22 November 2010

Ripping DVDs for Apple TV

As mentioned previously, I use an Elgato Turbo.264 HD stick to quickly encode movies for use with my Apple TV.

I'm now in the process of looking into ripping all of my DVD content into H.264, so that I can also watch it on the Apple TV. My current DVD player is an Xbox 360 and the fan noise on that thing is incredibly loud. Besides, it's nice to have all of my content in the one place.

I tried simply adding the mounted DVD drive to the Elgato encoding software, and while it accepts the DVD files, for legal reasons Elgato have chosen to disable this feature for copy-protected DVDs.

I could use Handbrake, which works well, but is far too slow to rip & encode video for my liking. Besides, what's the point of having the Elgato stick if I can't make use of it?

The solution to this issue is quite simple:

1. Download and install VLC, if you haven't done so already. I had the 64-bit version, but the next step requires the 32-bit build, which I downloaded & simply renamed the 64-bit build to VCL-64.app in my Applications folder.

2. Next, download and install Fairmount. This is a free, open-source app which decrypts any copy-protected DVD and presents it as a mounted drive in the Finder. Run Fairmount and let it do it's thing.

3. In the Elgato menu, click File and then on Add Files… Locate the mounted drive that Fairmount has created and select it.

4. All of the video files (movie, deleted scenes, trailers, etc) will appear in the Elgato window. Delete whatever you don't need and hit the Start button.

[Update: if you're having trouble getting the Elgato software to pull in all the chapters using Fairmount, then try rip the entire DVD to your hard drive first. Sometimes Fairmount can't decrypt the DVD, but using an app like RipIt! should do the job (don't bother encoding with RipIt! though, just drag the folder that it creates into Elgato and it'll work as expected). Oh, and Daring Fireball currently has a 25% off coupon for it.]

That's it! Now, all I need to do is hire some cheap labour to import my collection for me - any takers? ;)