I’m in the local equivalent of Netflix (Quickflix) and I want to time-shift some of the DVDs they send me. So I’m paying to watch them, I just want to watch them at the time of my choosing instead of the erratic timing that, say, the 9 DVDs of **The Tudors **arrive in.
I’ve been using DVDsmith, a great little free utility, to “back up” DVDs to files on my Mac. But they come down as .VOB files in a VIDEO_TS folder, and those files can only be played one at a time in VLC - which also means you don’t get proper DVD Player-like controls (pause, subtitle, language selection etc). Indeed some have come across in German only somehow.
So I have two needs:
how can I make these VIDEO_TS folders back into a proper DVD-like file (.iso perhaps, or .mp4) ? Or even if necessary burn to a blank DVD?
how can I in future copy these DVDs to a format that I can play when I want, just like on a DVD player?
There are a million apps out there that appear to offer functionality along these lines - Roxio Toast, Ripit, Mac DVD Ripper pro, Nero among many others. Prices range from “free” (which always seems to mean a crippled version, or one that pits a watermark on the screen) to $25 to $80 to $120!
So I’m after advice and experiences from anyone who’s been down this road before! Thanks all.
For your first problem, pretty much any DVD burning program could do it. You just put the files back in the same folders they were on the original DVD. That’s all a DVD-video is: a data DVD with a specific folder structure and specific types of files.
For your second, most people around here seem to use Handbrake. It uses the DVD decrypting software built-in to the Mac OS, so it should work on any DVD that you can play on your Mac. (Likely, your other program uses the same decrypting method.)
Handbrake can, BTW, also convert those VOB files to a proper video file.
Hmmm, now you’ve reminded me I was using Handbrake, but stopped and went onto other utilities for some reason - I think it barfed on some sort of copy protection? I’ll look back into it, thanks.
Are you saying if I just copy the VIDEO_TS folder as files onto a blank DVD it’ll be a playable media DVD? Or it has to be done via an app that knows that’s the end goal in some way?