When ripping a DVD with HandBrake...do I really need to do 2 passes? Bacchus, do you use this program? Using the 2 passes for encoding to m4v takes like 2.5 hours! its NUTS. Crazy long. Anyways...can I unclick 2 passes? will that affect the quality significantly?

There HAS to be a faster way

You need a quad core monster rig! Yes, I use handbrake and it takes forever (and I have a dual core w/ 4Gigs of ram.) I always go with the default settings as when you start lowering the settings to speed the process up the first thing that goes is the video quality (compression artifacts) and the next thing that always happens is you start losing audio sync.

BTW: Netflix is gonna be pissed at you, lol!

I have 2GB of Ram. That's not TERRIBLE, right? (say "no" so I feel better lol)

Ok...i'll just have to suck it up and rip dvds when i dont need the computer and can let it veg. vege? vedge? You get it lol

HandBrake is the best one to use though right? Or should I use Mac the Ripper? Essentially the same?

***k, man, i need a "movie files for dummies" book. It's the top computer-y thing that I struggle with. at least as far as applications/burning/easy-ish stuff is concerned.

Yeah...that makes zero sense.

Two is good and I am not even sure what the max you can put in your macbook (the new ones are 4GB but that is with the santa rosa chipset refresh.)

It all depends. I mean I run vista and that eats over 1GB by itself and when I use photoshop I eat up the other 3GB and it starts writing to my flash drive scratch disk (which is 8GB.)

I am not a big ripper these days (but when I was I used DVD- X-Copy.) I found that I did not take care of my burned DVD's anyways and I did not have the space to keep them digitally.

Word. I have a 500GB external that I'm using though....So I'm ripping to the desktop, burning, and storing them there for a bit.

I think my MacBook maxes out at 2GB possible. The MacBook Pros are 4, I believe.