The Handbrake software will start the process of converting your DVD files into MP4 or any other desired formats. This is how you can convert a general DVD to MP4 file using Handbrake software. The software is available for Windows and Mac systems. Method 1 Using HandBrake. Click Start Encode. It's a green button at the top of the HandBrake window. Clicking it will prompt HandBrake to begin converting your DVD's files into a playable MP4 in your specified save location. After this process is complete, you'll be able to double-click the MP4 file to play it.
Now-a-days everyone can rip or copy a DVD with just a few clicks once you know how!, you needed all kinds of complex tools and the process was not just challenging, but also very time consuming on those old computers. I used to have my computer run overnight to get a single DVD it done. With my current computers we’re talking about mere minutes.
Why rip a DVD? Maybe you’d like to use it with, play the movie on your tablet computer or smartphone, or you’d like to have a copy for your kids to handle, and smear their little pizza fingers on.
In this article I’ll show you how to use the free and awesome on a Windows computer. Verify your local laws! This article is not intended to promote pirating Copyrighted Materials! Laws, when it comes to copying Copyrighted materials, differ from country to country. It is your responsibility to be aware of these laws and comply to them. See also our! The movie industry in general does not want you to copy a DVD for any reason. Fair use proponents however claim that the law leaves room for making a private backup (in the US: DMCA or ).
But it’s all a matter of interpretation – so think for yourself before you act! Other countries, like The Netherlands, are more liberal when it comes to this – Consumers pay a few cents extra for empty media, and for personal use you are allowed to make a copy (see ). Why DVD to MP4 or MKV? So you might wonder what MP4 (or M4V) and MKV stand for? Both are file types; in this case they are so called containers that can contain multiple parts which can be video, audio, subtitles, etc. These particular file types can hold multiple video, audio, and subtitle parts or so called streams. For example videos in different angles, audio in different languages and qualities (Dolby Surround, Dolby AC3, regular stereo, etc), or subtitles in different languages or types (Closed Caption versus regular subtitles).
The purpose of the files we are about to make will be mainly playback on your computer or other device capable of playback of these kind of files. For example: box, Tablet PC, iPod/iPad, smartphone, media player in your car, or other media playback capable device. Here MP4 is the most commonly used format (together with AVI). MKV on the other hand, although seemingly superior, is not (yet) as popular, but supports MKV as well. Transcoding Other Video sources HandBrake also accepts other video sources than just a DVD – including other video files!
It can convert most common video files to MP4 or MKV with ease. Note: Copying a DVD is commonly referred to as “ripping” a DVD. For the impatient: the short version For those that are impatient and more experienced, you can follow the following steps quickly. For beginners I recommend to continue reading the following paragraphs which explain a little bit more about what’s happening. Install libdvdcss (see below). Start HandBrake.
Insert DVD. Open the “ Source” in HandBrake (the DVD). Select “ Title“.
Click preferred “ Preset” – possibly. Click “ Start“. Drink a cup of coffee and eat a cookie – a.k.a. Wait and pretend to be patient. Tools we need to Rip a DVD When using, we have all we need in one application, for proper working though we need libdvdcss (to decrypt a DVD). Downloads As usual, we offer the needed files for download but we highly recommend that you visit the listed sites below to make sure you get the latest version:.
– install by double clicking the downloaded file and follow the instructions. – install unzipping the file, renaming “libdvdcss-2.dll” to “libdvdcss.dll” and dragging it into the program folder of HandBrake (for example: C: Program Files HandBrake). Note: libdvdcss versions can be found, but it can be that newer versions do not have a compiled version for Windows available yet.
Check the folders with the highest version numbers and work your way down until you find a version that has a “win32” (32 bit Windows) or “win64” (64 bit Windows) subfolder with the “libdvdcss-2.dll” file in it – this would be the file needed to install libdvdcss. At the time of writing this article, is the most recent version. 32 Bit Windows versions. Region Code Before proceeding, make sure the DVD can be played on your computer with your regular DVD playback program for example “” – just to make sure that the is set correctly.
Step 1: Start HandBrake In Ubuntu you can click the “Dash Home” icon and start typing “handbrake” – when you see the icon: double click it. Step 2: Select your video source (the DVD) Normally HandBrake starts right away with a file dialog asking what to rip or convert. If that didn’t happen: Click the “ Source” button ( 1) and a tiny subwindow will open offering some shortcuts. When I clicked my DVD, it didn’t work, but clicking “ Open Folder” did.
In the file dialog, select your DVD ( 2) and click “ OK” ( 3). HandBrake – Select the movie to rip Step 4: DVD Conversion settings – Video First we can set the destination of the result file. Typically HandBrake will take a default location, like your desktop, and name the file based on what it found on the DVD (which can be a random guess). You can change the location and filename as you see fit. Keep in mind that the resulting file size for a normal movie is in the 1 -2 Gb size – make sure the destination drive has enough space available! When ripping a DVD we basically convert (transcode) the DVD movie to a different file format and for this we will need to do a few settings. For your first DVD, you’d want to try the default settings as they are already pretty good, but you can fine tune the settings if you’d like.
In you’ll find more details on how to fine-tune/tweak the settings. First, since we want to create an MP4 or MKV: Select the desired “ Format“.
For most purposes choose “ MP4“. One of the nice things of HandBrake is the ability to work with presets, you will see them on the right.
HandBrake – Presets for particular target devices If you have a particular target device in mind, try to pick the one that closest matches one of the presets. If you’re unsure or you have multiple devices in mind, then pick “ Universal” – a preset I usually start out with. Note: All settings after this point are optional! HandBrake example Audio settings Step 6: DVD Conversion settings – Subtitles (optional) Now that we have covered Audio and Video: Subtitles.
Of course subtitles is fully optional and you can leave them out if you’d like. I usually add at least one subtitle: English Closed Caption. You can however enable as many as you’d like.
You will have to pay attention here though! Some subtitles HandBrake wants to have “Burned In” – which is a bad idea all together. It means that subtitles will always be visible and cannot be turned off! So we really want to make sure that “ Burned In” is NOT CHECKED!
More details about subtitles variations can be found on the. HandBrake Subtitles example Step 7: Start Ripping!
This would be the time to click the “ Start” button to start the ripping/copying/converting process. Ripping will take a little bit and it mostly depends on the speed of your computer and the encoder settings you used. Additional Tips Advanced Tweaking of the Encoder I wrote an additional article for those interested in. I can highly recommend, even for beginners, to read thought this article.
It’s not just about “better” settings but also about some of the basic principles of encoding video. Using a Queue for sequential ripping of multiple DVD’s or video conversions You do have the option – if you have multiple DVD Rom players connected to your computer, or want to convert multiple video files – to add everything you just did to the Queue (click “Add to queue”) and start the entire process you just went through again to then add that one to the queue as well. You can however NOT remove the DVD form the drive it’s in right now! Once you filled the Queue, click “Start” and HandBrake will process the entire Queue in sequence.
Put the computer to sleep when done One of the features I really appreciate is that you can have HandBrake put the computer to bed when done converting. Specially with conversion job that take a while, this proves very handy. If you’d like to enable this option, because you’re going to walk away from the computer and let HandBrake do it’s thing: Click the menu (top of your screen) “ Tools” “ Options” “ General” “ When Done” and choose “ Suspend“. You can even do this while HandBrake is in the middle of converting your DVD! You can of course also choose for one of the other options. I use Handbrake for transcoding video’s for web streaming. I really appreciated your explanation of some of the additional features and capabilities of Handbrake and your clear style of presentation.
It makes it much easier to learn about what this product is capable of doing. One feature I can’t seem to find any information on is the “Options”, “When Done”, “Send file to:” option. I would like to use this in conjunction with a program like WinSCP to transfer the completed file to my web site, but I haven’t been able to determine how to pass the file name in the “Arguments” field. If you are aware of ways to use this option, could you provide some documentation on this.
It seems like a really useful feature. Hi Brian, Thank you for the compliment! I had never even payed attention to the “Send file to” option. We learn something new every day haha. The only thing I could find about that is what I found in, under “General”, where it says that you can send the filename to an application (Mac only – so I’m not sure if this is an option under Windows). I would assume that it would execute the application something like this: So as the first parameter. You’d probably have to write a script that catches the name or have an application that knows what to do with it.
Since you use, I assume you want to use SSH to upload it to (for example) your webserver. Having played with SSH (on Mac), I can tell you that it might not be very easy to fully automate that. Maybe using FTP is a better option?. Link QR Code.
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