[Yetti12]

So i wanna back up my personal DVD's and was wondering what's the best program out there for Mac.. I know most of you will say Handbrake and i've tried that before, not a big fan. I also have MacTheRipper 3.0... haven't tested that one yet just got it...

Another question is, What format do most DVD player play? avi? MP4?... I have a bunch of movie on my macbook and wanted to convert them. I've recently been using VisualHub to convert them to Mp4 so that i could sync them to my iphone and Blackberry bold but realized that after converting from avi to mp4 the size of the avi which was originally 6-700mb turned into 1GB+... Though i have noticed on some sites that ppl have MP4 movies with the file size of an avi.. how is that possible?

So basically my question is

A) what should i use to back up my dvd's
B) What do most DVD/Ps3 players use as format?
C) best converter with the least increase in file size but without loss of quality.

What's on my mac now:

Toast 9
MacTheRipper 3.0
VisualHub
PopCorn 3.0

[bhz1]

Having just gone through the process of converting some PAL format divx to NTSC format DVD's I can answer some of your questions.

If you are looking to play the DVD on a "set-top" player - you will convert to DVD format. I used Toast 9. In the video setting I highlighted DVD -videoIf any of your files on your Mac are form a different region format (PAL vs NTSC) you will have to set the Preferences in Toast to encode the correct setting. (NTSC= USA/ Japan, PAL = most of rest of world) Your Mac will play both formats so dont make the mistake I did and go through burning 3 dvds before realizing they wouldnt play because I needed NTSC. This being irrelevant if you plan on watching the dvd's on your computer.

[mikerlx]

Which program is faster?? Handbrake takes several hours to convert a dmg to MP4 and it may still be converting by the time one of you guys replies to this thread LOL