I'm setting up a hard drive based media center so I'm ripping all of my dvds and putting them on the drive. I found this application called handbrake which happens to be free, and does exactly what I was looking for. You can use it for converting movies in to mp4 so you can watch them on your ipod, or a bunch of other kinds of downsizing you might want to play around with.

They have a 64 bit version that works with intel core duo, however this application runs in conjunction with VLC player, which is only available in 32 bit for said processor.

http://handbrake.fr/

 

FairMount lets you mount a DVD as a disk and bypasses the CSS encryption so you can easily access the file structure. All of this is only for backing up DVD's which you already own though, not copying Netflix DVD's of course.

 

I just downloaded HandBrake, I haven't used it yet. I didn't know it was free until I was looking around for stuff to put into my new Mac Mini. I always used MacTheRipper and burned a copy of the DVD with Toast, then called it a day. This should save a lot of hard drive space and I'd be able to put an entire series onto one DVD.

 

been using handbrake on my mac for a while now. definitely recommend it. pretty easy to use and straightforward. Definitely makes converting videos to your iphone/ipod much easier

 

Yep same here.