This post is not about stealing copyrighted martial, but about backing up your personal DVDs (such as family events, etc) and converting them to a space saving file format.
There are many tools to accomplish the task of ripping and backing up your DVDs, I know, I have used most of them with different levels of success. Recently Handbrake, a multi-platform Open Source software project has been climbing to the top of the pile of different applications, through a series of constant releases and improvements, Handbrake has really set itself ahead of the pack.
If you have VLC on a Windows or Mac box, or libdvdcss on a Linux box Handbrake can copy directly from any protected DVD, however this is not needed since most home DVDs are not copy protected. Something that can be even more handy, especially when talking about legitimate uses of Handbrake, is the ability to use and folder or file as a source for encoding. There are lots of reasons why this is handy, transcoding to a more universal format, reducing the file size of an existing video and so on.
Handbrake supports a lot of great formats and containers, such as:
File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)
It’s also multi-threaded and takes advantage of dual and quad core systems, which can really speed up the process of encoding your DVD to your favorite format. It also means other important tasks, like de-interlacing which gives you a much better picture do not take as long.
Check out my video for a full review:
You can catch new videos as we release them over on our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/jupiterbroadcasting
You can find Handbrake over at their page
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