Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

miltontong

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 29, 2004
10
0
toronto, canada
does anyone know of any free software that will shrink dvd files? i already have mactheripper to rip the dvds but i can't find any free software that will shrink it down to 4.7gb.
 
If you are going to make a backup on your computer and not copy the dvd onto another dvd (very illegal dont steal films!) then use Handbrake (look it up on versiontracker). Handbrake converts dvds to files, the size determined by your settings. Very easy to use. Check it out.
 
The cheapest one I know of is DVD2oneX. There was a freeware one on sourceforge.net, but it hasn't been updated for well over a year, if memory serves me. You can do what you want with ffmpegX, although it's not entirely straightforward, and I personally have not used it that way, so I can't tell you how well it works. I've only used ffmpegX for mpeg4 compression.
 
miltontong said:
does anyone know of any free software that will shrink dvd files? i already have mactheripper to rip the dvds but i can't find any free software that will shrink it down to 4.7gb.

Macthe ripper --> DVD2oneX --> Toast

That works well. DVD2oneX works very well...
 
DVD2onex isn't free... plus, it gives you only the movie content without any of the menus, etc.

Still, a good solution in a pinch. I also like using DVDBackup to rip the DVDs to disc.
 
legacyb4 said:
DVD2onex isn't free... plus, it gives you only the movie content without any of the menus, etc.

Still, a good solution in a pinch. I also like using DVDBackup to rip the DVDs to disc.
Not true. I have it, and it certainly can give you the entire contents of the DVD, including menus, multiple sound track and subtitles.
 
My bad, then, since the last time I tried it out, it was only giving compressed movie data with chapters, but nothing else.

Still, it isn't free...

Cheers.
 
FFmpegX...

by major.

You can use it to shrink VOB files into almost any format using lots of different encoders. It will not work with VIDEO_TS folders by itself, you have to combine all .VOB files into 1 and then encode.

Much faster than Handbrake. It's possible to encode a movie in less than an hour on my PB 1.33
 
Manzana said:
by major.

You can use it to shrink VOB files into almost any format using lots of different encoders. It will not work with VIDEO_TS folders by itself, you have to combine all .VOB files into 1 and then encode.

Much faster than Handbrake. It's possible to encode a movie in less than an hour on my PB 1.33
You can get a single VOB file if you rip with MacTheRipper and use "Title Set Extraction" mode (if memory serves me).

Handbrake is transcoding to mpeg4, which produces much smaller file sizes but requires a lot more cpu cycles. There's only a handful of standalone players that understand mpeg4, at this point. With ffmpegX, the way you're using it (I assume), you're transcoding from mpeg2 to mpeg2 using a lower bit rate so it fits on a DVD5.

Sorry if I'm saying stuff you already know.
 
daveL said:
You can get a single VOB file if you rip with MacTheRipper and use "Title Set Extraction" mode (if memory serves me).


That's good to know as I was using the cat command from terminal after extraction to combine all .VOB's into one.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.