Hello all, I am having a problem. I want to get an AppleTV to use as a on demand movie system and I bought what I thought would let me put all my DVD's on my iTunes so that I can watch them through Apple TV. But everytime I try t convert the DVD it says its copy protected!!! Is there a way to rip all my DVD's on to my computer so that I can create a very large digital library on my computer? Any help would be GREAT!!!
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I bought CRUNCH but....
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I haven't done this myself (yet) but I understand that the programs "MactheRipper" and "Handbrake" will accomplish what you want.
It is a violation of the DMCA, but supported by fair-use principles. Who knows how it will shake out legally (OK...we all know, it will stay illegal...but it shouldn't).
Anyway, I have a lot of DVD's I want to rip to a huge drive array and use my Mini to serve them via front row, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Need to rip the movies that you own to the hard drive via Mac the ripper or handbrake then you can use crunch to import onto apple tv ..
Movies that you rip is your own is legal since it's back-up purposes only ..
Movies that you rip is your own is legal since it's back-up purposes only ..
Try Handbrake. It'll decrypt DVD content and encode it into iPod or 
TV format in one hit.
Mac the Ripper (sorry, don't know where to download it from these days) will remove the protection from DVD content, but then you still need to encode it to anTV-friendly format... but I guess that is what Crunch is for.
Mac the Ripper and Hanbrake are both free.
NB: Whatever software/hardware you use, be prepared for a this being quite a slow process.
SL
TV format in one hit.Mac the Ripper (sorry, don't know where to download it from these days) will remove the protection from DVD content, but then you still need to encode it to an
TV-friendly format... but I guess that is what Crunch is for.Mac the Ripper and Hanbrake are both free.
NB: Whatever software/hardware you use, be prepared for a this being quite a slow process.
SL
Thanks for the help...how is the quality of Handbrake & Mac the ripper? Will I still have DVD quailty video? Im worried about loss of quality since I have a bigger TV and I dont want the moives to look bad! Also does it maintain all the menus or will it just show the movie?
I use MTR and do full dvd rip and looks fine on a 1440*900 screen.. If you use hand brake the preset apple tv settings will be best for apple tv on HD tv..
Hand brake or MTR will maintain all menus..
Full rip in MTR = 6 - 8GB file of the dvd.. Hand Brake you can set the final rip size but it decreases the quality ..
Actually Handbrake will NOT maintain menus. It will convert a particular segment of a DVD (i.e. main feature) to a flattened movie file.
MTR just strips off the CSS and/or region encoding but leaves you with the full VIDEO_TS folder structure.
BUT MTR only rips as Video TS files which aTV wont recognize.
I rip with MTR and convert to MP4 with HandBrake.
Ripping at HandBrake's Apple TV setting produces some pretty great results.
This is true. It's not like it is with CD's. For whatever reason, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act prohibits copying or converting, or otherwise extracting the content of DVD's (e.g. ripping), even if you own the DVD and are ripping solely for your own purposes. Lots of people are trying to challenge this broad prohibition, but so far it's still illegal.
I don't like it, you probably don't like it, but that doesn't make it any less true. Good thing is that odds are you'll never get caught, unless you share your files in some kind of obvious way.
If you use Handbrake, You don't need MTR. You can just rip it from the DVD itself.
Sorry that i type it incorrectly before .. correct way: The movies you own personally is legal for your own use..
I rip my movies so the original disc doesn't scratch and for me it's just easier for me to do: open dvd player / cmd+o / find the movie / hit play ..
And i don't make other copies either.. All my {ripped} movies there for Personal Use Only ..
Sorry that i type it incorrectly before .. correct way: The movies you own personally is legal for your own use..
I rip my movies so the original disc doesn't scratch and for me it's just easier for me to do: open dvd player / cmd+o / find the movie / hit play ..
And i don't make other copies either.. All my {ripped} movies there for Personal Use Only ..
Not sure where you're posting from, or what the law is there, but in the US (among other places), it is not legal to copy a DVD in any way for any purpose, even if you own the DVD and copy it only for your own use (unless you're the copyright owner, of course). More specifically, the intent of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is that it is illegal to circumvent the copy protection technology (DRM) of digital media, even if you're not violating the copyright in any way. In the EU this is covered by the EU Copyright Directive, which is similar.
Don't get me wrong -- I don't like it any more than you do, but if we're going to discuss the legality of this we should be talking about what the law actually says, rather than what we want it to say or what we personally feel is justifiable.
Well, there is more to it than that. DMCA may be in violation of legal precedents set by previous court rulings regarding fair use and copyright. However, as far as I know this theory has not been tested in a court of law. That's probably because nobody is sued by MPAA for ripping their own DVDs for their own personal use. If MPAA members believed they could win, they would probably have tried it already.
Of course, they may believe they have a strong case, but think that the potential award to be not worth the litigation costs. Even if they win, the court would probably award them compensation based on perceived damages. As you have already purchased the product, they probably could not claim much if any.
Sorry that i type it incorrectly before .. correct way: The movies you own personally is legal for your own use..
I rip my movies so the original disc doesn't scratch and for me it's just easier for me to do: open dvd player / cmd+o / find the movie / hit play ..
And i don't make other copies either.. All my {ripped} movies there for Personal Use Only ..
What do you say if family uses MTR or such software to their copies of the their children's dvds and store the originals away to protect them from scratchs? .. hmmm ... Because i do that also instead of re-burning to dvd,i put them on my hard drive...
RIAA has more [proof] of music thievery.. than the dmca does on the movie front..
And i know that i've not sold anything from my ripping.
The reason i do my ripping is so i don't keep re-buying movies, 'cause of scratches.. I ain't ripping off the movie studios by doing this practice, I'm protecting my investment
I don't disagree with any of that, and I suspect that as devices such as the
TV and video iPods (and others) proliferate, the law will get challenged and I think it will evolve to allow 'fair use' of digital content (that you've purchased, for your own use, etc, etc). My point though, is that at present it is illegal to rip copy-protected DVDs, period. I'm just trying to help people differentiate between what is legal, versus what they feel should be legal, or what may become legal, or what they can justify to themselves, etc.Look, I'm not passing judgement on anyone, and I don't want anyone to think I'm on a high horse about what's 'right' or 'wrong' or ethical or moral or anything like that -- that's for you to work out for yourself -- and I'm all for 'fair use' of content you own. I'm just trying to clarify what the law has to say about it right now, and I'm not sure how much more clearly I can say it: it is illegal to defeat the copy-protection on copyrighted digital media covered by the DMCA (such as DVDs), even if it's for your own use. With DVDs it's not about whether or not you sell or share the content, it's about using the content in a way that the copyright owner is specifically trying to prevent you from doing, which includes ripping, transcoding, copying to another storage medium (e.g. hard drive), etc. Because DVDs have 'Digital Rights Management' (DRM), those things, right now, are illegal, whether we like the law or not.
As far as I know, because CDs are not copy-protected (they don't have DRM) they are not covered by this law, although they are still copyrighted which makes unauthorized copying and distribution illegal. This is why software such as iTunes will allow you to read and convert CDs (which in itself is not illegal under the DMCA), but not DVDs. If you share the content you extract from your CDs, though, that's copyright infringement which is what the RIAA is going after people for.
Stated simply:
CDs: legal to extract (no DRM), illegal to share (copyrighted)
DVDs: illegal to extract (DRM), illegal to share (copyrighted)
I own an
TV, a video iPod and lots of copyrighted DVDs, and I want as much as anyone to be able to legally use those things together, but right now it's not legal, no matter what justification we may give ('fair use', protection from scratches, etc). Luckily, the industry seems to be turning a blind eye toward people who do this for their own use (and aren't 'sharing'), and that alone may eventually be grounds for the law to change, but until it does people stand to be prosecuted if MPAA decides it wants to go after people for ripping their own DVDs. I, for one, don't want to be the guy who stands in front of a judge and says, "well, I didn't feel it was wrong so I did it anyway", only to have the judge say, "too bad. How you feel doesn't matter; it's illegal, and you're guilty." We'll probably need someone to do this to get the law changed, but I personally don't want to go through that. If you're willing to challenge the law, more power to you my brother.Anyway, my message here is not about what I or you feel is right or wrong, or how we feel the law should be, or anything like that. I'm just trying to get to the truth of what the law is at the moment.
Incidentally, check out the story linked here.
The DMCA is not invalid even if it "violates" prior court decisions regarding fair use. Fair use is the product of a congressional enactment. Congress is allowed to alter or even repeal the laws it rights. Congress overturns court decisions it disagrees with all the time by enacting new statutes, and it's allowed to do so. The only constraint is the Constitution. For your argument to prevail, you would need to establish that the fair use doctrine, even though it arises from a congressional statute, actually originates from the First Amendment. I think you would have a tough time establishing that, and I certainly wouldn't arrange my personal affairs on the assumption that the Supreme Court would hold the DMCA unconstitutional as applied to copying DVDs. All IP law is a balance between the interests of rights holders and consumers. That balance has been struck in Congress, for good or for ill, and the Supreme Court recently affirmed in a 7-2 decision that even ridiculously imbalanced concessions to the rights holders (the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998) are not unconstitutional.
Handbrake won't work on quite a few DVD's
It will work on quite a few but most Disney stuff and Sony Pictures DVD's have loads of crud these days that will either hang or crash Handbrake. If this happens you will need to either rip with MTR to hard drive then point Handbrake to the ripped file and run it or better yet rip on a PC using AnyDVD then Handbrake the cleaned up file or new disc. MTR is pretty buggy these days. Even the latest versions.
It will work on quite a few but most Disney stuff and Sony Pictures DVD's have loads of crud these days that will either hang or crash Handbrake. If this happens you will need to either rip with MTR to hard drive then point Handbrake to the ripped file and run it or better yet rip on a PC using AnyDVD then Handbrake the cleaned up file or new disc. MTR is pretty buggy these days. Even the latest versions.
Well, I am not a lawyer, but here is the gist of what I've read about the issue: DMCA is enacted to specifically protect copyrights, not a business model. This is the reason Library of Congress interpreted that DMCA does not apply to people who break the lock on their cell phones so that they can use them with other carriers, as this lock is placed there to protect a business model, not any copyrights. Therefore, unless Congress specifically changes the definition of fair use, DMCA would probably not apply to breaking encryption on your own DVDs for your own personal use, as this does not violate any copyrights.
I'm not sure I follow your argument. If a cell phone is not copyrighted, there's no copyright for the DMCA to protect so it doesn't apply. A DVD is copyrighted, so there is a copyright to protect. I believe that's an apples an d oranges argument. Although there is no infringement due to distribution if you restrict your DVD activity to personal use, the DMCA has clearly drawn the line more conservatively regarding defeating DRM.
Not that it's definitive or authoritative by any means, but this is a quote from Wikipedia's article on the DMCA: "It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself."
Anyway, I'm trying to separate what we want from the intent of the existing law, which makes it illegal to circumvent the copy protection on your DVDs. In a certain sense it's not illegal until someone starts enforcing it though, and not only are they not doing that, I'm not sure how they even could.
'Fair use' is an intentionally nebulous concept, but I think that we have to accept that, for the time being at least, the DMCA strongly favors the MPAA on the subject of DVDs. It will change, but it hasn't yet. Again going back to Wikipedia, they have a pretty good article on 'fair use' that dispells the misconception that any use that seems fair is fair use: "In the law, the term 'fair use' has a specific meaning that only partly overlaps the plain-English meaning of the words. While judges have much leeway in deciding how to apply fair use guidelines, not every use that is commonly considered 'fair' counts as fair use under the law."
True but i like to rip a bunch with MTR and then queue them up in Handbrake so a bunch can convert at a time.
But the violation of copyright isn't triggered by the breaking of encryption -- it's triggered by the making of a duplicate copy, whether it's for personal use or not. "No copies" is the rule. An exception that rule is 17 U.S.C. § 1008, which explicitly allows private, noncommercial home copying of music recordings with analog devices and media. Some people say digital copies of music recordings should be covered by Section 1008, too, but I think that is (ahem) a disputed issue between the RIAA and pretty much the rest of humanity.
If I understand correctly, there is no similar provision for copying of video recordings, except to the extent you're time-shifting a broadcast using a VCR, DVR, or DVD recorder under Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc. I'm only one guy, but I don't think any of the fair use rationale in the Sony case would apply to ripping DVDs that are available for purchase. That's equally true whether you're duping the DVD or ripping it to a drive.
In other words, take the DMCA out of the picture entirely, and you still are stuck with the fact that making a duplicate copy of the DVD is a copyright violation. It's also not, in my humble opinion, the kind of behavior that qualifies for the fair use defense under Sony. "Personal use" is not a basis for fair use (although it is a necessary element for the statutory right to copy music recordings under Section 1008.)
It will take some willpower in Congress to change this fact -- which they can -- but people need to be willing to vote out members of Congress who take IP producers' interests ahead of IP consumers. As it stands today, I don't kid myself about whether it's a violation of copyright to rip a DVD, because I'm personally convinced that it is.
I don't think Sony VCR case applies here, either.
As I've said, I am not a lawyer and you could be right. Still, do not discount the "damages" aspect of copyright, either. I know of a case of a pianist, whose name I cannot remember, who released recording of another very obscure artist as if it was her own. It got very good reviews in classical music publications and sold well for a while. (Actually she did this more than a few times.) Eventually somebody figured out the scam and the scandal hits. The artist who originally recorded the performance could not sue her to claim what should in a fair sense belong to him. Apparently he had to show damages and his sales went from none to sizable due to the scandal. As he actually benefited from this fraud, she got away. Well, she died in the meantime, so maybe I should say her estate got away with it.
Of course, DMCA may tack on additional penalties for breaking the encryption, even if the copyright holder cannot claim any damages. I am not that familiar with the law, but I just wanted to share this anecdote.
As I've said, I am not a lawyer and you could be right. Still, do not discount the "damages" aspect of copyright, either. I know of a case of a pianist, whose name I cannot remember, who released recording of another very obscure artist as if it was her own. It got very good reviews in classical music publications and sold well for a while. (Actually she did this more than a few times.) Eventually somebody figured out the scam and the scandal hits. The artist who originally recorded the performance could not sue her to claim what should in a fair sense belong to him. Apparently he had to show damages and his sales went from none to sizable due to the scandal. As he actually benefited from this fraud, she got away. Well, she died in the meantime, so maybe I should say her estate got away with it.
Of course, DMCA may tack on additional penalties for breaking the encryption, even if the copyright holder cannot claim any damages. I am not that familiar with the law, but I just wanted to share this anecdote.