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  1. Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
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    Ok so i'm new to mac. i just bought a mac mini the other day and i've been a pc guy for several years. i'd like to say that i was pretty good at ripping and encoding. i used either dvddecrypter to rip a dvd or dvdshrink, or dvd hdfab7. i had all those because sometimes one program wouldnt rip the dvd, so i would use another program. next for vob to avi conversion i used auto gordion (autoGK). which worked great. than if i wanted to convert any avi or wmv or mov file i would use my tmpgenc 3.0 xpress that i bought a while ago to convert said files to mpeg 2 compliant files, which than i would use tmpgenc dvd author 3 with divx to make my menu's and create dvd-r's..
    now i've been looking around for mac equivalents. i'm so used to the process i mentioned above to do what i need, that ideally i'd like the same thing, or a program or three that would do it. are there mac equivalents of dvdshrink? autogk? tmpg xpress? tmpg dvd author?
    i see dvd backup than needing to use another program, than finally toast. would these do what i said above?
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  2. Member
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    Search Comp PM
    and yes i've checked the stickies above, a lot of those links will not work oddly.
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  3. Member
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    Nov 2006
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    My favorites:

    - watching - VLC, Perian for Quicktime
    - ripping: latest version of Mac the Ripper. Ripit is ok, too.
    - transcoding to mp4/ avi/ mkv - Handbrake. 2nd place is ffmpegx, which also has a good tool for imaging an ISO and calculating a good bitrate.
    - very basic editing and changing containers - MPEG Streamclip, Quicktime Pro, AVI Demux, TSMuxer, MKVToolnix
    - authoring very basic DVD - Burn OSX
    - Authoring DVD with menus - I don't do it. Tried once with iDVD and failed miserably. Maybe Toast or Final Cut Pro, both paid apps.

    Good luck and let us know what you like!
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  4. Member
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    for handbrake you listed i can encode to mp4/avi/mkv. but i dont see an avi option, just mp4 and mkv.
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  5. Member
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    Oh, who needs avi anyways? Just kidding. Ffmpegx does a good job on divx and xvid avi files. In fact, I believe it defaults to divx avi. Just up the bit rate a bit to make it look decent. I don't know if it will put h.264 into an avi. Mpeg Streamclip may be able to. If you were to use Handbrake, though, you may be able to use avidemux or qt pro to change the container format of your resulting mp4 or mkv file to avi. If not, mkvtoolnix can demux the mkv and then avidemux may be able to mux the audio and video streams into an avi.

    Aah, the things we do for freeness. I am right there with you.

    Good luck and let us know!
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  6. Member terryj's Avatar
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    @ Biff:

    Ripping DVDs: MTR v. 4.02 is the best.
    Shrinking DVDs: DVD2OneX is tops.

    As for making .avi files from DVD folders, the top three are :VisualHub ( if you can google it), MpegStreamclip ( free) or ffmpegx ($15).
    Something that can do all three: not close. VisualHub can make .avi files from DVD Video_TS folders, and can make (author) DVDs from .avis.
    So can ffmpegx. But the authored DVDs are just Insert and Play only Video_TS folders, there is not ability to create fancy menus.

    Authoring DVDs with fancy Menus: Toast ( $80) followed by DVDStudio Pro ( part of Final Cut Studio, $1000) or Adobe Premiere ( $700) are the best for these tasks.

    Glad you got the Mac Mini, welcome to our corner of the universe!
    "Everyone has to learn, so that they can one day teach."
    ------------------------------------------------------
    When I'm not here, Where can I be found?
    Urban Mac User
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