[hillstones]

Kazoo said:

Not sure about every last Disney movie but mac the ripper 3 works on all the rip-guarded movies I own.

It will fail with Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Wall-E.

[leicaman]

dean_o said:

My admittedly limited understanding of the DMCA is that it makes circumventing DRM illegal even if the purpose is a legal one like making a personal backup. I also thought that linking to software designed to circumvent DRM was prohibited. Am I wrong? (I haven't bothered to read the Act, so my understanding comes second-hand at best.)


I realize that some parts of the law may not have been challenged in court, but does anyone really think that the industry that bribed -- I mean lobbied Congress into passing this thing would be in any danger of losing? All the industry has to do is decide they want to make an example out of somebody. Their pockets are so deep, who could afford to fight them for long?


They don't have to be right or win. They just have to spend money until you quit. When the cost of defending yourself will ruin you, you effectively don't have any rights at all.

The DMCA cannot trump the First Amendment. The Press is protected, and you can bet that if the bozos who keep abusing the DMCA try to test it, they will lose. That is, if Macworld has a staff of highly-paid lawyers ready at their beck and call to win the day. :p

[Chris Breen]

Wondercow said:

Technically it is illegal in the U.S. To my understanding the DMCA supersedes the right to make a backup.

I've spoken with intellectual property lawyers about this and other copyright-versus-fair-use subjects and I was surprised to learn that even they don't have a solid answer to this one. The truth is, no one really knows. The consensus is that it's a violation of the DMCA to make copy-busting software (which is one reason you see HandBrake no longer including this technology but, instead, relying on another application to install it) but not to use it for the purposes of archiving your media (and using those archived copies in devices you own).

[hillstones]

MacKayaker said:

I can't believe this and threads like it. Full of rationalization and the same lame thinking that dominates most of the crime "solving" shows I quit watching. Too much end justifies the means kind of thinking. People talking about the "need" to break copyright protections. The "need" for back-up media - it's a load of dingo kidneys in my opinion. I have many hundreds of CDs and plenty of DVDs that run as well now as the day I bought them. If kids aren't old enough to respect media, they arent old enough to watch with out the parent's involvement, which means the parents can handle the media - end of rationalization.


At the end of the day people will justify and rationalize what they want to do - whether it's really appropriate or not.

I am sure some of your DVD's and CD's are also out of print too. How about when you have those in your car and your car gets stolen, and now you cannot replace your out of print DVD's or CD's. Then how will you feel? I am sure then you would have wished you had copies of those DVD's and CD's in the car instead of the originals. Get over yourself. People have a right to make a copy of something they own.

You have a right to make a copy of computer software that you purchased, and in the days of floppy disks, it was even recommended by the software developer that you make a copy of the original disks and only use the copies to install the software, to prevent damage to the original disk. DVD and CD media is no different. I only use CD-R's in the car because I don't want the original disc damaged or lost, especially when it is an out of print or import CD.

[hillstones]

webraider said:

Quote

Aimerisoft's program claims that it can. It's not free but it's not expensive either. You can download the demo and try it. It would be the Ripper I believe. They have Windows and Mac versions so you have to look on their site. If you buy from them.. do it through PayPal.

Talk about advertising through message boards! Do you work for this company? Every post you have promotes this program.

[trusswalker]

So this whole thing has turned into a wild rant about DMCA vs Fair-Use Act... Personally, I don't care. I have more technical question that I was going to write into MacWorld just because I haven't seen a good answer anywhere.

So yes, HandBrake has many good presets for individual devices... iPod vs iPhone vs AppleTV vs. "Normal" but how do I get the equivalent of what Apple posts on iTunes? What I'm looking for is the best video and audio experience I can get that will play on both an iPhone and an AppleTV... preferably with surround working with the ApplyTV. I get that video size will be limited by the iPhone, but HandBrake supports multiple audio tracks. Lastly, I don't care much about file size... hard drives are cheap.

So enough of the philosophical disagreements... How about getting better at what we're talking about?

[Chris Breen]

trusswalker said:

What I'm looking for is the best video and audio experience I can get that will play on both an iPhone and an AppleTV

You can use HandBrake's controls to select a resolution and bit-rate for your video. Take a look at the video specs for the iPhone here and the Apple TV here. Play with HandBrake's settings so you get close to those resolution and bit-rate limits.


You'll want to duck under these limits a bit because these are averages. If your video exceeds the limit, the iPhone or Apple TV won't play it.

[garyi]

I have been using ripit these last few days to simply put video folders on my drobo that XBMC via ATV then plays back flawlessy. I have to say its been 100% so far.

However I have ran into an issue it will not read any disk that I put in my intel mac mini, it asks if its dirty then says to feedback to them that the disk does not work. All disks work on my iMac and Macbook but not the mini.

Could it be related to the fact the mini runs headless, for sure the DVD player will not work as there is no monitor attached.

I did email the company but so far no response. I really want the mini to work as it will be very hand to stick the occasional dvd in it and have it automatically import.

[fmaxwell]

MacKayaker said:

Bottom line - I think most of my protest to this kind of article and discussion is a practical one.

I'll grant that there are legitimate reasons one may want to create a back-up of media they have legitimately purchased - for their own use. And I have no real issue with that. I tend to buy CDs, as it makes that, for myself, far easier - and I like the extra info that comes with a CD versus a digital version of the same album.

Thanks for the more measured response and the recognition that there are legitimate reasons to rip from media we own. My iPod is filled with music that I have ripped from CDs that I own. My reason for doing that rather than buying from iTunes is several-fold. First, I have a very high-end audio system at home (Rotel CD player, Hafler amp, VMPS speakers, etc.) and I want uncompressed music for that.

It's funny that you should mention "extra info", but that is one of my primary reasons for liking MP3s. In my car, I have an Alpine head unit that can play music from my iPod, displaying album cover, song title, artist name, etc. I can search by album, artist, or track name. That's all missing digitally on the original CD. Add to that the ability to control the encoding quality, selecting something which is sonically superior to online purchased tracks, and it's the best choice for me.

MacKayaker said:

As a practical matter, interacting with computer users day-in and day-out - I see this kind of info used for piracy. I see pirated software. I get queries on how to copy content borrowed, rented, etc. and what works for legitimate intentions - also works for illegitimate. I have users who have iTunes libraries that are messed up - and full of songs ripped from library CDs, etc. Since I observe far more illegitimate, I see it as not too wise to publically declare how to do this kind of thing.

This is where you and I may have to just agree to disagree. I do not want to see us reach a point where we self-censor, harming legitimate users in order to protect corporations.

It's one thing to choose not to publish information on how to produce (the deadly poison) Ricin, but quite another to withold information about extracting movies from DVDs and audio from CDs.
Sorry, but Disney's and Microsoft's interests are not more important to me than the interests of the users who purchase their products.

You say "as a practical matter" and I'll respond in that vein. Consumers have everything from iPods with video (I have an iPod classic 120GB) to laptops that can play multimedia files extracted from DVDs. The quickest way to run down your laptop's battery is to play optical discs -- and that's a big concern on long flights. It's also a good way to wear out your expensive laptop optical drive as you bounce across the country in a jet while the head assembly tries to follow a track that is about 1/50th the width of a human hair. As airlines impose ever greater fees and restrictions on checked bags, consumers are looking for ways to minimize what they carry. When a consumer can put his movie collection on his laptop drive or iPod, that's a tremendous boost to his quality of life while travelling. Maybe the fact that I've been on a launch campaign for a satellite since mid-November (three months now), spent four months on one last year, and six months the year before, makes me more sensitive to this than you may be.

[Chris Breen]

garyi said:

However I have ran into an issue it will not read any disk that I put in my intel mac mini

Sounds like the media drive in the mini is bad.

[garyi]

I should clarify the DVD mounts just fine on the desktop, it just seems the app does not want to read it.

However I will pull it out the cupboard and have a look. I did take it apart some months ago and put ram in, I wonder if damaged something, suffice to say I rarely put a disk in it.

[audpro1]

This article is a good starter point for most of you that are just starting out with digital media. However, as most have noted already there are other alternatives to the three mentioned. Everyone reading should explore them all, take a minute and search and read reviews and even explore their respective user forums to find out the limitations of each-and there are limitations with every program. Things to note:

1-MacTheRipper hasn't been updated in while and its future is uncertain. Most new rip-protection methods have worked in halting MTR on DVD's that have been released in the past year-The MTR forums are a good resource for listings that show which DVD's are problematic

2-Handbrake as an alternative is great for ATV, iPhone, and other compressed formats. If you are on an intel machine the file conversions are quicker than real-time (as noted by the frame rates during the conversion), but on a PPC mac it will take hours for the average movie.

3-RiPIt seems promising however where it succeeds in extracting a Video_TS folder (uncompressed, originally DVD info) it fails in offering a compression option after the fact. It may be a good solution if you want a portable version of the DVD on a laptop and have 7-10 GB to store it. However, the resultant output will not always work with Handbrake if you wanted to compress it (try "The Dark Knight")

4-If you are at liberty to use Windows on a Mac there may be a Windows solution where the above 3 fail. But investing in Parallels/Fusion and a copy of Windows just to rip a DVD doesn't seem logical, but for those of you that have such a set up might want to explore the Windows side (as some have mentioned).

The underlying theme to all of this should be if you want to back up/rip/encode etc. you need a program that will output a Video_TS folder or an .mp4/.m4v file. As new programs come out with claims to be able to do such a thing, remember Hollywood is spending a lot of money to stay 1 step ahead of these types of programs. What might work today could fail tomorrow-so you might not want to spend money buying such a program. If you are willing to spend some time you can most often use a combination of 3-4 said programs to get you what you want. Then ask yourself if the time spent is worth more than $14.99 it would cost to buy on iTunes?

[Rugby]

thank you Dan for a relevant article - we may not but have always made - backup, mixes etc. I applauded when DVD prices were lowered to a level where it actually makes it less likely to be attractive to copy and store on a harddrive before owning it, a good movie is always great to have as an original but of course the thing is - back up and watching elsewhere as mentioned and as Montgomery so well mentioned is to bypass the ridiculous intros and warnings and... welll in the VHS days we could fast forward past these pests but now - it´s locked. Ripit has been very promising, coping with DVD´s other can not

[applecrate]

From what I gather on the internets, it's a difficult and time consuming process to rip Blu-Ray on a Mac. Also you would have to spend hundreds on a Blu-Ray drive.

As someone who just invested in Blu-Ray, I am waiting patiently for an easy process. I am willing to buy the drive.