I recently set out on a mission to convert all my season box sets and other DVDs to compressed video files that I can stream to my TV through my Mac Mini turned media server.

This is certainly not the first time I’ve done such a thing. I’m an old pro at ripping DVDs. I even got past the encryption on the Dark Knight DVD, but that’s another tale. (Pirating DVDs is wrong. Don’t do it kiddos. However, you are allowed by law to make a copy of any DVD, Music CD, software, etc. that you own, as a backup. Aren’t disclaimers fun?).

Anyways, this time, I wanted to ensure I got a near DVD-quality rip while still conserving file size. Any compression format is going to be lossy, sure, but you can get awfully close to the original, and that’s what I was looking for. That’s also what I had no idea how to do. I use HandBrake religiously but it’s not always obvious what presets or options to use for any given case. So, I turned to my old friend, Google, and started researching.

After a fair amount of work, I finally came across a thread in the HandBrake forum that gave me the info I needed. One of the developers of HandBrake suggested that the AppleTV preset in HandBrake with the quality slider bumped up to 62% gives a near perfect encode. What the thread didn’t mention is that you’ll need to uncheck “Large file size”, as well, since this is only for encodings where the produced mp4 will be greater than 4GB and breaks compatibility with most software and devices when enabled.

I gave it a whirl, and I have to say that it definitely does the trick. The mp4 produced is virtually identical in quality to the DVD, at least to my eyes (YMMV).

It also seems to be a relatively quick encode. On the low-end model Mac Mini (1.8Ghz, 1GB RAM), I get about 12-14 fps converting directly from DVD to an external hard drive over USB2.0. It usually takes twice as long, roughly, as real-time, so a 2-hour movie would equal a 4-hour encode.