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Ripping Large Dvd Library to Macbook

K

kungfucody

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 11, 2006
11
0
Hello all. I am expecting my macbook around Christmas time and I thought I would go ahead and ask this question...I have a collection of about 100 dvds and some family guy and simpsons season dvds. i would love to rip this collection to my macbook (and external hard drive of course) so that I could watch a movie/episode at the click of a button. anyone have any ideas for software to rip it with other than mac the ripper, and any good media software ideas (maybe where i could catalog my collection by dvd cover, or something). any ripping and media center software would be appreciated. thanks again.

cody
 
I use a program called mactheripper.
It is great, and also can take off any locks or regional settings.
 
Mactheripper is probably best as you can rip a dvd in about 20 minutes to an external drive. You can just keep firing them through the macbook until they're all done (or you run out of space), and then Handbrake them to make them into mpeg-4's. You can queue ripping in Handbrake, and just let them fly overnight and do 4-5 per night.

If you use a single step process such as Handbrake, each one takes about 2 hours and you have to change the disc after each one, so queueing is not an option. It's also encoding at a high level all the time and the disc is spinning constantly.

ITunes is fine for cataloging, what I do is not actually import the files into iTunes, but uncheck the Add file to iTunes Library on Import option in preferences, and leave the actual movie files on my external hd. The movie still plays in iTunes and also in Front Row.
 
balamw said:
Why the objection to MTR?

It's really the only game in town unless you want MPEG-4/H.264 and thus can Handbrake or run a Windows based ripper in Boot Camp...

B
Click to expand...

There are a few weaknesses of MTR. Firstly, it's not been updated for a while, and in that time some DVDs have been released with new macrovision crap which screws up the ripping (though, admittedly, not many). But the main problem is the inability to rip only certain soundtracks, angles or subtitles. Although this can be done with Handbrake, that's no good if someone wants to make a VIDEO_TS library.
 
Can someone make me a very simple step-by-step guide how to rip DVD's to a mac via MTR/Handbrake, and getting DVD quality. I tried in Handbrake, but I can't seem to get the settings right, and the files always end up being 20 GB...:(
 
FleurDuMal said:
There are a few weaknesses of MTR. Firstly, it's not been updated for a while, and in that time some DVDs have been released with new macrovision crap which screws up the ripping (though, admittedly, not many). But the main problem is the inability to rip only certain soundtracks, angles or subtitles. Although this can be done with Handbrake, that's no good if someone wants to make a VIDEO_TS library.
Click to expand...

It's only not been updated in a while if you don't know where to look for newer versions. :3

Josias: Well, you can never get FULL DVD quality, as you're lossily encoding from an already lossy source. But, assuming you don't want to watch your movie on your iPod, a 1500kbps 2-pass H.264 rip in Main Profile should look pretty fantastic, not a lot of tweaking needed.
 
I am looking for dvd quality, will anything rip into divx on the mac? would a windows based ripper be better?? i would also like 5.1 sound, i wouldnt have to have it, but would like it...will mac the ripper handle that?
 
kungfucody said:
I am looking for dvd quality, will anything rip into divx on the mac? would a windows based ripper be better?? i would also like 5.1 sound, i wouldnt have to have it, but would like it...will mac the ripper handle that?
Click to expand...

I think you are a bit confused. You can't have DVD quality and DivX. By its very definition DivX, being lossy compression, quality must be less than that of the original DVD (i.e. MPEG-2 in a VOB container.)

MTR will give you the ripped VOBs without any loss in quality.

If you're considering DivX why not stick with MPEG-4 or H.264 which will be more likely compatible with iPods/iTV or even standalone DVD players. In which case, Handbrake is a good choice.

B
 
Mac the ripper basically takes a dvd apart down to its basic files of scenes/audio etc...
When you rip a dvd via MTR it is lossles from the dvd quality of mpg2.

Once you are done ripping, leave the files within the resulting folder alone. They are arranged in a way so your computer/dvd player can find them and assemble them into a playable movie. You can just place these movie folders in your external and store them that way. They will avearge 4gb+-. Title each folder with the movie name.

To play them you just direct your chosen player to the "TS" file whithin the respective movie folder and it will play just like a dvd would without the dvd.

The "TS" file is like the table of contents for the dvd. Once the player is shown that file the movie will come together and play.
 
thanks balam and freeny. I actually meant near dvd quality, and i know divx is one of the best... anyone know about the possibility of 5.1 with mac the ripper or anything else. i would also like to hear from someone who has done something similiar to this, thanks again for all response, yall have been a big help.
 
If you can justify the cost, I'd go for MacTheRipper + Popcorn. That seems to be the most compatible combination (neither HandBrake nor MTR + iSquint could correctly rip Star Wars :p)

Popcorn will output to iPod-compatible MPEG-4.
 
kungfucody said:
thanks balam and freeny. I actually meant near dvd quality, and i know divx is one of the best... anyone know about the possibility of 5.1 with mac the ripper or anything else. i would also like to hear from someone who has done something similiar to this, thanks again for all response, yall have been a big help.
Click to expand...

The best quality/size compromise I've seen is ripping the DVD in Handbrake using the full resolution, H.264 encoding to a .mp4 file and using 1500 - 2000kbps.

divx doesn't come close to the quality of H.264. Only problem is my iBook rips H.264 at a maximum of about 5fps whereas on even a 1.66GHz Core Duo mini you can get roughly real-time encoding. Using MPEG-4 makes for a much faster encoding time.
 
Chundles said:
The best quality/size compromise I've seen is ripping the DVD in Handbrake using the full resolution, H.264 encoding to a .mp4 file and using 1500 - 2000kbps.

divx doesn't come close to the quality of H.264. Only problem is my iBook rips H.264 at a maximum of about 5fps whereas on even a 1.66GHz Core Duo mini you can get roughly real-time encoding. Using MPEG-4 makes for a much faster encoding time.
Click to expand...

i agree here.

except, MPEG-4 isn't bad. but i actually do the same thing (or am in the process), and i use handbrake and itunes. i rip to MPEG-4 though, cuz you never know when i might load movies up on my ipod to watch on a trip or something
 
kungfucody said:
thanks balam and freeny. I actually meant near dvd quality, and i know divx is one of the best... anyone know about the possibility of 5.1 with mac the ripper or anything else. i would also like to hear from someone who has done something similiar to this, thanks again for all response, yall have been a big help.
Click to expand...

At the moment I think you can't get 5.1 when you rip to MP4 in Handbrake because Quicktime is used to play that file and Quicktime doesn't yet support 5.1 surround sound.

VLC might do though.
 
Chundles said:
The best quality/size compromise I've seen is ripping the DVD in Handbrake using the full resolution, H.264 encoding to a .mp4 file and using 1500 - 2000kbps.

divx doesn't come close to the quality of H.264. Only problem is my iBook rips H.264 at a maximum of about 5fps whereas on even a 1.66GHz Core Duo mini you can get roughly real-time encoding. Using MPEG-4 makes for a much faster encoding time.
Click to expand...

I agree, I use 1500 for all my good rips and 1000 for stuff I don't care about.
 
Mhill said:
Has any one tried using Drive Inn?
Click to expand...

It looks like it will only use full DVD images to do its thing. If you have a multi-terabyte server more power to you, but the prospect of using 500GB+ of drive space for my DVD collection seems like a waste.
 
I don't really understand the difference between macttheripper and handbrake... which one should I use to rip normal length DVDs down to about 1 GB files?
 
smartalic34 said:
I don't really understand the difference between macttheripper and handbrake... which one should I use to rip normal length DVDs down to about 1 GB files?
Click to expand...

Handbrake. MTR rips a DVD as a "folder" of a DVD so it's the same size as on the disc, HB encodes the video using compression algorithms to shrink the file down in size.
 
Mhill said:
Has any one tried using Drive Inn?
Click to expand...

It is Drive In, at this stage in the process it is extremely buggy not worth bothing just yet. It is also really just a pretty front end to what Mac The Ripper does, can it still can not rip most of my Dvd's. When it does rip then it can not play them (tries to change the region on my dvd player even though it is in the correct region already)

So to reiterate, it is too buggy for practical use. It is not really appropriate for this context.

I use Mac the Ripper and then handbrake, 2500 h.264 for my good films / animation (Howls Moving castle etc etc.) and 1500 for the older films.

Currently my movies average at about 1.5 Gb per movie.
 
slightly off topic

so i'm looking to do a similar thing but my question is - if divx was chosen so that the file outputted was .avi and not .mov or .mp4 - is it possible to get them to show up in itunes? by putting movies in my movies folder i've gotten them to show in frontrow but as i recall i can't get them in itunes (i'm not home now at my mac so i can't try atm...)
 
I just tried ripping "click" with mactheripper and I got a read failure. yes, i followed the read me .pdf and followed the steps as instruced. what's wrong here?
 
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