How to rip DVDs and convert videos on your Mac

May 4, 2009 by Sukrit Dhandhania

Handbrake is a DVD and video converter for the Mac. It’s a free download and you can convert videos to various formats, including ripping DVDs to the iPod format. Handbrake supports formats such as FLV, WMV, AVI, and MOV out of the box. Handbrake is an open source project and it uses a number of video and audio libraries from the Linux and open source world.

To get started with Handbrake head over to the project’s website and download the latest release of the application. There are two versions of the application available for download for each platform. One is a version with only a command line interface, while the other has a much prettier graphical interface. I went with the graphical option. Once the download is complete the application installation image will mounted automatically. Drag and drop the Handbrake application file into your Mac’s Applications folder to complete the installation.

Launch Handbrake by double clicking the application file in your Applications folder. Handbrake will now launch and pop up a Finder window. Select the disc or file you want to rip from the Finder window then click Open. An activity window will now pop up and it will begin scanning your DVD or video file before it can rip it. If it detects an error in the source file here it will display and error. This would be the end of that road. Handbrake will not be able to rip the disc in such a case. If it does go through the scanning without any errors it will bring you back to its main window. Now you can choose the format you want to rip the DVD in and the picture size, and a few other settings. Once you are done with tweaking the settings click on the Go button to get the process started.

This might be a good time to head over to get yourself a cup of coffee while Handbrake rips your DVD for you. Once it’s done ripping Handbrake will drop the new file on your Desktop. Now you can do with it what you like. Open it with iTunes, quicktime, VLC Player, or import it into your iPod.