Handbrake

I'm researching for a friend how to bring media into his Mac from his DVD player so that he can edit it in iMovie HD (which now accepts importing MPEG-4 files). It seems like HandBrake might work for this. Has anyone tried this and, if so, how did it work? Before finding out about HandBrake, I was suggesting that my friend use an analog to digital converter (Canopus ADVC-50) which costs $200. It would be great if HandBrake could solve his problem for free.

I can help with that question...to double the speed just go in to your "energy saving" section under system preferences and set your CPU to "maximum" instead of "automatic". That will double your performance.

Handbrake is absolutely awesome. I love being able to encode my DVDs into high quality h.264 movies of a reasonable size. Saves me having to keep all my DVDs in the vicinity of my computer. My only gripe is that compared to my friends 1.33Ghz Powerbook, my iMac G5 1.8Ghz gets outpaced in terms of FPS - which kinda sucks. (Both have the same amount of RAM). Any ideas?

To Callum: can I disagree? According to the law you can make as much copies of cddvd as you wish as far as you make them for your own use. Look, I have 3 dvd-players in my house - one for me, one for my parents and one in the guest room (thought I live in a 2-room-flat in Moscow, Russia, but let's assume it's just an example) I can legally make two more copies from the DVD i've LEGALLY bought so that all my family members can watch it in their own rooms. Of course it's illegal to make copies for friends or for sell, but for my own use - it's ok. What comes to Handbrake - i have no success installing it on my Mepis (Debian-based) box even with the deb-file they provide.

I love this program. It is perfectly legal, and very useful. I make archives of all my DVDs on my iMac overnight, then transfer then over to my 'book in the morning (over a firewire network). I have 6 on it now, and 9 on the iMac, making 15 total (just in case you can't add). As long as you don't share them or sell them, it is legal. Handbrake is one of my favorite applications.

I don't know if it uses DeCSS necessarily, but I would say it definitely decrypts the DVD somehow as the MPEG file is not encrypted or DRMed.

ok..this sounds cool,..is it using DeCSS? (i'm assuming since poster john b "tested" team america its gotta be using something like it) i'm giving it a try.

It is not illegal to make a backup / "copy" of a DVD you own. Not illegal at all. When will one of the major sofware boys MS / Apple turn-out a OS integrated DVD-Ripper... Media-Player did it for CDs, iTunes too - DVDs should and will be ripped, they are so easily brused... if you've small children around you'll understand.

I love this app. I've been using it for a year now (haven't upgraded since I first got it). It usually takes about 2 to 3 hours to rip a DVD in single-pass encoding and makes a nice quality MPEG-4 movie that's roughly 1GB (give or take a couple hundred megs depending on lenth). I tried to rip to AVI once but the estimated time was about 9 hours so I cancelled it. It's very handy that it has so many features (ripping and conversion) built into one app. Plus, you can import the MPEG-4 file into iDVD and make a pretty good copy. I did this with Team America to test it out and it did surprisingly well (although it was just the movie - no extra features). I think I might give the upgrade a go now.

Money (That's What I Want) was first performed and made a hit by Barrett Strong, three years before the Beatles. It was co-written by Berry Gordy, Jr. of Motown fame. The Beatle's were just one of many artist to cover it-- The Kingsmen (of Louie Louie fame) covered the same year the Beatles did. My personal favorite version is by the Flying Lizards.