[sdilley14]

Hey. So I have The Simpsons, Family Guy, That 70s Show, and a few other shows on DVD. I was wondering if there was a way to rip them to my HD, seperate them out into individual episodes, then put them onto my video iPod.

I've had the iPod for about a week. So far I've managed to put about 70 .mpeg music videos on it without a problem. I have iSquint, Mac The Ripper, and Popcorn for my ripping/burning needs on my PowerBook.

[icruise]

Just use handbrake. It's by far the easiest way to do what you want. The only problem is that you have to resize the video to the iPod's dimensions (320 x 240) for each episode you want to rip.

[angelmb]

Cinematize !

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/12587

[sdilley14]

Cinematize looks PERFECT! Any cheaper/free alternatives? hehe I've been looking for a long time for a program that will extract sound/video clips from DVDs.

[icruise]

I've never used or heard of Cinematize, but a casual glance at the feature list shows that it doesn't even decode encrypted DVDs, which means that you would have to rip your DVDs with a separate application like MacTheRipper before you could even use it with a commercial DVD. This can take quite a while. When you add the fact that it costs a very hefty $59.95, I'm a little confused as to why this is better than handbrake, which converts directly from the DVD, iis free and will do exactly what the original poster wanted. To date, I've converted 2,382 TV shows, mostly using handbrake, so I do know what I'm talking about.

Cinametize may well have its uses (it looks like a pretty full featured program) but it doesn't make sense to me to buy it just to convert DVDs for the iPod.

[sdilley14]

So could you help me figure out how I seperate a DVD that has like 4-6 episodes of a TV show into 4-6 sseperate MP4 files using HandBrake, rather than converting the whole disc...that make sense?

[icruise]

Most TV DVDs are divided up so that the different episodes are in different "titles" on the DVD. So all you have to do is set up handbrake with the proper settings (more on that later if you need it), select a title, and the set the iPod's resolution (320 x 240) in the "Picture Settings" window. Then you can click "add to queue" and you can move on to the next episode (to use the queue you have to have enabled it by clicking "enable queue"). That's basically it, but you do need to watch out for DVDs that have a "play all" option. In that case, one of the titles will actually contain all of the episodes, and you'll want to skip that one.

[sdilley14]

Also, I use Mac The Ripper to decrypt and compress DVDs, then of course HandBrake to convert them to mp4. Is there a way to compress the file size even more without sacrificing toooooo much quality? I'm not a real stickler on quality...with such a small screen it's hard to notice a slight decrease in quality IMO. I only have a 30gig HD with about 13gig available after all of my music and music videos. Now I'm trying to load it up with DVDs and T.V. shows.

[icruise]

You don't need to use Mac The Ripper with handbrake. I would use h.264 if you're concerned about quality vs. size. It gives a better picture than MPEG4 at a lower size.

You can also use Instant Handbrake if you don't need full control over the settings, BTW. It's easier than the full handbrake.

[sdilley14]

I think I can figure that out. Thanks for the tip! I'm currently ripping Anchorman DVD with HandBrake right now. I ripped it once but it only ripped the deleted scenes and not the actual movie! I changed the "Title" that it ripped to the 1hr 37min. title (only one close to being long enough to be a movie), so hopefully it works this time!

Do you have MSN by chance? I could always use a good Mac expert on tap in case I need some help!

[sdilley14]

I'll try h.264. Is there any reason why that isn't the iPod standard? Seems like mp4 is more so the standard. Smaller file size and better quality should be the standard to me.

[icruise]

It is the standard in the sense that all of the iTunes Music Store videos use h.264. h.264 is a variant of MPEG4, though, so if you were to look at the videos in iTunes, they would say MPEG4 video. But if you open then in Quicktime, you can see that they are actually h.264 encoded.

[sdilley14]

Ahhh, makes sense. Well thanks for all of the good information man, I really appreciate it!

[anthology123]

I had the same issue with the Pink Panther Cartoons. Handbrake took care of it all. It does batch conversions, so I can see each episode based on the time chapters (about 6 mins each). Then selected one, to set up, then added it to batch, then setup the next one, etc. In the end, I got 27 separate MP4s ready for my iPod. The slow part is configuring each batch job, but that's a small price to pay for the free Handbrake. BTW, I own Cinematize, which I bought at MacWorld for $49. A good program, but not meant to do what you want. It's for extracting non-chaptered sections of a DVD for use in DVD authoring. It does not rip DVDs that are encrypted, you do need to use Mac the Ripper if you use Cinematize.

[sdilley14]

I got it all figured out using HandBrake finally. Works great!