Like everybody I get stressed out because of my inability to play movies I purchased as a DVD on portable media players, computers without DVD drives, etc. Luckily I found out how to rip DVDs to iPod using my favorite media player, VLC, and I'm here to show you how.
Getting VLC
The first step is to get the software. If you already have VLC you can skip this step, but if you don't you can download it here. Find “Mac OS X” and click on.
Insert and Open the DVD with VLC
Most people know to open the program first. But if you don't open the program, unless you have some problem with your installation or your OS. Then insert the DVD you want to rip.
click the "File" drop-down menu and click Open disk. Select "DVD", make sure the "use DVD menus" box isn't checked. You might want to click ok and see if the main movie plays. If it doesn't, change the value for "Title" to 1, if that doesn't bring up the main movie, try 2, and so on.
Click the "Stream/Save" box then click the "Settings" button. (You can also go to “File” and down to “Streaming/Exporting Wizard”. Click on “Streaming/Exporting Wizard” to bring up the dialog box.)
Output setting
Check the "File" box under Outputs. Don't check the "Play locally" box unless you want to watch the movie as you are ripping it. Now select the encapsulation method. If you want to use the file with itunes/ipod you need to save it as an mp4 with .h264 video and mp4a audio.
Now, under the "File" box there is a button that says "Browse". Click that. Select the file you want to save to then under file name type any name followed by the file extension for the encapsulation method you selected (if you you selected MPEG TS, PS, or 1 type .mpg at the end of the file name, if you selected Ogg type .ogg, ASF type .asf, and so on but don't type any file extention if you selected RAW). Hit "Save" then "Ok".
Convert
Hit "Ok" and the transcoding will start. If everything is setup right it should look like this (it'll be playing the movie if you selected "Play locally"). The problem is that it only rips at x1 so if you have a 2 hour movie it will take 2 hours to rip.
This method is free. But it is not easy to use. The formats is headachy. If you want to rip dvd to many other formats such as 3GP, AVI, FLV, MOV on Mac. You can use this beeeeep It's a great one-click solution. Best resolution to rip a dvd to video or audio format. For whatever reason, the video and audio of the output files that are converted by some dvd rippers are not synchronous. But this beeeeep works really well, and the quality is excellent.
