Save me from crushing my computer; converting a DVD into a .mov

Teeming Millions,
So I have a DVD, not a commercial one, but a private DVD of a performance that I’d like to post on the internet. Oh yeah, and I have a Mac. So I spent about 5 hours yesterday trying to figure out how I could rip this DVD onto my harddrive as a .mov before, out of sheer frustration, I felt like smashing my computer with a crowbar. Basically, I don’t know how to do this. I know there must be a way. What programs do I need? How can I make this work? I am, as always, in your capable hands.

birdmonster

What forum is this? Oh. Bye.

C’mon now—granted, I should be in some dweebed out tech forum, maybe, but I’m ascared of those places. Plus, I have far more faith in the people here than anywhere else.

No, why is this in ABOUT THIS MESSAGE BOARD?

Sheesh.

Sending this to General Questions.

Maybe you should read the forum listings again – or for the first time, even:

The Straight Dope Message Board (forum listings)

your humble TubaDiva

Well here at The Dope we have several forums. This one happens to be called ATMB or About This Mesage Board. I fail to see the relavence of the OP to ATMB. I am not Junior Modding just suggesting you place your OP in an appropriate forum here like General Questions ir IMHO you will get better responses.

I am not suggesting you post outside the Dope the forums I mentioned are part of it.

Ooops, guess it got moved while I was typing. I really have to learn to type faster.

Crap. I rescind my several stupid statements above. Thanks.

I can’t help you with the conversion (the software I use is not available for mac), but I’d like to discourage you from using the MOV format. MPG will work for everyone without them having to download Quicktime.

Duly noted. And totally appreciated. This is novice territory for my computer skills, so all advice will be happily devoured

Coupl’a points:

  1. Quicktime (and .mov) is not an encoding format (codec) by itself. Rather, it is a container format, that wraps MPEGs, WAVs, Sorensons, and whatnot in one file. Having an MPEG file in Quicktime format is not unusual.

  2. It doesn’t matter if the DVD is commercial or not; if it’s a regular pop-in-the-DVD player DVD, then you will need a program to rip the video and audio data off the DVD onto your computer. Quicktime won’t do it, because Quicktime is a media player, not an extractor.

  3. Try MacTheRipper and see if it works for you.