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.

You should be able to use dvd decrypter.I haven`t used this for a long time but it works.
I use Nero and DVD43.


dvd decrypter,

[Link: mrbass.org]

thanks.

it seems everyone has a recomendation for SW that is about is intuitive to use as Pronto Pro! lol

yes i could spend 10hours trying to figure it out, but would much rather something straightforward. i wouldnt even mind having to pay for it!

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.

thanks for the reply otahd, but here where i got bunged up. i read the manual and it began the same way, however the VLC player (or any wondow i can get to pop up in its place) does NOT show "File". where file normally is it shows "Media". when i click on that it does have an option to open disc however none of the other things you mentioned are showing in the box that pops up so i dont think its what you're talking about.

Looks like they may have changed VLC. I'm sure there's still a way to do it on that version - but to make life easier, try VLC 0.8.6 (the one for Win 98/Me).

EDIT: Downloaded 0.9.8, it's in there but more hidden. Go to Media-Open Disc, then click the down arrow at the bottom and you can choose "stream."

The way I tend to rip DVDs on my Mac is as follows:

1. Use 'Mac-the-ripper' which decrypts the DVD and basically copies the DVD as is across to the hard drive with all features as on the disk. File size etc all remains the same.
2. I then use Handbrake to convert it to mv4 or mp4 format which are all playable on ATV. The advantage is this then also gets rid of all the intro stuff including menus, copyright warnings, ads etc so you just get your movie. You can also set subtitles etc if you wish but it will encode this directly to the resulting video which cannot then be subsequently changed unless you re-encode and replace the final output file. It also compresses from the DVD size of around 4.3GB down to around 1.4GB . Quality still quite ok and even on my projector with ATV, is more than watchable.
3. Now I copy the resulting file to my server and drop it into iTunes, change the cover-art in iTunes to a scan of the DVD cover. This iTunes remains on and my ATVs around the house stream it from the server. The movie is visible by cover-art. Sensational!

Now, converting (compressing) from DVD to mp4/ mv4 is a time consuming process but the nice thing about Handbrake is that you can queue up jobs so it can grunt away overnight encoding your videos.