BernieMac: Mac OS; DVD ripping/burning dilemma
Recently I started working on Mac OS-X , Got this fine Apple previous G4 with the Superdrive from friend of mine . I discovered few interesting things as far as DVD ripping and burning is concerned, after a long struggle on few things. I thought this would be useful for folks out there who want something quick about this part of the world.
To burn DVD movie which is as big as 8 GB to 10 GB is a pain. You have couple of options.
- Have a Dual layer DVD 8.X GB, and burn your movie or data on that, But bummer is you will need a dual layer DVD-RW drive, which is not a great option
- Second and best option is compress the movie or data file which is greater that 4.7 GB and then burn it on the standard blank DVD-R(+R/RW) disk
This gets extremely easy on Windows , just download DVDShrink , this puppy is one of the best of application ever written and best it is free, it does 2 important things
- Rips the DVD data from the source
- Compresses the data to the best compression % possible with default compression algorithms.
After that all you have to use a normal burning utilities like Nero or Roxio to burn the data. Simple and elegant.
Now How about Mac-OS, it gets little tricky and complex than that, primary reason is there is no DVDShrink available for Mac-OS, moreover its quite a work to find free and good software to find on Mac. So consider following options
- MacTheRipper : Tiny little ripping tool (Its free) does a great job of ripping the DVD into VIDEO_TS format. Some of the rips doesn’t work good for burning.
- DVD2Onex This is a ripping + compression tool, works pretty well. Got to pay, you get one free rip with free download.
- Roxio Popcorn This one is ripping + compressing + burning tool , so that makes it best of all of the above , again you got to pay for this one, but I would say it is totally worth it. You put a Source DVD, it will start ripping + compressing and once it is done, you pop out source dvd and pop in blank dvd and it will write the compressed data. With real good quality.
For burning on Mac, you can use Mac OS’s in house iTunes, DiskImage, DiskUtility and Free softwares out there or commercial softwares like Roxio Toast Lite/Titanium. For more info on any of the above go to this Wiki
Have a great time ripping _and_ compressing _and_ burning.
American Legend to roll in India
I’m writing after a long time in here, and I thought this one is really good information to share with all those motorcycle lovers, especially cruisers.
Harley-Davidson is planning to bring its legendry motorcycles to India, via import medium. Believe it or not for few people like me its a damn good news, if it really happens. Call it as craziness or whatever, it will be a big shift for Indian motorcycle industry (I mean motorcycles from India and _NOT_ Indian brand :)). This will add up to one of the reasons why I would move back to India. Here is the article which talks about this possibility.
Price tag is little too over the top for Indian market, but it would still draw lot of upper class people to buy this mean machine, Harley-Davidson is targeting range between 4 Lac rupees to 14 Lac rupees. So lower end price tag might fetch you Sportster brand and higher price tag will possibly have VRSC or Touring , if they plan to release all the models.
As India is one of the biggest market for motorcycles, I was always dreamt these big machines to be a part of Indian roads, where Kawaski and Yamaha sportsbikes was always in demand.
I know few people like Inddie Thumpers who ride and live the Indian manufactured bad boys (Enfield motorcycles) would either try this piece of American history or own it. I would for sure when I get back home and right now I’m enjoying my harley-davidson sportster ride around bayarea.