Handbrake and copying DVDs

[leftarc]

Couple of things first up:

• I own all the DVD's
• I am sick and tired of people taking DVD's out of the player and not putting them back into their cases. This equals scratches, complaints and it wasn't me.

I am looking at getting apple TV and a 2TB HDD so I can copy/backup all my DVD's to a hard disk and not worry about them become coasters.

I currently use Handbrake for ripping/copying the DVD to my imac/itunes.

What I want to know is how do I include the menu part of the DVD in the copied file.

Cheers,

leftarc

[s4mmy]

With the Apple Tv you wont be playing it in the same way you do a normal DVD so the menu is of no use.

The Apple TV will simply play the avi, mkv etc that you rip. So really you only get the movie\any extras you rip.

[StuartL]

Originally Posted by leftarc

I am looking at getting apple TV and a 2TB HDD so I can copy/backup all my DVD's to a hard disk and not worry about them become coasters.

I currently use Handbrake for ripping/copying the DVD to my imac/itunes.

What I want to know is how do I include the menu part of the DVD in the copied file.

You have two options.

Option one: use the Apple TV. This means ripping the movies or TV episodes to individual .m4v files, and forgetting about the DVD menus. That's probably the better approach; I tend to find DVD menus to be more annoying than useful (case in point: Red Dwarf. Probably about two minutes between putting the DVD in the drive and being able to actually watch the episode I want.)

Option two: use a software package (such as RipIt) to rip the DVDs to a directory, and something other than the Apple TV to play them back. You'll need to structure them in some way so you can choose the DVD from a menu (and then choose whatever you want from the DVD's menu). Maybe XBMC will do the job, but that won't run on the aTV 3 (you have to jailbreak the aTV 2 to run it; there's no jailbreak for the aTV 3.)

Your call. Just expect the latter approach to require a lot more disk space than the former, since .m4v compresses the video more than the DVD format will.

[glenpinn]

Originally Posted by leftarc

I currently use Handbrake for ripping/copying the DVD to my imac/itunes.

What I want to know is how do I include the menu part of the DVD in the copied file.

you cant do that with Handbrake, and you dont need all the fancy menu's and other stuff if all you want to do is play the movie back from the hdd or from a hdd media player.

just grab a free copy of DVDFab HD Decrypter http://www.dvdfab.com/download.htm

open dvdfab, put the dvd disc into your drive and and let it import the dvd, select an output directory for the movie rip, then use the "rip Main Movie" function with whatever audio track you want, and select the rip quality of DVD9 as it will rip the movie to its full size and quality, then start the rip, and when it completes the rip your left with the contents of the main movie in the destination folder (set of .vob files)

then open handbrake and import the Vob_01 file from the folder and convert the movie to MP4 using whatever video and audio settings you prefer.

this will convert the movie files to a single h264 MP4 video file ready for playback.

if it is a Dvd, in handbrake, select constant framerate output with a quality setting of RF:23 or RF:25 to get you pretty much dvd quality at about half the original dvd file size.

[FantoM_CircuiT]

Originally Posted by glenpinn

you cant do that with Handbrake, and you dont need all the fancy menu's and other stuff if all you want to do is play the movie back from the hdd or from a hdd media player.

There was a recent (ie a few months ago) update to Handbrake which lets it read and decrypt DVD files straight from the disc - no separate ripping utility required. Unless there's a specific reason for not using the inbuilt Handbrake routines?

Oh, and iFlicks is an awesome app for adding metadata and adding it to your itunes library. Just set it to watch the Handbrake output folder and all your stuff will be neatly stored in itunes with cover art, episode data etc. http://www.iflicksapp.com/

ONly thing that sucks about this whole process is Handbrakes queuing system takes a lot of manual work.

[j_a_h_2077]

As long as you have VLC installed handbrake will rip straight from DVD.

Currently ripping all the children's DVD's so our friends children can't scratch the discs.

[plasticbastard]

Originally Posted by j_a_h_2077

As long as you have VLC installed handbrake will rip straight from DVD.

Currently ripping all the children's DVD's so our friends children can't scratch the discs.

In my experience this has been broken with the release of VLC 2.x for Mac.

[glenpinn]

Originally Posted by FantoM_CircuiT

There was a recent (ie a few months ago) update to Handbrake which lets it read and decrypt DVD files straight from the disc

lol i have version 0.9.6 and i just discovered the "folder" option in the source tab at the top, i dont know why i never noticed it before, must give it a try.

cheers