Guide for creating Divx/Xvid DVD Rips Easily on a Mac?

[ehmjay]

Okay, I know there is a tutorial posted in the conversion section however its for an older version of Handbrake and perhaps someone knows the best settins for the newest Handbrake (and perhaps they could even provide a preset?)

I'm on a mac and I wanted to start ripping my DVDs to Divx files to hold them on external drives.

Normally I'd just do iPod rips in Handbrake (the quality's great, plays on my iPod and i'd also get Chapter markers) but DivX/XviD is much smaller and much friendlier on multiple platforms.

So is there an easy way to do it on the mac, or is it one of those "rip the whole dvd to vob, convert the vobs using carefully selected settings" etc.?

thanks guys!!

[tomlee59]

I'm a big fan of D-Vision3 to convert from DVD into Divx/xvid. It's as close to a single-click tool as exists. Give it a try and see if it does what you want. It's free, so the only cost is time.

--Cheers!

[terryj]

Not so one step, but Rip with Mac The Ripper,
and then process to xvid from VOB with Visual Hub
works for me.

Also, I believe that if Divx components (6.5 or higher) are installed on your mac,
you could also rip in MTR, & process out with MpegStreamclip
v. 1.9.2, but haven't tried it yet. Just now reading up on it....

[ehmjay]

I like this D-Vision app -- do you have any suggestions for ideal settings? How do i get the quality that I see on videos I download from bittor... revision3...

[tomlee59]

"Ideal" is very subjective...there's a tradeoff among conversion speed, quality and file size. We all want highest quality, small files, and rapid conversions, but we can't get all three. In fact, you only get one.

If you prefer higher quality, choose a relatively high bitrate (2Mb/s will be close to lossless; I use 1.5Mb/s routinely for general-purpose work), two-pass conversion, and the "high quality" setting.

The user interface for D-Vision allows you to optimize for a variety of other objectives. For example, if you want to squeeze a movie onto a single CD, just select that as the goal, and D-Vision will choose the bitrate and resolution for you. If you don't like its choices, you can override them. That's what I like about D-Vision; it will do things automatically for you (for simplicity) if you so desire, but you can also override its decisions if your tastes are a bit different.

Since tastes vary quite a bit from person to person, I recommend experimenting with the settings until you find a combination that you like. You can start the conversion with some settings, then stop the conversion and view the partially completed result. you could start with D-Vision's choices, and iterate from there.