![]() – HandBrake (free) This is an open source media encoder that is used to convert the MPEG-2 movies on the DVD into MPEG-4 movies that iTunes uses for it’s movie format. It is useful for playing back all kinds of movie formats that your Mac can’t normally play (.WMV Windows, DIVX, XVID, Real, etc.). You need to install VLC because it installs the playback library that allows the Mac to bypass CSS DVD Copy Protection used on Hollywood DVDs use to prevent copying. – VLC Media Player (free) This is an open source media player that allows media playback on all major platforms. In a future post I’ll talk about how you can move your movies from your Mac (or PC) to your Synology NAS which is better iTunes can stream MPEG 4 movies to a variety of Apple devices 9iTouch, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV). Just make sure that the hard drive specified has room for all your movies since it is about to grow much larger as you convert your collection. In Itunes/Preferences/Advanced if you have Keep iTunes Media folder organized checked and “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” checked it will help automate the adding of your DVD collection to iTunes. You should take some time to think about how you are going to organize your converted DVD movies. – iTunes (free) – This should already be installed. Apple never embraced Blu-Ray so users would need to buy a 3rd party Blu-Ray disc drive to rip their Blu-Ray discs. I have not included the steps for Blu-Ray, but they are similar. These tools are also available for windows users, but these steps are written from the Mac point of view. Here are the tools you’ll need:īe sure the following 3 applications are installed on your computer. In a future post I’ll cover how to setup your Synology NAS as an iTunes server capable of streaming these converted DVDs so that you don’t have to use your Mac or PC as an iTunes server. Movies that we “rip” have to be hosted on our computer or Synology NAS in order to be shared. ![]() One advantage of buying the movie in iTunes is that it is made available online for streaming to any Apple device using your same Apple ID. The bad news is that a few of your DVDs you will try to convert and you will need to find other tools or buy the movie digitally. The good news is that most of the tools are free and work well. In this post we’ll cover the steps needed to convert (aka ripping) your DVD library into MPEG-4 movies (.M4V) that are compatible with playback on PCs, Macs, iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) and even Apple TV. If your old enough to remember VHS and having to buy the same movie again when it came out on DVD then you’ll be happy to know that using a few tools on your Mac you can easily convert your DVDs to movies. While the movie industry isn’t excited about users being able to rip their DVD collection it is obvious that between NetFlix and iTunes that more and more movies are being streamed rather than played from DVD or Blu-Ray. That said we still have a large library of old DVDs. My kids prefer to stream movies to the iPads or Airplay them to the big screen. The concept of a disc as the vehicle for watching content is dead.
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