Handbrake icon question

This is a bit of a newbie question,and not a technical one at that, but I figured I would ask here. I am new to Macs and Handbrake 64 bit was one of the first programs I downloaded. I dragged the application into the Application folder and the icon appears and the program seems to open fine. However, I noticed that the icon for Handbrake that showed up in the shortcut application folder (for lack of better terminology) that I have on my desktop is not an icon at all (not the pineapple), but rather a package with an image of a circle and a line through it (a symbol that indicates you shouldn't do something). The program does seem to open when you click this.

Since I am not really familiar with installing programs on a Mac, I was just wondering if maybe I did something wrong or if this is normal for this program.

Also, when I tried to use Handbrake for the first time it asked me if I wanted to download VLC and it didn't locate the DVD I had put in the player (although the DVD player played the DVD when I put it in the computer). Will I need VLC to use Handbrake? Why wouldn't Handbrake find the DVD even though it was in a format that the computer otherwise recognized?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Icon issue resolved - VLC question

The icon issue miraculously fixed itself tonight. I'm not sure what happened, but I was playing around with the file (looking at the package contents, opening and closing the program, etc.) and when I looked later the icon had changed.

Anyway, I still have the question about the need for and any benefits of VLC with Handbrake.

Handbrake uses the codecs from VLC to convert the movie to whatever you specify. In a nutshell, yes you must have VLC installed to use Handbrake.

Shawn

Thanks. I guess I'm used to running it on my "Windows" machine where no additional software/codecs were needed.

This is a touchy subject here. I PM'd you.