Ripping a DVD to a Mac

[Wes Jordan]

I want to be able to rip a DVD onto my Intel Powerbook(Family Guy) so I won't have to carry the discs with me. Is this possible? I have no illegal intentions.

 

[mduser63]

It is possible. I'm not up on which apps are Universal yet and which aren't, but the ones to check out are MacTheRipper, Handbrake and YadeX. MacTheRipper is for ripping disks to a VIDEO_TS folder. Handbrake will also rip DVDs, but it compresses them to MPEG4 or H.264 for smaller file sizes. I've used YadeX, but I can't remember exactly how it was different. Anyway, all three of those are free.

I'm assuming you don't yet have your MacBook Pro yet, right?

 

[dolphin842]

An unofficial x86 build of Handbrake is available. From what I hear, it seems to work ok.

 

[Wes Jordan]

Oh no I got it several weeks ago...hasn't everyone? Its absolutely amazing. Very fast. The battery life is about 12 hours. I can work all day! It was so expensive though! $400!

I wish.

No, same boat, very anxious, still waiting. But unfortuately, the looming ship date is also the date of the science fair which I have to prepare a project for that I haven't even started!

It will be my very first mac. Thanks for the help!

 

[Wes Jordan]

Oh, one more thing, how big is the file size per 2 hours of video or so. Any ideas?

 

[dolphin842]

For 2 hours... raw DV video will go about 27 GB.

Good h264 video runs at about 1000kbps... or roughly 900 MB if you do a straight 8bit>1byte conversion.

 

[mduser63]

For 2 hours... raw DV video will go about 27 GB.

Good h264 video runs at about 1000kbps... or roughly 900 MB if you do a straight 8bit>1byte conversion.

True. Of course, there's no reason to go to raw DV from DVD as the quality will never be better than the MPEG2 on the DVD, and you'll just get way bigger file sizes. If you just rip the VIDEO_TS folder and don't do any further compression, you're looking at around 4-4.5 GB for a single layer, full length DVD.