such a basic question, but I never had the chance to get involved with DVD movies and laptops before as my previous Dell wasn't DVD capable.
I purchased Roxio Toast 10 Titanium for burning CD's and DVD's.

My question is I've heard about DVD decoder programs for protected disc's.
What are they used for and is there any good programs that you would recommend for this.

I would use MacTheRipper, or HandBrake.

 

[spinnerlys]

Commercial video DVDs have a copy protection on them, to prevent them from being copied.

MacTheRipper, RipIt and Fairmount are applications that are able to rip (copy the video DVDs content to HDD while removing the copy protection) video DVDs.
As video DVDs are quite big (up to 8.5 GB) there are programs like Handbrake, that encode the video DVDs videos into smaller videos using space efficient codecs like Xvid, MPEG-4 or H264.

Encoding can only be done after ripping, although Handbrake is able to encode directly from a DVD when VLC Player is also present on your system, as VLC contains a library called libdevcss that can circumvent the copy protection.

Depending on the speed of your Mac though, the encoding process can be faster by first ripping the video DVD and then encoding the contents directly form your HDD (where the ripped video DVD is now stored), as the DVD drive is not as fast as your HDD.

Btw., plurals like disks or CDs or DVDs are not created with an apostrophe, as an apostrophe is used for omissions and possessions like doesn't = does not or Jim's bike = Jim his bike.
Further reading: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp

 

[Skippy440]

Thanks for all the information of this. I've downloaded MacTheRipper and installed it.
So the idea would be that I rip the DVD onto my HD first using MacTheRipper (stripping the protection off the video) and then using Roxio to burn additional discs if I wanted a second copy?
One additional question, could I rip the DVD onto my 1TB external drive rather than the HD on the laptop? I don't see why not unless the Roxio/MacTheRipper don't allow it.

 

[spinnerlys]

Thanks for all the information of this. I've downloaded MacTheRipper and installed it.
So the idea would be that I rip the DVD onto my HD first using MacTheRipper (stripping the protection off the video) and then using Roxio to burn additional discs if I wanted a second copy?
One additional question, could I rip the DVD onto my 1TB external drive rather than the HD on the laptop? I don't see why not unless the Roxio/MacTheRipper don't allow it.

Once you have ripped the video DVD to your HDD you can make as many copies as you want.

Also MacTheRipper (and probably the other two) will allow you to set any other location of where to store the ripped DVD, including other HDDs.

 

[Skippy440]

Thanks again for the education. Now I'm up to speed.