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Because you mentioned it, maybe you can answer this ... how does MythTV/MythDVD stack up for DVD transcoding to other programs (e.g., dvd::rip, etc.)? I'm 'shopping around' for software to do this, in order to reduce the load on my Mac, and I'm trying to figure out which one is worth spending the time to set up.

On MacOS, I use the (excellent) "HandBrake" utility, which does a direct 'one shot' DVD -> MP4 transcode, while also handling subtitles, cropping/scaling, etc. It comes as one binary, too. It has a claimed 'Linux version' but from what I've seen, it's not really ready for prime-time. (Although I'd be willing to change that assessment if anyone wanted to offer evidence that it's easy to get going.)

Is there anything which does something similar on x86 Linux? I'm hoping for something that's equally easy to use -- I'm really not interested in shooting an afternoon setting up a half-dozen utilities to do what ought to be a fire-and-forget operation, if I can avoid it.

"I don't like Azureus at all- I find its user interface clunky and pathetically slow ... Sadly, it's the only decent mac client."

I guess you're looking for something like Transmission, my favorite client since I discovered it last week. It's probably worth it to grab the nightly build, since it looks like it's been developed a ways past the latest official release. Don't worry--the interface and feature set is far more aesthetically tasteful than that directory of nightlies would have you believe.

Transmission is a bare-bones, ground-up rewrite in C and has really impressive performance. I use this as my default.

I used to use the official Bittorrent client on my mac until I found Transmission, which actually looks like a Mac app. It's still missing a lot of features, but it seems it's being actively developed, so check out one of the nightly builds. I find it gets pretty fast speeds, and it's now my default bittorrent client.

As an indication, I've repeatedly tried Handbrake (http://handbrake.m0k.org/ a DVD ripper) on my ImacG5 2.0GHz and also on my AthlonXP3200+, running Gentoo Linux. Ripping a DVD takes 30 hours on the G5 and 6 hours on the PC with exactly the same options selected. I've repeated this test at least 10 times (took weeks, if you add up all those hours). As an interesting note, Handbrake was first developed for the Mac, and then ported to Linux. So you'd think it would perform better on the Mac.

Bottom line: From where I'm standing, I think Steve Jobs' estimate of 3 to 4 times the speed is *conservative*. It could be as high as 5 times the speed.

Of course Apple's not going to build DVD ripping into iTunes. That would get them into a huge amount of legal trouble. You can still do it yourself, though, using third-party applications such as Handbrake that can rip the video from the DVD and encode it in h.264 for you.

For converting existing videos to a compatible format, Apple does provide that functionality in Quicktime Pro, but that costs $30 USD. I'm sure a google search will bring up many free video converters.

You also might be interested in reading the guide to creating video for iPods at Ars Technica.

I agree totally with regards to the video Airport Express. I'm guessing they're just going to wait a little to let the video thing expand a little more, then Steve will announce this at a future Apple event. Wireless video out + Front Row + Mac Mini would be an awesome move for Apple.

I may be missing something here, but I thought that you could copy DVD content without violating the DMCA assuming you had a licensed CSS key (or however it works) which Apple must already have for their DVD app. Doesn't that mean they wouldn't be 'breaking' the encryption if they were to dump the video to a reencoder rather than to the monitor?

Alternatively, there's always HandBrake. Put the DVD in, choose H.264, ~400Kbps and resize horizontally to 320. That's literally all it takes, legal issues aside.

Handbrake will rip DVDs to MP4 or H.264, and it's free.

It's called HandBrake and it works awfully well, actually. I'm ripping most of my DVD collection with it just for convenience. H.264 encoding is slow, but it works, and you can pick any destination rez you want... it has a very nice interface. I can't wait to try some of its output on one of these iPods...

Don't forget iMovie; Apple is big on people creating their own video.

Looks like Handbrake just got a lot more popular.

I currently use Smartripper to rip the .vob files and separate my audio and video tracks, and DVDx to encode the audio to mp3 and video to DivX and package it all up in a nice .avi container.

Just rip the DVD's to the iPod with Mac the Ripper, as I would with any other hard drive, and open them using the DVD Player on the Mac at the house I go to.

Or you could just use The Only Mac Ripper Worth Using and AVC/H.264, and not have every movie take up 4-9GB. (Or if you're impatient, use plain MPEG-4, which encodes in realtime on a recent system.)

I have been messing around with HandBreak http://handbrake.m0k.org/ and have been able to use that snazzy new H.264 codec and compressed NapoleonDynomite to 652mb with no noticable quality loss at all. My 60 gig iPod should hold at least 60 movies and still a bit of music.

Small screen? Sure its small. But as said elsewhere in this thread, plug it into your tv. Bam. portable movies.

Sync it with your new Apple DVR system and... oh wait. not yet.

go apple

Is it just me, or am I the only one completely freakin annoyed with DVD menus? One out of every two has a DVD menu that is absolutely infuriating from a usability perspective.

It's terribly inefficient, both from time, power and storage, but it's to the point where I'd rather rip the DVD to my hard drive and watch the DVD from my computer (on the computer screen or TV, depending on the video and if others in the family who want to see it). Get a DVD, put it in the computer, hit the button, go to bed. Wake up, return the video to the store (or put it in the mail, depending on the service), see it at your leisure. Delete after viewing to balance digital rights with unconstitutionally powerful copyright laws that further the progress of neither science or arts.

The menu systems are infuriating while the unskippable commercials and warnings are downright insulting. I want the slower to deteriorate / better replayability of DVD and the users rights of VHS players (minus the Macrovision that meant I couldn't route my VCR through my DVD player because my TV didn't have enough inputs). Instead, I'm ripping DVDs to my computer, wasting some time and money and getting the home theater experience I want.

Superdrive Option $100
Copy DVD to HD. Point and click, easy as pie. Freeware.
PVR over firewire. As low as $149 US

$499 mini+$100 Superdrive+$0 handbrake+$149 ATI Eyewonder USB 2.0=$648 US.

That's about 525 Euros... how attached are you to your price point? You get your PVR for 400 Euros, and on top of that you get the rest of the Mac for 125 Euros. You also have the benefit of using a general purpose machine, which means no lock-in, limitations on storage, whatever. Just plug in a firewire drive for more when you run out.

It doesn't really make sense to require it cost no more than a PVR when it is far, far more functional than one. Stickies and iCal alone can turn the TV into a great central life management area. Streaming video. iChat videochatting on the big screen makes it into a real videophone. Whatever.

Of course there is. Popcorn.

For excellent DVD ripping use MacTheRipper.

For excellent ripping to divx, HandBrake.

It's a freakin' Mac, multimedia editing is its home territory.

Try Handbrake. I've only ever used it on OS X, but it's been ported over to Linux as well. Debian packages are even on the download page. Very simple application. Does one thing and does it really well.

Use HandBrake.

for literal heat, this puppy is pretty hot.

my dual 2.5GHz PowerMac G5 idles at 52C (125F) on CPU A and 50C (122F) on CPU B. the memory controller is actually one of the hotter things, it idles at 62C (143F). however, it's not the hottest thing, of course: at full load (DVD rip+encode or playing 15 videos at once + MP3 + tasks + flicking around Exposé) both CPUs have hit a max of 83C (181F) (the computer is supposed to automatically sleep around 90C or so).

so why so effing hot? i mean, this idles at the max temp my athlon 2500 peaks at! it certainly idles at a hotter temp than it needs to, but i have no problem with that: the system runs the fans dynamically to keep the noise down, so at idle it's not as cool as it could be. the difference in noise in my room when i sleep the athlon is ridiculous - the G5 sounds like a slightly loud external hard drive that's spun up. the system also has a liquid cooling system to quench the processors. this seems to just keep the processors within their range. the value that i see in it is response to new heat - the CPU temps flick around a lot and are very responsive to load and the loss of load. after ramping up the CPUs to >80C, it take about three or four seconds after the load drops for the CPU temps to drop 15-20C, then maybe a total of ten or twelve seconds to drop to idle temp.

for some real-world perspective... a DVD rip+encode with HandBrake with using ffmpeg engine, MP3 audio, 2-pass encoding, and gunning for your average 700MB movie time (800-1300kbps?) takes slightly less than the length of the DVD. an hour and a half long movie took about and hour and fifteen minutes to get on to my hard drive. MP3 ripping in iTunes will run up to 28x, but it's not fully loading the processors so i wonder about a drive read bottleneck. the first night i got it, i was at a loss for how to really test the speed on it, so i just decided to open up a shitload of videos. basically i played a DVD (fluff, the GPU does that), opened up something in VLC, opened up about 13 videos in QuickTime of various sizes and formats, played some MP3 music (fluff again, that's ball sweat of a cutting edge proc), and still had enough processing power to comfortably navigate files, chat, browse web pages, and flick around Exposé. around all of these things plus one is when a few of the videos would start stuttering and expose would start dropping frames to keep collapse speed uniform. anything past this would really start robbing time from videos.

all in all? it's fast. it's quiet. it gets hot, but it takes care of itself. coming from a 375MHz G3-upgraded PowerMac 7600 (vintage '98), i'm not doing too shabby. i just decided i'd scramjet at mach 7 to the top of the pack and then sit there for another few years.

• Mac Rumors - Good rumors website
• Mac Slash - Slashdot like mac news site
• Mac News Bytes - Good quick links to mac related articles
• Version Tracker - Software update website. Kind of like download.com for mac.
• Mac Update - Similar to versiontracker.com
• Mac OS X Hints - Good tips site for beginners and experienced people alike.
• Think Secret - Another good rumors site. Very accurate, most of the time.
• Emulation.net - Links to game emulation for mac

• Adium - Multi-protocol IM client
• Byte Controller - Good itunes hotkey/menu pager applet
• Camino - Nice mac based gecko browser.
• Colloquy - Webkit based IRC client. not too newbish.
• Cyberduck - SFTP/FTP client for os x
• Desktop Manager - Multi desktop app for os x
• Apple X11 Server - Apple's integrated X11 server. you'd want this for the next two items
• Fink - UNIX software for your mac
• Gimp.app - decent free photo editor
• Handbrake - DVD to mpeg4 ripper
• iTerm - Multi tabbed terminal
• Logorrhea - iChat log viewer/searcher/indexer
• Meteorologist - Weather applet for the menu bar
• Menu Meters - Menu applet for cpu usage, net usage, and more.
• Mplayer OS X - This app will play just about any media format in existance
• Poisoned - GiFT (Kazaa) and mldonkey based P2P mac client.
• Quicksilver - Very cool file/application/url/itunes/etc/etc/etc indexing program. It's like spotlight, only here TODAY and free!
• VLC - Another good video playing app. Nice to have a backup sometimes if mplayer doesn't play a file (which is very very rare).

on my BeOS i can use good software to do that