If only I could get surround sound going in conjunction with this i'd have a Apple TV like , yesterday. Come'on apple turn on the good ol' 5.1!

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I ripped a DVD using Handbrake just the other day on my MacBook Core Duo 2.0GHz 2GBs RAM, took an hour...used H.264 at 720p.

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Wow, that was amazingly complicated. It's really, really simple. This is the 5 step tutorial I used, there's no need for QT Pro.

http://www.codenameitv.com/index.php/topic,24.0.html

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i use mactheripper (free) sprinkled with visualhub (not so free)- which coverts and adds stuff to your itunes for you pretty easily.

not as long as handbrake method ... but not as cheap either.

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All the complication in this guide is due to extracting anamorphic video. I know there is some quality benefit to doing this, but if you don't care and just let handbrake/mediafork set the aspect ratio the process becomes incredibly simple.

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MediaFork has forked back into Handbrake.

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They're right. This tutorial makes it seem much more complicated than it actually is.

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yeah... that tutorial was intense. if you are already ripping your dvds onto your computer you probably have less of a moral standard anyway... so pirating a copy of visualhub wouldn't be beyond your conscience. just use mactheripper and visualhub... simple as pie.

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Something else, he failed to mention how to get the chapters back onto the media file. I use MetaData Hootenanny. It's a great program to quickly get chapters on the file. Downside is that it converts it to a MOV file, which Apple TV still reads, but then I can't add a cover to the file and it looks stupid have the Universal logo (or some other studio) as the cover on Apple TV.

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Instead of saving the file after the changes in Quicktime, do an export.../Movie to MPEG-4 and set it to "Pass Through". You can now edit the metadata in iTunes, including the cover art.

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BTW: There is definitely a difference in video quality between the anamorphic and non-anamorphic settings in Mediafork/Handbrake. I ran several versions of the same scene from a movie and this one came out the best by far.

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@Josh
Some people see Pirating software as Wrong, while Pirating DVDs as not-quite-so-wrong.
Converting your Personally Owned DVD's to a Digital Format is actually Legal in most countries, unless you violate some other law (such as the DMCA in the US).

Yes, the Tutorial is needlessly complicated, even for a Pedant like myself, although still very informative.

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Say, I wonder, can the Apple TV play back 720p/1080p trailers from Apple's Website?

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@Jimmy: Why would you rip a DVD at 720p? The source material is only 480p. Is there a difference that you can see?

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See this [url=http://www.dvdtoappletv.org]DVD and Videos to Apple TV site(Mac/Windows)[/url] for help...the windows converter works great for me.

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The above commenter (mrxxg) owns, works for, or has an interest at stake in the link he posted.
He's been Digg-ing his own site like crazy. I can't say whether or not his software works, but I'd avoid out of principle.

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