With the release of the Apple TV it has gotten me excited. Over the last few days I figured out a way to start getting my entire DVD collection onto my computer. Once I have the Apple TV setup here I will not have to worry about another DVD getting ruined by the kids. I have found this really nice open source program called HandBrake. What is HandBrake you might ask? Here is what they say about it on the website.

HandBrake is a GPL’d multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but now has been ported over to MacOS X and to GNU/Linux. A Windows port is being worked on.

For all of you iPod fanatics out there this is handy for you too. You can convert your DVD’s into iPod compatable movies as well. Now if you are not interested in having the full version that can encode your movies into any size file and just want to put movies on your iPod, there is a stripped down version called Instant Handbrake which you can find on the site as well.

Now when using HandBrake it is quite simple. You put your DVD in the drive and open the DVD with HandBrake, you tell it to use the detected volume. It will read in all of the DVD chapters. Once that is done you can set the quality based on several factors such as average bitrate, constant quality, you can even set a max size for the file. You may also choose the file type. You can use AVI, MP4, OGM files. Personally i choose MP4 with a quality of H.264. I also set a max size of 1024MB (1GB) for my movies. After testing the quality of the movie at 1GB is pretty good and on my TV it will look just fine. If you have an HD TV, or a large screen TV you might want to encode with better quality. I have no idea how these movies that I have encoded will look like on an HD or large screen LCD TV.

Now you can go one step furthur if you want to automate the process. HandBrake has a queue system which you can use to automate the encoding of several movies. If your DVD’s are not already ripped to your computer you can use a program called MacTheRipper to put them on your computer. If you are not looking to use the queue you will not need MacTheRipper because HandBrake can rip a single DVD as well. I would not try to use the queue when you are ripping from a disk. Once they are on your computer you can place them into the queue in HandBrake, start the process and walk away. Another good feature of HandBrake is that it is able to use img and iso files as well as reading the VIDEO_TS directory on a ripped DVD.

This process is going to keep me busy for a while as it takes about 90 minutes to encode one movie at these quality settings on a PowerMac G5 Quad with 4GB RAM. If you have a system which is significantly slower you may wish to upgrade otherwise you will be sitting there for hours. You could also use the normal MP4 quality and not choose H.264 (this takes a while longer).