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Do You Know the Faster Way to Rip DVD to H.264 on Mac

By Bella Brown to rip DVD, H.264｜Last updated on Jan.21, 2020

With smaller file size and good video quality as well as better compatibility with a wide range of multimedia devices like iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, etc., converting DVD to H.264 is a popular choice when it comes to digitalizing the discs. However many users are complaining that H.264 ripping is way too slow. Some have to wait for hours and overnight to finish a DVD. According to a survey on Killermovies forum, American households have an average of 500 DVD titles. Imagine how painful it would be if they need to convert all or part of their collections to H.264...

Do You Know the Fast Way to Rip DVD to H.264?

Do you really know how to rip DVD to H.264 fast? You may say yes, but I highly doubt that.

1. "I'm want to make smaller file size from my (legal) DVD collection on the computer so that I don't have to lug around my originals and mess around with eject/insert/wait. I'm ripping using VLC in an MP4 container with H264 video but it's PAINFULLY slow."

2. "I use Handbrake to rip my DVD to MP4 but I get between 5 to 10 FPS. Does H.264 really take so much time? Estimated around 7hrs."

3. "The DVDFab is way too slow ripping a DVD to H.264. The rip starts at 40fps but slows down to less than 10fps and I give up after an hour. MacBook Pro 16 GB RAM, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB, Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB."

4. "Running the latest Handbrake. When ripping dvds using the H264 codec & .mp4 container, my cpu usage is between 97-99%."

The truth is: DVD to H.264 transcoding is an intensive task, which many DVD rippers can't finish it fast. So is it possible to happily rip a DVD to H.264 in minutes? If you don't want to wait endlessly or smash your computer, choose the ripper wisely.

Rip DVD to H.264 on Mac via 3 Fast Clicks

Free download Mac DVD converter

Free download Windows version

Step 1: Choose Output Format.
Run the software and click "DVD Disc" to import the DVD. Choose to convert DVD to MP4 (H.264), or MKV, MOV, etc. (MP4 has better compatibility while MKV makes a digital copy of DVD with multiple subtitles and audio tracks). You can also directly copy DVD to iPhone 11/Pro/Xs/Max/XR, iPad, Galaxy S10, Huawei, Sony, Microsoft, game consoles, etc. with 420+ profiles available.

Note: there is a slide bar next to the profile, which enables you to adjust between low quality and high quality. Of course, higher quality comes at the expense of ripping speed. Fortunately, HW acceleration compensates for it.

Step 2: Enable Hardware Encoder

Tick the Hardware Encoder Intel/AMD/Nvidia to ensure the fastest speed. Also, check the boxes "Use High Quality Engine" and "Deinterlacing" to ensure the best output quality. The Safe Mode will fix any ripping problem and avoid the waste of time. Then click "Browse" and select a folder to save the output H.264.

Step 3: Start Conversion.

Click "RUN" to start ripping DVD to MP4 H.264 on Mac. On an advanced hardware configuration, the whole DVD conversion will be finished within minutes with the GPU acceleration activated, which dramatically lowers the CPU usage and avoids overheating CPU.

How Fast is MacX DVD Ripper? Is the 5-Minute Ripping a Real Thing?

How fast is it? The picture (MacX 1 vs Handbrake 2) below pretty much speaks for itself. Simply put, while you're waiting, you can:

With MacX DVD Ripper Pro: Oh wait, it's finished!

With others: Fly from New York to California or even further.

Rip nxDVDs in 10min VS Use nx10min to Rip a DVD

Secrets behind the No.1 Fast Speed - MacX' 3 Unique Speed TECH

1. Level-3 Hardware Acceleration tech

GPU acceleration is not new in the video industry, but MacX DVD Ripper Pro is the very only program that applies Intel/AMD/Nvidia hardware acceleration through DVD ripping to video encoding (dubbed Level-3 Hardware Acceleration). Currently, 99% DVD rippers can't take advantage of GPU acceleration in the whole process. 24% support hardware decoding & encoding (Level-2) while 65% stop with hardware encoding only. For example, the latest Handbrake 1.2.0 supports AMD VCE, Nvidia NVENC on Windows, but only Apple VideoToolbox on macOS.

2. Multi-core CPU & Hyper-threading

Hyper-threading will speed the system up by making a single physical CPU core appear as two logical CPUs. It's a bonus when the system has multiple cores and hyper-threading technology. While the Multi-core lets users select the cores they want for the ripping task when GPU acceleration is not available on their computer. This allows for different processes at the same time.

Conclusion: The above speed techs make MacX DVD Ripper 5-8x faster than others.

Rip a DVD to H.264 within Minutes, It's True

MacX DVD Ripper Pro apparently has surpassed Handbrake, Ripit, MacTheRipper and most of the competitors. For further reference, we have our internal test with other DVD ripping software that also pairs hardware acceleration. The test is carried out with the DVD I Am Warth on Macbook Pro(macOS Sierra); 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 Processor; 16GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Memory; Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB.

I Heard that Some Rippers Sacrifice Quality for Speed...

You know the old saying: you can't have your cake and eat it. The same goes with most rippers:

* Fast isn't high quality.

* High quality isn't fast.

In the pursuit of a faster DVD DVD ripper, many programs fail to maintain the video quality. For example:

"I'm using DVDFab 9.3.0.5 to rip DVD to MP4 but the rips don't look as good. There are blotchiness in dark areas."

"When I tried to rip DVD using Handbrake with "High Profile", there was no success - resulted in really choppy audio and the picture was really messed up (random blocky colors all over the place), so it wasn't watchable."

"I have issues with badly pixelated and garbled handbrake DVD rip. It's like it's trying to encode at the same high speed."

"I want better quality so I select 2-Pass encoding in Handbrake. But it really takes up so much more time..."

While GPU acceleration offloads the intensive tasks to GPU for faster processing, the quality is not as good as CPU processing. With software processing, users have the ability to adjust most aspects of the codecs (compressors/decompressors) to get better video quality. But relying H.264 ripping on CPU may give you "encoder overload" messages, which may result in frames loss and therefore even worse quality than it should get better with CPU. As you can see, it's a dilemma.

But MacX DVD Ripper Pro has built in two quality techs to guarantee 98% output quality for H.264 ripping.

* High Quality Engine

* Deinterlacing technology

Conclusion: The two technologies make up the possible quality loss brought by GPU acceleration. This allows the quality to go hand in hand with the speed. While users are ripping DVD to H.264 with the No.1 fast speed, they can also enjoy the near-original output quality.

Note: The MacXDVD software calls for copying or ripping DVD under the concept of Fair Use and does not encourage any illegal reproduction or distribution of copyrighted content. Please abide by the local DVD copyright law before doing it.