How to Rip DVD on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with HandBrake

Published on May 15 2012 by Victor

No doubt you can purchase movies from the iTunes ready for playback on iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, but if you already own the DVD, you don't want to waste your money on the same movie a second time. Instead, you can rip the DVD to an MPEG-4 video file on your computer, add it to iTunes Library, and then sync it to your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. The program I'd like to recommend to do this is called HandBrake, and it works great on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Step 1. Download HandBrake from http://handbrake.fr/?article=download to Mac and install it.

rip DVD on Mac with HandBrake

Step 2. Insert a DVD and launch HandBrake. If HandBrake doesn't recognize the DVD as a source automatically, you may have to click "Browse" and direct HandBrake to your DVD drive.

Step 3. HandBrake will analyze the DVD and let you choose the title and chapters you want to rip for your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch (in general, you'll want the first title and every chapter). You can get an idea of which title is the main DVD title by choosing the title duration that matches the movie's playtime.

Step 4. Click the "Presets" button on the top right of the HandBrake window on the Mac. You'll see several presets; choose the iPhone and iPod Touch or iPad preset.

Step 5. Now just click the Start button and sit back while HandBrake rips the DVD to one big file. This can take a while, so you won't be able to rip a DVD on your way out the door to the airport. Make sure you plan ahead.

Step 6. When HandBrake finishes ripping the DVD, drag the file into iTunes for syncing to your iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone whenever you want to.

Though HandBrake works great for ripping DVD on Mac, it:

1. Cannot merge DVD chapters into as a single file. You will get sparate video files rather than a whole movie file.
2. Cannot preview the movie before encoding.
3. Cannot trim the movie segment.
4. Cannot extract sound tracks from DVD as audio file.
5. Only supports M4V, MP4, MKV, AVI, OGM output formats.
6. Cannot well customize profile for the output file.
7. Only supports a few mobile players like iPod Touch, iPhone, Apple TV, etc.

So if you need advanced DVD ripping features, HandBrake may not be the perfect choice. It is recommended downloading Clone2Go DVD Ripper for Mac to rip DVD to all popular video or audio formats on Mac OS X (including OS X 10.7 Lion).