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

Sean Dempsey

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
1,622
8
I am experimenting with my DVD drive. I threw in a movie and tried using Mac The Ripper to see how long it would take.

31 minutes for 6.7 GB, almost a full movie DVD. Is this normal? I had some problems at first, since I had never use the drive before the region wasn't set, and MTR would crash out on me every time. So would handbrake. Once I actually played the DVD once, I set the region to 1 and then MTR ripped it, but took 31 minutes.

Is that about right for an 8x dvd drive? This is a 2.4GHz iMac with 1gig of ram (2 more gigs on the way).
 

Toddgabweg

macrumors member
Jan 17, 2007
91
0
PA
It took me about an hour to make a DVD via idvd... imovie is very quick to edit, but sharing a movie takes awhile... even for my 2.8 extreme :confused:

I do like the new imovies- it took me awhile to get use to (is it normal for it to take so long to share...?)
 

resonatorman

macrumors newbie
Aug 18, 2007
2
0
Yeah that time is standard. I think you will find it will vary depending on the size of the disc & how clean it is but between 28-31mins is average. From what I have read (ridpifferent.com forums) & experienced a lot relates to the Matshita drives apple uses. I had a an LG drive in my G4 eMac, it would rip in 12-19mins, on a machine that is now 4yrs old. I got my first iMac core duo (matshita) & was ripping around 30min. Before I got this I was hoping they may have changed drives but als another matshita.
rediffusion: If I set my iMac to region 1 will Mac The Ripper be able to read Region 2 discs?
You get 5 region changes last change locks in. From what I last read there is no way of getting around this with the Mashita with other drives there are little tricks to bypass. If you have dvd's from lots of different regions & don't want to be locked in to a region you maybe better off getting an ext FW DVD drive. Also with the ext you get to rip quicker than the internal drive if speed is an issue.

Cheers
 

mrgreen4242

macrumors 601
Feb 10, 2004
4,377
9
Your time is right on. I'm pretty certain that the slimline/laptop optical drives in all their systems except the Mac Pro is the limiting factor. No matter how fast the CPU or other parts of the system get, that's just how fast the optical drive can move data.
 

Southern

macrumors regular
May 15, 2007
217
0
London, UK
Yep that sounds about right. I was in Micro Anvika and one of the techs was burning a 3gb DVD there of something and that only took ~40mins - 20 to rip from source and 20 to burn. This was on an entry level 20" iMac. So a 6Gb one in 30 mins is pretty good going!
 

macjonny1

macrumors 6502a
Jan 10, 2006
554
117
My MBP takes about 30min for a rip. Don't think it can really get that much faster unless the DVD drive becomes faster. Agree with above that you can have all the RAM and faster CPU but it won't get better. I was pretty happy with a 30min rip myself...
 

WMuntean

macrumors regular
Aug 23, 2007
178
0
I suggest using a full sized 5.25" drive for ripping discs. They're much faster then the slot drives.

Agree, it takes me about 13 min to rip a disc that is about 8gb. With an external. My MBP (Rev B, single layer) takes about 35 min :(
 

roker

macrumors regular
Apr 14, 2007
171
0
New Zealand
Agree, it takes me about 13 min to rip a disc that is about 8gb. With an external. My MBP (Rev B, single layer) takes about 35 min :(


Is that through USB 2/Firewire 400 or 800?

Also what speed is the drive at reading DVD's (is it 16X?)

Thanks :D
 

WMuntean

macrumors regular
Aug 23, 2007
178
0
Is that through USB 2/Firewire 400 or 800?

Also what speed is the drive at reading DVD's (is it 16X?)

Thanks :D

USB 2, 16x. I needed a Dual Layer for some projects that required large datasets. And I used it to back up projects. The greatest part about the burner is that its a phillips. I never knew phillips made some quality computer products. Far better than my plextor...
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
My drive was a DVR-109 over FireWire. It was so much better then using my iMac's slot drive. I got around 13 minutes as well for a single layer disc.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.