Writing Movies to Hard Drive

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I recently purchased the mid ranged MacBook, and I wish to write a few movies to the hard drive so I can watch them without always having to carry the DVD's around with me. I have tried writing them through Mac the Ripper and just copying and pasting, but it just places the files into seperate folders and none of the movie playing programs (lack of a better word) such as Quicktime and Front Row recognises them as movie files. There also have rather large file sizes.

So yeah, bit of help please.
 

nZa


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2.8Ghz MBP
http://handbrake.fr/

I rip them into the iPod high-rez setting, and they end up around 1.5gb per movie.
 

dtravis7


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MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
Another vote for HandBrake. Excellent little application for what you want to do.
 
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new handbrake is *awesome* it's just brill with all the new settings and all the little fiddly bits ^^

a well deserved 5 bunnies out of a potential 5
 
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I presume you mean you have Video-TS folders?

You can play these in the built in DVD player (Or VLC etc)

Just open DVD player, then choose 'File' - 'Open DVD Media' and navigate to where the relevant Video_TS folder is saved on you Mac and open the video file (Don't worry about the Audio_TS folder, this will play automatically)
 
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As was explained above, you don't need a ripping program to save the dvd. If say you load the Bourne Supremacy DVD, exit out of DVD Player program that will auto-play the dvd. Double click on the DVD icon on your desktop and copy the folder Video_TS. Click anywhere on your desktop, and type Shift Command N and rename the new folder Bourne Supremacy. Right click that folder and paste, or drag and drop the Video_TS folder. After the movie has copied, drag and drop that folder into your Movies folder, and you can use Front Row and the remote to watch your movie.
 
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centurian1: would this method work if I'm trying to create a library on my external hard drive of my DVD collection. What I was looking at doing at this point is ripping them all onto my external hard drive using handbrake, but obviously this will take a long time. Are you saying that I could use your method above for my purpose as well? So that I would have all my movies in folders to watch on my TV which I have connected to my macbook?
 
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As was explained above, you don't need a ripping program to save the dvd. If say you load the Bourne Supremacy DVD, exit out of DVD Player program that will auto-play the dvd. Double click on the DVD icon on your desktop and copy the folder Video_TS. Click anywhere on your desktop, and type Shift Command N and rename the new folder Bourne Supremacy. Right click that folder and paste, or drag and drop the Video_TS folder. After the movie has copied, drag and drop that folder into your Movies folder, and you can use Front Row and the remote to watch your movie.

To get the Video_TS folder reliably to your desktop you need to use MTR (as the is doing) dragging and copying will not generally work due to the encoding and protection on the DVDs.

centurian1: would this method work if I'm trying to create a library on my external hard drive of my DVD collection. What I was looking at doing at this point is ripping them all onto my external hard drive using handbrake, but obviously this will take a long time. Are you saying that I could use your method above for my purpose as well? So that I would have all my movies in folders to watch on my TV which I have connected to my macbook?

Using MTR, yes that would be very doable. However, considering that most of these files range from 4 to 8Gb in size, you're going to need a lot of Hard Drive space. If you have a fairly recent machine, HB will allow you to convert a movie to a format with high quality and less than half the DVD file size. This is much more efficient use of your Hard Drive space.The Quality may not be complete DVD quality, but you can get it pretty darn close. There are multiple threads about this on the Handbrake forums, I'd recommend doing a search there for the best settings.
 
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Thank you baggss for these recommendations. I had a look at the handbrake forums you referenced and I have one question. Looking through the settings I'm seeing people who say their reason why using handbrake is to transfer DVD collection to a media server. I'm not exactly clear what they mean by media server, but I'm guessing that that is similar to what I am trying to do...am I correct on that? Would those settings work for me to copy my DVD collection and have them at my disposal to play back?
 
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Most of them mean a Windows Media Server for a Home theater setup. I think there is even a specific version of Windows for this. Sounds close to what you want to do, but not exactly. I think you can do it through front Row on the Mac as well.
 
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Ok yes I know that ripping them in the mp4 format allows them to be played back in front row. But you think that those settings are comparable to what I should use? I suppose I should also pose this question on the handbrake forums but just wondering your opinion. Thanks for your help!
 

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