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macrumors 603
Original poster
Jan 8, 2009
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Ok my head hurts (anyone have a Vicoden? lol)

Currently I'm using Fairmount from the recommendations here for full DVD rips. I got a 6-Core Mac Pro with a LG Blu-Ray and LG Superdrive SATA as well as a USB superdrive. So far I had no issues until I installed the second optical that came with my Pro (took it out for a SSD and put it back in for 3 DVD drives). I want to make full backups, then use Handbrake to convert the backups or use the "batch encode.workflow" (keeping full audio, my Pioneer Elite VSX-33 supports full MCACC (ACC) and of course AC3.

Fairmount detects the DVD's, the batch dispatched works, but Fairmount is now slow as **** if it even works at all. I've read other paid apps are better and since I'm ripping 300+ DVD's I'd rather pay for the best than settle for average.

1. Mac DVDRipper Pro
2. RipIt!
3. Wondershare DVD Ripper for Mac
4. MacTheRipper 2.6.6 (site shut down but it's still available, mixed reviews on current media)
5. DVDRemaster (heard it's better than Fairmount)
6. Xilisoft DVD Ripper Mac

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Also, if three optical drive rips (2xSATA, 1xUSB) on my Mac Pro are the issue let me know. I've read you can use as many as your system can use.

Thanks! Hope y'all are having a great weekend and hope it's sunny and warm where you are.:)
 
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Yes full backup of the DVD, you can also try MTR (Mac the Ripper). If you have acess to a PC you can try DVDFab.

Thanks man. Gonna give RipIt a try as well as "Mac DVDRipper Pro" and "Mac the Ripper" (although I've read you need to donate a "gift" to "Mac the Ripper" 4.0 in order to get the necessary items to rip certain DVD's ;) ). I like that RipIt allows a full copy of the BD/DVD (extra's, menus, subtitles, etc. just as Fairmount but also allows saving it in a compressed format.

Thanks so much!

UPDATE: Trying RipIt and "Mac The Ripper 4" over Fairmount.
 
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I'm on disc 875 of making full-disc images of the 950 DVDs in my anime collection (3x2TB drives--yikes!). I tried RipIt and Mac DVD Ripper Pro (aka MDRP), as well as some other apps, and ended up settling on MDRP.

MDRP is quite fast when doing full-disc rips (generally limited by the speed of the DVD drive, but then so is RipIt), and in my testing did better at reading through minor errors on discs than RipIt--RipIt stopped on errors on discs that MDRP had no trouble at all with, and on the three badly damaged DVDs MDRP couldn't read without significant errors (each about 20% sector error rate), it still produced a usable rip, it's just a rip with bad sectors (DVD player will glitch on them, but it's no different than with the physical disc). RipIt will only, I think, make .dvdmedia folders, while MDRP can also make .iso disc images. MDRP will warn you if you're about to re-rip a disc it already ripped, but RipIt may have that feature as well. Oh, and MDRP is cheaper ($10 list, which I paid, though it's often on sale at MacUpdate for closer to $6), although they're both pretty cheap.

RipIt may do better with copy protection; I haven't yet found a disc that MDRP wouldn't rip, including some brand new Disney titles, but I've heard that RipIt is more frequently updated to get around new copy protection schemes.

MDRP also has a 5-disc free trial, so it's easy to experiment with and compare both, but I'd recommend MDRP personally.

Tip, if you hadn't noticed the options in the prefs: You can set either program to start a rip as soon as it sees a DVD, and to eject the DVD when it's done. This will let you just put a stack of DVDs near your computer and swap one in every time one pops out. You don't even need to look at the screen, and it's about as efficient as you can get.
 
Doesn't MakeMKV just output an .mkv file? I need a full backup, one that I can re-burn or encode into multiple formats.

Thanks! :)

It creates a folder with the entire contents of the DVD, listed by titles. It is a full "backup" of the disc.

I then use Handbrake to encode it to a variety of formats, from iPod to iPhone to Apple TV 2.

As for burning the mkv to a blank disc, you could use this product...I've never used it, but it sounds straight forward.
 
I use RipIt: to be honest I wouldn't bother with Mac The Ripper, especially as it requires Rosetta.

Bedifferent: it might be worth nothing that if you are still getting slow speeds with RipIt, and the SuperDrive you are using is provided by Apple, it could have RipLock technology, which is a nasty little bugger and slows your ripping speed to a crawl.

Use one of your USB optical drives, and you should see a marked increase in speed.
 
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+1 for RipIt. Out of 100 discs I had 1 that I needed to use Mac the Ripper to take off the Region Code.
 
It creates a folder with the entire contents of the DVD, listed by titles. It is a full "backup" of the disc….

Huh. So technically I could use MakeMKV for everything, interesting.
I'm using MakeMKV for Blu-Ray ripping (and Handbrake for all encoding). Interestingly, I was able to use Fairmount to rip a Blu-Ray.

I use RipIt: to be honest I wouldn't bother with Mac The Ripper, especially as it requires Rosetta.

Thanks mate! I have tried all of them, and they all work well aside from Fairmount (I was able to throw in two DVDs and walk away letting Fairmount run, then it started to crash). I got a copy of "Mac the Ripper 4" and "RipIt" (both great). I would like to alter the workflows to point to a preferred ripper app. I posted the question on the sticky:

I backed up:
Users/Library/Services:

Batch Rip and Batch Rip Finder

/Users/Library/Application Support/Batch Rip:
Entire folder

I modified the scripts to point to RipIt using PlistEdit Pro and text editor. Yet when terminal launches when ripping a full DVD I get this message:

/Users/CJ/Library/Application\ Support/Batch\ Rip/batchRipTmp.sh ; exit;
Cory-Dorschels-Mac-Pro:~ CJ$ /Users/CJ/Library/Application\ Support/Batch\ Rip/batchRipTmp.sh ; exit;

ERROR: RipIt.app; was expecting Fairmount.app command tool
ERROR: attempting to use tool at /Applications/Fairmount.app

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Bedifferent: it might be worth nothing that if you are still getting slow speeds with RipIt, and the SuperDrive you are using is provided by Apple, it could have RipLock technology, which is a nasty little bugger and slows your ripping speed to a crawl.

Use one of your USB optical drives, and you should see a marked increase in speed.

Good point. It seems to be the second SATA Superdrive. I used the one that came with my 2010 Pro (2010 Hitachi) and a 2009 LG. Any time I try to rip from those drives I get bad sectors, so you have to be right. I'm ripping with my LG BD-RE SATA with no issues. I'll go back to using the USB superdrive and LG combo.

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+1 for RipIt. Out of 100 discs I had 1 that I needed to use Mac the Ripper to take off the Region Code.

Yup, seems a lot more people prefer RipIt, it's a shame the workflows use Fairmount. Any idea why, perhaps because it's free?
 
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Any idea why, perhaps because it's free?
There are other reasons, but that's pretty much it--people are cheapskates when it comes to software. Although it does also allow you to use Handbrake, a very good re-encoder, without having to rip to the hard drive first, if you're short on space. Of course, the end result workflow will probably be much faster if you batch process a bunch of disc images rather than direct rip, though.

I'm honestly curious here, due to the preference of RipIt over MDRP: Has nobody else had trouble with RipIt failing to rip due to bad sectors? I came up with two discs that failed on that error but worked in MDRP just in my initial testing, and I ended up paying for a MDRP license even though I already had a copy of RipIt through one of the bundle promos from a little while ago.

That's also interesting about the RipLock thing, which I haven't yet run into. I've done the vast majority of my rips on a cheap Sony desktop drive in a USB case (I assumed a thousand discs would kill the drive so didn't want to mess up my iMac's internal, though it's so far fine), but I've also done a few rips each on my previous-gen iMac's internal drive, my two-generations-back Mini's internal drive (which I've designated my region 2 ripper), and my brand new Sandy Bridge MBP's internal drive, none of which have had speed problems. They're all a little slower than the external, but that's just because they're slot-loaders with lower max spin speed.
 
There are other reasons, but that's pretty much it--people are cheapskates when it comes to software. Although it does also allow you to use Handbrake, a very good re-encoder, without having to rip to the hard drive first, if you're short on space. Of course, the end result workflow will probably be much faster if you batch process a bunch of disc images rather than direct rip, though.

The guide and workflows are great, it's a shame there isn't an easy way to modify the called ripper application. That's exactly what I am doing. I'm ripping full backups of all my DVD's on a 2TB SATA, then using the "Batch Encode.workflow" to tag them for my library. I'll most likely delete the Blu-Ray backups as well as any SD DVD's I'm not too concerned about losing. With "Time Machine" backing up my media, aside from a fire *knock on wood* I should have good coverage. It'll be nice to rid myself of all the DVD's as I did with all my CD's over a decade ago (wow time flies and things change so quickly).

Remember those big CD/DVD carousels that could hold ~100 at a time years ago? Shame, such a device would be perfect for ripping media. Throw in all your DVDs/CDs, set up the workflow, let it spin through your media and rip them and not have to change discs.
 
It'll be nice to rid myself of all the DVD's as I did with all my CD's over a decade ago (wow time flies and things change so quickly).
It's funny, I actually like my shelves full of DVDs; I consider them a collection, and in some cases have gone out of my way to hold on to (or buy) classic DVDs that I've replaced with a newer remastered/hi-def edition (for example, the original Ghost in the Shell DVD, even though I have it on Blu-ray now). It's obviously more convenient to have everything on a central server, but there's something nice about having a physical representation of a movie/series you like.

It's the same with my CDs; the only time I'll ever touch the physical disc is to rip it into iTunes, but I like having the shelf of physical media and booklets.
 
Fairmount is being used in his workflows because it can be used via command line. he just issues the command via his scripts and fairmount does the rest.

I just finished processing 1000+ usign the workflows. perfect, nope but here is what I had going.

3 External drives via USB(1)/Firewire(2) plus internal superdrive(mac mini)

I will tell you there were times where Fairmount didn't rip correctly, here is what I found out. Disney movies, never used the internal super drive, almost never worked to get past protection and not have 1000's of errors.

Sometimes, changes DVD drives for a certain movie mad a differance. some movies seem to be able to be ripped off diff DVD-Drives

And for me the ones that refused to Rip via fairmount, I used DvdFab on my PC and it works, just copied over the ripped folder back to mac for the encoding process.

Fairmount does work for 80% movies right off the bat, but sometimes changing drives works as well.
 
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