How To Rip DVD’s for iTunes

How do I get DVD movies into iTunes and on my iPod? How do I rip movies for iTunes? Can I do it for free?

Well, this post is the solution to your problem. I will guide you step by step through a totally free tutorial that only uses free software to rip your DVD’s into iTunes and later enjoy them on your Apple TV or iPhone or iPod or whatever!

Is this easy? Hell yeah. Just some clicks and then you have it in iTunes.

Before we get started for this tutorial, I would just like to say that ripping the movies is illegal if you share or distribute them over the internet. This tutorial is intended to show you how you can get your self-bought DVD onto your own Mac and into your own iTunes. I think that for personal use you are free to rip them into your iTunes library – but don’t trust me here for 100%, I am not sure on that!

This is a long, long post, so I did split it into two parts. So, click the link below to read on.

In any case, let’s get started:

1. Get your DVD you want to rip and jam it into your DVD drive on your Mac. Close any Player that opens. Now check your time. Do you have time? Does your Mac have time to run the next hour or so? If yes, then continue!
   If you later want a good cover for your ripped movie, then take a look at this post of mine.
2. Now visit this site and download the latest version of HandBrake. I will be using HandBrake 0.9.1 for this tutorial. HandBrake is the whole heart of this article, and without HandBrake, ripping movies for iTunes would probably not be possible. This is just a absolutely fantastic application.
3. Now that you have downloaded and opened HandBrake, you will get a window looking like this:

   

   Navigate to the DVD via the sidebar and then hit “Choose.”

4. After HandBrake has read the DVD we can start setting up what get’s ripped and what not. We of course want the actual movie. So, in the main window, look for Source “Movie-Name” and then under “Title” select the option with the time that fit’s to the length of the movie. In my case, I want to rip Italian Job which is 106 minutes long. So, look at the options and choose the option that fits best for the time. The times might vary up to 10 minutes, depending on if they count the credits as part of the movie or not.
   If you have no clue of what I am talking about, then see this screenshot:

   

   You can also select to only rip certain parts from a certain chapter to another. If you want the whole movie then make sure you choose 1 to the max value (or max value -1 if you do not want the credits).

5. The “Destination” part should be quite self-explanatory – but the “Output Settings” can really make you crazy. So, let’s take a close look at them. For the “File Format” choose “MP4.” This is the only format that I am aware of that will work 100% with iTunes. To the right you have the option to choose “Codecs.” Take the “MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio” codec because this is the one that works with iPods. The H.264 plays with iTunes, but cannot be synced to the iPod’s.
6. Now we move on to the more technical stuff. HandBrake offers a great variety of options that allow you to style the movie in whatever way you wish. We will start off with the “Video” tab. I will first tell you what each part means and then I will go into telling you what I suggest you take.

   First, we have the framerates. Framerates are how many pictures (frames) pass in the movie in one second. The higher, the smoother, the less, the more the movie will be shaky (laggy). Anything between 20 and 30 is fine. The best and optimal is 29fps.

   For the quality, you can choose to make the movie a target size, target bitrate or a constant quality option. Constant quality will probably take up the most space on your drive. Setting it a target will limit the file size – but will limit quality in certain scenes.

   Grayscale encoding will make the whole movie Black and White. 2-pass encoding is for those who want real quality in their movie. It will do the process of ripping twice and then fuse those movies giving it exceptional quality. I always tick the 2-pass option because I want my movies in it’s full-blown quality! If you have chosen the quality to be 100%, then this is the same as having chosen 2-pass encoding.

   “Picture Setting” allows you to define how large you want the movie to end up. Normal iPod’s (iPod Video, Nano 3. Generation & iPod Classic) have a screen-size of 320 by 240, where you only want to define the x size and not y. If you modify y, you will shift screen proportions. The iPhone has a size of 480 by 320. Again, just set your x component to 480.
   For the rest of the iTunes things (AppleTV and other), make it as big as possible which most of the time is 720.

   Now, having said all of that. I am a fan of making the movies full quality and I do not care how much space they take up, so this is what I am configuring:
   

   

7. After this long step, we are going to make it a bit shorter. Let’s move on to the “Audio” tab. Go to Track 1 and select your preferred language. For the mix choose “Dolby Pro II” or any of the others if you know what they mean.
   You can have a second track if you wish, but that will make the movie about 50% bigger in size as it already was.
   Then for the last options, set the bitrate to 128 and the Sample rate to 48. Lowering any of these values will drastically reduce the movie size – yet will lower the quality as well!
   Lastly, I suggest you tick the button “Forced Subtitles Only” because in some movies, the characters speak Chinese or whatever and if you don’t have any subtitles it might not be that cool.
   For example, in Rush Hour 3, Jackie Chan speaks chinese to some ambassador. On the DVD you get the translation – but without the option ticked, you will not get that translation in iTunes!
8. The next two tabs are quite easy and therefore we will take them in one step. “Chapters” are quite useful, especially with AppleTV because you can hit the forward button and move through the chapters. I recommend adding this. You can change the names into the real chapter names.
   The tab “Advanced” can only be used with H.264. But even if you have that codec, it does not yet seem to work.
9. Ready? Hit the “Start” button at the top and then show the “Queue”. You can start ripping another Movie – but keep in mind, ripping movies will take it’s time and that doing other complicated and intensive stuff on your Mac can influence the movies quality.

   

   That’s all you have to do! Now just drag the movie into iTunes and sync it with whatever “i” object you wish.
   Now, If you need some cool album art (movie covers), then check out this post of mine.
   Please remind yourself that it is strictly illegal to rip movies and then share them. They are only for your personal use.

So; hope you liked it! No wait, don’t go. There are three more things. One, if your movie finishes after like 5 minutes or it only completes the first chapter, then it might be copy-protected DVD from Sony or Disney’s (They tend to do that). For more information, take a look at the HandBrake Forums.

Then, do you like the HandBrake icon? Nope? Here is a great replacement one!

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