This post will show you how to rip DVDs so you can watch them on your iPod/iPhone. Michael wrote a similar post on How to use DVD Decrypter for Windows.

1) Download and install HandBrake. If you download version 0.9.2 you must be running Leopard. If you are using Tiger or older, you should download 0.9.1

2) Place the DVD you wish to rip into your DVD drive and open HandBrake. If your computer tries to play the DVD automatically, close the program so that only HandBrake is accessing the DVD.

3) Click the Source button in the top left corner. Then choose the your DVD drive and click Open. At this point HandBrake will begin to scan the DVD. This could take a couple minutes.

4) Click the drop down box next to Title and choose the longest title if you wish to copy the entire DVD (this does not apply to Episode based DVDs).

5) The default Destination is the Desktop. Change this to wherever you wish to save the DVD file.

6) If the presets are not already displayed on the right side of the window, click the Toggle Presets button in the upper right corner to display them.

7) For the iPhone and iPod Touch you should choose iPhone / iPod Touch.

If you have an iPod video or iPod classic and want high resolution (much larger file size, good for 160GB versions) choose iPod High-Rez.

Lastly, if you have an iPod Video or iPod classic and want smaller files (good for 80GB versions) choose iPod Low-Rez.

If these presets aren’t quite what you are looking for, check the troubleshooting at the bottom of the article.

TIP: For better quality, choose 2-pass encoding. This will take longer to encode but will look better.

8.) Click the Audio & Subtitles tab. Here you should choose the language you prefer under “Track 1:”. Also, be sure to set Subtitles to None. The Sample rate should be between 32 and 48 while the Bitrate should be set between 112 and 160.

9) At this point you should be ready to begin ripping your DVD. Click Start to begin.

10) Once your DVD is finished ripping all you need to do is add it to your iTunes library (or whatever iPod manager you use) and then transfer it to your iPod.

Troubleshooting
If you have trouble with the video and audio settings from the presets, you should try the following settings instead. These settings are more strict and should work on any iPod with video capabilities.

File format: MP4 file
Codecs: MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio
Average bitrate (kbps): 700 (again lower numbers mean less quality and smaller files)
Check 2-pass encoding
Picture settings -> set Width: 320 and the height will auto adjust to something close to 240 (will be lower for widescreen movies)

Once you find the settings that work the best for you, you can save them as a custom preset.

For more information on how to use HandBrake take a look at these websites:
How to Rip a Move for your iPod with HandBrake v0.9.0
How to Rip a TV show for your iPod with HandBrake
HandBrake Documentation

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Have you ever wanted to backup a DVD (without losing quality) onto your hard drive in Ubuntu? There are a few programs that will do it, but the simplest way is by using the terminal.

First, open the terminal. Then type:

sudo dd if=/dev/dvd of=Name_of_DVD.iso

Where I have ‘Name_of_DVD’ you should put the title of the movie you’re trying to rip.

The iso image will be automatically saved in your home folder. You will need around 5GB of space in your home folder as the iso file will be about 4-5GB. Once you have the file, just right click and open it with VLC.

DVD Decrypter is one of my favorite DVD ripping programs. This program is best used by people who have plenty of hard drive space to put these rips. Remember that a single layer DVD holds around 4.7 GB of data and this program essentially places the copy of this data onto your hard drive. Your collection of DVDs will fill up your hard drive quite quickly, so I’d recommend using a large external hard drive (you can find 500GB externals for around $100). The program was designed to rip backups of your **legal** DVDs. Why backup your purchased DVDs? I do it so that if I lose my bought DVD, or it gets scratched, I can always burn a copy of it if need be. It’s also nice if I want to watch a movie on my PC. That VLC player I talked about in the last post will play the .VOB file DVD Decrypter outputs. I hope you’re not buying iTunes copies of movies you already own on DVD because with the help of another program, you can reduce the size of that DVD file and play it on your nice new video playing iPod. So here’s how to use DVD Decrypter:

First download it from here.

Once installed and opened you should have a program that looks like this:

Put in the DVD and select in the source drop-down box your DVD drive. Next press mode(top) and select IFO mode.

In the right box you will want to make sure to select the one with the greatest time (this is your actual movie file). You can click on multiple files and DVD Decrypter (these are your extras) and these files will be saved as separate files.

Select your destination folder:

Finally click:

Once you’ve gotten a few DVDs ripped you can right click the file and choose open with VLC player.