I have some dvds that don't have a digital copy and want to rip them for use on my iPad Pro, what's best software out there now to use? I have a PC not a mac and if there's an easier way than Handbrake lmk.
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Want to rip some DVDs to iPad
- Thread starter Brewc
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If you're feeling brave on the command line then use ffmpeg.exe
https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
If you have an Nvidia GPU, then its super easy to use NVENC GPU encoding and you'll have a transcode done in minutes compared to hours via CPU.
As a very basic example:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf scale=-1:720 -c:v hevc_nvenc output.mp4
-i = input
-vf scale = drop to 720 (bit more suitable for iPad)
-c:v = codec > video
hevc_nvenc = or h264_nvenc GPU encoding (hevc=h.265)
I can even do this on my MacBook Pro, unfortunately only in Windows or Linux. MacOS no (even if you have an Nvidia card) I haven't found an FFMPEG version that has CUDA support.
https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
If you have an Nvidia GPU, then its super easy to use NVENC GPU encoding and you'll have a transcode done in minutes compared to hours via CPU.
As a very basic example:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vf scale=-1:720 -c:v hevc_nvenc output.mp4
-i = input
-vf scale = drop to 720 (bit more suitable for iPad)
-c:v = codec > video
hevc_nvenc = or h264_nvenc GPU encoding (hevc=h.265)
I can even do this on my MacBook Pro, unfortunately only in Windows or Linux. MacOS no (even if you have an Nvidia card) I haven't found an FFMPEG version that has CUDA support.
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Yea, all that's kinda more involved than I'm looking for, an probably need a high end pc I guess? Is there any software you can buy that does it all?
In terms of the PC being high end, wether you're using ffmpeg or handbrake its all down to whatever the power of your CPU. It wont make much of a difference.
Well.. Handbrake is already your easiest way. Its free and has iPad presets ready to use.
Well.. Handbrake is already your easiest way. Its free and has iPad presets ready to use.
Handbrake should be very simple, unless the DVD has some difficult type of copy protection. However you will probably need a special library to rip commercial DVD's. When I installed Handbrake several years ago, the software automatically prompted me to download this, not sure if that is still the case though.
You shouldn't need a high end PC for this, but a slow one will obviously take longer. I have only used the Mac version, but on my 2011 MacBook Air with a 1.7ghz Core i5 CPU (not terribly fast by today's standards) it used to take perhaps an hour to rip a movie.
The other issue is, how do you want to access the ripped movie on the iPad? The easiest way would be adding it to iTunes on your PC, then syncing with your iPad. If you don't want to go that route, there are some video player apps that should be able to do it.
I find that a high quality handbrake rip of a standard definition movie on DVD is usually somewhere between 1 to 2 gigabytes. So available storage on the iPad may be an issue if you want to use very many movies.
You shouldn't need a high end PC for this, but a slow one will obviously take longer. I have only used the Mac version, but on my 2011 MacBook Air with a 1.7ghz Core i5 CPU (not terribly fast by today's standards) it used to take perhaps an hour to rip a movie.
The other issue is, how do you want to access the ripped movie on the iPad? The easiest way would be adding it to iTunes on your PC, then syncing with your iPad. If you don't want to go that route, there are some video player apps that should be able to do it.
I find that a high quality handbrake rip of a standard definition movie on DVD is usually somewhere between 1 to 2 gigabytes. So available storage on the iPad may be an issue if you want to use very many movies.
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So handbrake will take care of the copy protection on the dvds? Storage should not be an issue, I've got 75gb available so I was looking at 20-25 episodes
I don't think I've used Handbrake since I upgraded to Sierra recently. Evidently there's a trick that you need to use for installing the the decrypting library. See this article: http://www.macworld.com/article/3169375/videos/how-to-rip-dvds-with-handbrake.html
After doing this, it should be able to rip most DVD's. I have ripped over 1000 and only had a problem with perhaps a dozen.
After doing this, it should be able to rip most DVD's. I have ripped over 1000 and only had a problem with perhaps a dozen.
It is the current Macintosh operating system. Sorry, reading back here it appears you are using Windows. I have not used the Windows version myself, but it appears that it works properly - see this: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-rip-a-dvd-to-your-computer-5809765
My flow is to decrypt the DVD/bluray using makemkv. After that, I run the resulting MKV file through Handbrake to get it into a compatible format. (FYI I use an iMac, but windows versions of both apps are available.)
MakeMKV / Handbrake workflow really is the best. Theres a key you can get here that is continually updated every month:
https://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053