Netflix and Hulu notwithstanding, I have this thing about movies on my Mac. There’s never enough. Three little girls in the backseat of the car have forced us into capturing and saving as many movies as we can stuff onto our MacBook Air when we travel.
How do you rip DVD movies to your Mac? It’s actually easy, but somewhat time consuming, yet well worth the effort. All you need are DVD movies, your Mac, and one of these three Mac apps, one of which is free.
Click, Rip, Save, Watch
These three Mac apps are in inverse proportion to their complexity. The most expensive DVD ripper is the easiest.
The least expensive DVD ripper app (it’s free) is also the most complex to use.
Regardless, here are three ways to rip DVD moves and save them for viewing to your Mac.
Wait. Since you already have the DVD movie, why not just carry the DVD with you and play it back on your Mac?
First, who wants to carry around a stack of DVDs to play? That is so 1999. Second, your Mac notebook’s battery life goes down much faster while playing a DVD than playing a movie ripped from a DVD.
Finally, three words. MacBook Air. Oh, and iPad. There’s no DVD player in either device so ripping is your friend. The idea is to get as many movies ripped to your Mac as your storage allows.
#3 – RipIt: Without a doubt, the easiest app to use is RipIt. Launch RipIt. Insert your DVD movie. Click the Rip button.
RipIt will let you know how much time is remaining until the ripping is complete.
In the meantime, you have options to rename the ripped movie. The Compress button will create a smaller sized ripped movie for use on iTunes, iPod, iPhone, or iPad.
#2 – Mac DVDRipper Pro. Almost as easy to use, and a few dollars less expensive, is Mac DVD Ripper Pro. Stuff your DVD movie into your Mac, select a Save destination, and click to begin ripping.
The benefits of ripping to your Mac are obvious. If you have a DVD collection, you can rip them once and store the DVDs to avoid scratches, dings, and loss. It’s also a good way to backup a DVD collection.
#1 – HandBrake: The free way to rip DVD movies is HandBrake. The interface is more complicated, with far more options than either RipIt or Mac DVDRipper Pro, but the price is right.
Download HandBrake, drop a DVD movie into your Mac, muddle through the various and sundry settings, and let ‘er rip. Life is good, right? Especially with presets for moving movies to iPhone and iPad from your Mac.
Not so fast. Those Netflix DVD movie rentals are usually copy protected and that’s where your ripping mileage varies. Sometimes the movies can be ripped to your Mac, and sometimes not.
Still, what you get in the end, assuming all goes well, and you don’t develop some crazy, untreatable disease while waiting for the ripping process to finish, is a DVD movie that plays on your Mac, saves your Mac’s battery, extends the life of your DVD collection, and lets you time shift DVD rentals.
About Alexis Kayhill
Reminder: ripping DVDs you rent violates copyright laws. Basically, that’s piracy. Rip DVDs you own in order to save battery life, facilitate watching, etc. However, follow appropriate laws.
The jury is still out on whether you can rip DVD movies for your own personal usage.
You nailed the ease-of-use vs. free options. HandBrake is free but rather complex, even with presets. The others are, as you say, drop dead easy to use.
“Piracy” is a word coined by the industry in an attempt to propagandize usage and it’s apparently working. Before the digital age, people would make cassettes of songs and pass them around and no ever called that piracy. Back then, the term “piracy” was used for the people who made duplicates of commercially available material and sold them and that’s where that term should remain. Terms used in this article such as time shifting or sharing are the words that should be used.
Indeed. The proper term to use is “Fair Use”, a concept that existed, and still exists in US copyright law. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use )
This right was illegally abrogated by the DCMA.