help me save some $$

[itsratso]

being a complete noob (and not exactly an IT expert either) i hope you guys/gals don't mind some questions. this seems to be the forum in the know about such things. i have a older mac mini (single core intel 1.5, 1 GB memory, with the built in GMA 950 graphics). not exactly state of the art, but not a tandy either. i recently decided to try ripping blurays. i have tried both makemkv and pav-tube blu ray ripper. i am having the same experience with both. as an example, i started ripping a bluray last nite (house of flying daggers). when i woke up this morning it still wasn't finished. i went to work, came home and ... it still has an hour and a half left. i had similar times with rush's snakes and arrows blu-ray. the pavtube people said it was a bug in snow leopard so i back it down to 10.6.6 - no change. i cannot believe that this is normal even for my not so great computer. i have been meaning to upgrade to a new mac mini, but i am not so sure that it would fix this problem? my external drive is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001QA2Y9S

any ideas from the community? thanx, mike

 

[cherry su]

A single core is going to be reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaally slow for ripping videos. Especially gigantic blu-ray files.

 

[itsratso]

thanx for the reply! so it IS my computer. ok. so to upgrade to the newest dual core mac mini:

1. is the 2.66 ghz upgrade worth $150 over the 2.4? i have always suspected that it's spending half it's time idling waiting for everything else to catch up (although i certainly could be wrong here!).
2. how much ram should i have? i have a choice of 2, 4 or 8. i know more is better, but i don't have a ton of money to spend so if it doesn't make a huge amount of diff, i am okay with that.
3. if i get whatever is advised, will it do the job (a mac mini that is)?

thanx again in advance for all help!

 

[KevinC867]

thanx for the reply! so it IS my computer. ok. so to upgrade to the newest dual core mac mini:

1. is the 2.66 ghz upgrade worth $150 over the 2.4? i have always suspected that it's spending half it's time idling waiting for everything else to catch up (although i certainly could be wrong here!).
2. how much ram should i have? i have a choice of 2, 4 or 8. i know more is better, but i don't have a ton of money to spend so if it doesn't make a huge amount of diff, i am okay with that.
3. if i get whatever is advised, will it do the job (a mac mini that is)?

thanx again in advance for all help!

It sounds like right now, you are just trying to rip the full Blu-Ray disk onto your computer, and not yet recoding it to a smaller iTunes compatible file. If that's the case, I don't see why a single core Mac Mini couldn't do the job as long as you have lots of disk space available. Your drive is a 2X Blu-Ray reader. I think that works out to something like 8 MB/sec average transfer rate, and your system should be able to handle that and finish the rip in about an hour for a two hour movie.

However, once you get the Blu-Ray movie on your computer, it *will* take a long time to do the recoding with your processor. If you use HandBrake and convert to a 720P AppleTV2 compatible format, I would guess that it might take as long as 20 hours to do the conversion.

If you are thinking about buying a machine primarily for video conversion, I would think about something like an inexpensive 4-core PC system. If you are so inclined, you can easily build a system like this for about $300 (plus a $100 windows 7 license) and it will greatly outperform a $700 Mac mini.

 

[itsratso]

hmmm... you know what kevin, my knee-jerk reaction was "i want a mini". but to tell the truth, as i told my mom (she just got a new computer) there isn't much difference to me between mac's and pc's these days. as a matter of fact, half the time i find it easier to use my pc laptop than my mac mini. i might just do the rare mac to pc switch (sounds weird just saying it). thanx.