On December 22, 2008 at 21:52, Stealth X said...
i hijacked another thread, so figured i may aswell start
my own.
i downloaded VLC media player and there is no clear way
to copy a DVD to my hard drive or change the format to
play on aTV.
is there not some kind of straight forward program that
would allow me to simply put a DVD in my PC, copy it to
my hard drive, then play it via iTunes/aTV?
quite possibly VLC is the best way, but as mentioned i'm
not seeing any options to rip a DVD, so any help with
direction would be greatly appreciated.
thanks alot.
There is. May not be obvious though.
It won't rip it in the manner of ripping the disc files or an image file to the hard drive (for that you want the free version of DVDFab), but it will rip it to a video file (MPG, WMV, MP4, etc).
Open VLC and go to File>Open Disc. Keep the default bullet (DVD (menus)) and enter the title of the main movie. Usually it's Title 1 but it depends on the disc. Your standalone DVD player will usually display the title number if you hit info, or you can play the DVD in Windows Media Player and note the title of the main movie.
On the bottom, under "Advanced Options," click "Stream/Save." Then hit the settings button. Under "outputs," check "file," then click browse and choose the desired output location and filename, followed by the extension of the file you will be converting to. At the bottom of that screen, check the appropriate encapsulation method (MPEG PS for MPEG-2, ASF for WMV, MP4 for MP4, MOV for MOV, or whatever else you want), then check the box for "video codec." Choose the appropriate codec from the video menu and a desired bitrate (7000 kbps is usually sufficient for DVD's). Then check the box for audio codec and select the desired codec and bitrate. Hit "OK" on both screens and let it convert.
It's fairly system intensive so you may want to walk away while it's converting.
