In addition to ripping the DVDs, you might want to consider re-encoding as MP4. If you rip a DVD as is, it takes up the same space as the DVD. Some rippers will transcode quickly and fit all of a DVD or the movie only in 4.37Gb (to fit on a single layer DVD disk). But that means you have 4.37Gb.
A really efficient free program to encode a DVD (once ripped) into say MP4 format is HandBrake. On a decent spec PC or Mac this might take say 30 minutes. You can choose how big you want the file vs bit rate (i.e. quality). Also will do two pass encoding for better quality and smaller files but obviously takes longer.
For movies that I have but stored away on DVD (hence using MP4 on a play back device), I used HandBrake choosing the slightly inferior (one pass) encode of MP4 format and the FFmpeg (Flask Mpeg) encoder. Using H.264 is better for quality but for standard definition I find ffmpeg fine.
All of this obviously takes a bit of time. On the PC, if you have a modern GPU you can make use of that for encoding DVDs (I have a program for an nvidia graphic card). I also have tried an elgato Turbo.264HD USB device on the Mac.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 31 May 10 at 20:37
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size of MP3 file 
size of MP3 file 
