VIDEO SOFTWARE (/CATEGORY/SOFTWARE-VIDEO/)utility software (/category/software-utilities/), video apps (/tag/videoapps/), dvd (/tag/dvd/)

How to rip a DVD withHandBrake

[Editor’s note: The MPAA and most media companies argue that you can’t legallycopy or convert commercial DVDs for any reason. We (and others) think that, ifyou own a DVD, you should be able to override its copy protection to make abackup copy or to convert its content for viewing on other devices(http://www.macworld.com/article/150731/2010/04/dvdripping_faqs.html).Currently, the law isn’t entirely clear one way or the other. So our advice is: If youdon’t own it, don’t do it. If you do own it, think before you rip.]

Jonathan Seff@jonseff Jul 3, 2013 3:15 AM

Looking to liberate the movies in your DVD collection fromthe confines of their plastic-and-metal prison so you canenjoy them on your iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple TV? Welllook no further—all you need to do is get some freesoftware and follow a few steps.

(Note that this guide pertains only to DVDs. To learn more about dealing with HDdiscs, read our story about watching and ripping Blu-ray discs on your Mac(http://www.macworld.com/article/2042431/watch-and-rip-blu-ray-movies-on-your-mac.html).)

Step one: Install the softwareTo rip a DVD with HandBrake, you need to download the free software(http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php). The latest version works on 64-bit Macsrunning OS X 10.6 or later. But HandBrake doesn’t include the software neededto decrypt commercial DVDs, so you also need to install libdvdcss(http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html), an open-source library thatcan circumvent the Content Scramble System (CSS) used on DVDs. (You should,of course, only rip DVDs that you’ve purchased.)

The first time you launch HandBrake and attempt to scan a DVD, the softwarewill inform you that you need additional decrypting software and will offer to sendyou to a page where you can download the libdvdcss installer (currently version1.2.12 (http://download.videolan.org/libdvdcss/1.2.12/macosx/), although youcan always find the latest version here (http://download.videolan.org/libdvdcss/)).Run that installer, and it will put libdvdcss where it belongs on your drive. Nowyou’re ready to rip.

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-css-100044223-orig.png)

One more thing...

Alternatively—and especially if you encounter problems getting HandBrake towork with your DVDs—you can use a separate app to decrypt your DVDs,leaving you with a Video_TS folder containing unencrypted files that HandBrakecan then deal with easily. Some good choices are The Little App Factory’s $25RipIt (http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/) and DVDSuki Software’s $25 MacDVDRipper Pro(http://www.macworld.com/article/1150806/macdvdripperpro.html). (Both canalso do some video conversion.)

Step two: Insert a DVD and pick what to ripNow insert your DVD into your Mac’s DVD drive and launch HandBrake. Bydefault, the app opens a dialog box and ask you to select the DVD mounted onyour Mac (you can turn off auto-prompting in the General pane of HandBrake’spreferences if you prefer). Choose your DVD and click Open, and HandBrakethen scans the DVD for the titles it contains. Once the scan is complete,HandBrake chooses what it thinks is the main title, but you can click the pop-upmenu next to Title and choose the item you want to encode. Generally speaking,the title with the longest duration is the DVD’s main feature.

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-choose-title-100044221-orig.png)

HandBrake’s main interface.

Want to make sure you’ve chosen the right title before you start encoding? Pickthe one you think you want, then click the Preview Window button and a newwindow opens up. From there you can scroll through ten still images from thetitle or, if that’s not good enough, choose to encode and watch 15 to 240seconds of the title (in 15-second increments).

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-preview-window-100044218-orig.png)

Bender’s the king, baby! Yep, that’s the episode I wanted.

If you encounter problems such as HandBrake quitting or crashing when it scansyour DVD (http://www.macworld.com/article/2029204/when-handbrake-wont-rip-your-dvds.html), or a DVD with 99 titles of almost the same length(http://www.macworld.com/article/154702/2010/10/99_title_dvd.html), you’verun into copy-protection scheme meant to thwart ripping. In that case, launchApple’s DVD Player application, and navigate through the warnings, ads, andpreviews until you’re playing the main feature. Then choose Go > Title from themenu bar, and find the title with a chek mark next to it. In HandBrake choose File> Open Source (Title Specific), select your DVD, and enter that title number in thebox and click Open Title.

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-queue-100044217-orig.png)

Want to rip everything on a particular disc? There’s a button for that.

If you want to convert several items—all the episodes on a TV show DVD, forexample—you can select one item, click the Add To Queue button, and thenrepeat the process for each item until you’ve added them all to the encodingqueue (you’ll want to adjust your encoding settings prior to adding the items tothe queue, however, which I’ll discuss in the next step). Rather than worryingabout overwriting items in the queue if you forget to rename each before addingthem, you can go to the General tab of HandBrake’s preferences and chooseUse Auto Naming (uses DVD name and title number), which makes sure each titlehas a unique filename. You might even find it easier to choose File > Add AllTitles To Queue, which as you might expect adds everything to the queue. Fromthere you can delete any title that you don’t want to rip by clicking the X to theright of each title’s name.

Step three: Choose a presetNow that you’ve decided whichtitle(s) to rip, you need to choose yourencoding settings based on the

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-presets-default-100044233-orig.png)

You can pick a preset and make it your default, oryou can create your own.

device(s) on which you plan to viewthe content. Although you can tweakevery aspect of encoding, HandBrakeincludes handy presets that make itmuch easier. Generally speaking, Iadvise using them.

If the Presets Drawer isn’t alreadyopen, click the Toggle Presets buttonat the top of the HandBrake window(or press Command-T). In the drawer,you’ll see two types of presets:Devices and Regular. In most cases,you can just focus on the Devicessection. There you’ll find options forUniversal, iPod, iPhone & iPod touch,iPad, AppleTV, AppleTV 2, AppleTV 3,Android, and Android Tablet.

If you want to watch your movie onan iPhone, for example, chooseiPhone & iPod touch for the best-quality settings that will work on thatdevice. The same goes for otherdevices, based on their playbackrestrictions. The Universal preset ishelpful if you want a file that will workon all current Apple devices. If youfind a preset that you plan to useoften, you can set it as your default(otherwise, HandBrake defaults toNormal as its preset). Highlight the preset you want, then at the bottom of thePreset Drawer click the gear icon and choose Make Default from the drop-downmenu. You’ll know it worked if your chosen preset now appears in bold. Alsonote that you can create custom presets

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-picture-settings-100044215-orig.png)

The Picture Settings display lets you turn ondecombing or deinterlacing, among other things.

(http://www.macworld.com/article/1166383/create_custom_presets_in_handbrake.html)for specific needs, such as after makingany of the tweaks discussed next thatyou want to use again.

Step four: Tweak your settingsOnce you pick your preset, there are a few settings you might want to tweak,depending on your specific needs.

Decombing/deinterlacing: Many TV shows you’ll find on DVD are interlaced(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video)—that is, each frame displaying onscreen as even lines and then odd lines (as opposed to progressive video, whichrefreshes all lines in order per frame) that can lead to jagged video when viewedon your computer or portable device. To overcome this, HandBrake candeinterlace while it rips so that the video will be smoother when you view it. Thedownside to deinterlacing, however, is that you sacrifice some picture quality.

So instead of using the Deinterlacesetting in HandBrake, try the Decomboption instead. The Decomb filterlooks at each pixel of each frame ofvideo and deinterlaces only framesthat show visible signs of interlacing.That process can slow down theripping process, but you should endup with smooth video that suffersminimal quality degradation. Only theAppleTV 3 preset uses the Decombfilter, so if you want to use it withanother preset, click the PictureSettings button and then the Filterstab in the window that appears. Clickthe Decomb pop-up menu and choose Fast (the same setting used in the presetabove). To see if that does the trick, try encoding a short bit in the PreviewWindow before and after changing that setting. If the jaggedness disappears

with Fast turned on, use that setting. If not, you can play around with the otherchoices. (Want to really get into the weeds with decombing and deinterlacing?Check out the HandBrake Wiki page (https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Decomb) onthe topic.)

Audio Altering or removing audio tracks is a great way to reduce the size of yourfinished file. Click the Audio tab, and look at the audio tracks your preset hasselected to include. There may be language tracks you don’t need, or if yourApple TV isn’t connected to a surround-sound audio system, you may want toremove a 5.1-channel audio track or down-mix it to stereo, for example.

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-audio-100044216-orig.png)

Don’t need a particular audio track? Get rid of it.

Subtitles If your movie is in a foreign language, or you have a hearingimpairment and need to read the closed captions when you watch, HandBrake’sSubtitles tab is the place to look. There you can find whatever subtitle orcaptioning data comes on your DVD and decide which to include in your rippedfile. Typically, subtitles must be burned into your file, meaning you can’t turn

them on or off, whereas closed captioning data is added as a separate text trackthat you can choose while watching in QuickTime, for example. You can also addan external .srt text file for the movie if you have it (one you downloaded, say).

For the most part, you shouldn’t have to worry about much of the HandBrake’sother minutia (and there is a lot of it). But if you’re curious about other settings,check out Christopher “Breen’s “Beyond HandBrake’s defaults(http://www.macworld.com/article/1142301/beyond_HandBrake_defaults.html).”

When you’re all set, click the Start button and go take a nice walk; depending onthe length of the files and the speed of your computer, it can take a while totranscode the video.

Step five: Tag your movie with metadataWhile this last step is very much optional, adding cover art, cast names,summaries, and the like will make your movies or TV shows look and act a lotmore like those purchased from the iTunes Store, sorted and grouped correctly iniTunes and on your devices.

(http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/handbrake-iflcks-100044229-orig.png)

A tagging utility like iFlicks can fill your rips with useful metadata.

Several applications can look up metadata online and add it to your files. RodneyKerstetter’s free MetaX(http://www.kerstetter.net/index.php/projects/software/metax) is designed forthat purpose (and HandBrake even has an option to send completed rips toMetaX directly). But Chris Marrin’s free Video Monkey(http://www.macworld.com/article/1160675/videomonkey.html) and (my personalfavorite) Jendrik Bertram’s $20 iFlicks(http://preview.www.macworld.com/article/2042832/mac-gems-iflicks-tags-and-converts-video-files-for-itunes-with-finesse.html) are video-encodingapplications that you can use just to add metadata. Whichever software use,once you’re done, just add the movie to your iTunes library and it will then readyfor you to transfer (or stream) to your devices.

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