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We start with the easiest option—simply make a copy of the DVD content on your hard drive. You can do this in the Finder; create a folder, name it for the movie (e.g. A Bug’s Life), then drag the VIDEO_TS folder to that new folder. To play the movie in DVD Player, select Open VIDEO_TS Folder from the File menu, and select the folder that contains your intended movie. This method works, sometimes, but not on copy-protected discs; it also requires extensive user attention, not to mention a keyboard and mouse. We want something that works all the time, and from the couch, using only a remote control.

In order to drive the Mac from the couch, we look to Matinee and MacTheRipper. Together, they provide a smoother, more kiosk-like experience.

Matinee provides a convenient, TV-suitable interface for selecting the movies on your hard drive, and watching them via DVD Player. It comfortably fills the gap between the Finder and DVD Player, and is easily controlled with a remote.

MacTheRipper streamlines the process of saving your DVDs to your hard drive. Not only does it slice and dice exactly which of the DVD’s contents should be saved, but it can also reset region encoding, remove Macrovision copy-protection, and perform a number of other advanced tasks.

Matinee’s Television Interface

When you launch Matinee, two preferences must be set. First, in the Movie Locations tab, choose the folders where your VIDEO_TS files will be stored. You can set up to five such locations, a feature useful for power users with multiple hard drives. Second, verify in the Additional Options tab that Matinee will save DVDs with MacTheRipper.

Matinee’s interface is all of one window, with eight buttons for navigating your DVD movies. The Previous and Next buttons navigate through available movies. Pressing either of the Play buttons will launch DVD Player and have it start playing the selected movie. (We have no idea why there are two Play buttons.) You can also import the DVD cover art; we download ours from Amazon.

Copy a DVD with MacTheRipper

With Matinee running, insert the DVD you wish to copy and press the Rip button. MacTheRipper will launch.

First, identify the location where your DVD file will be saved. Select Save To in the File menu and navigate to a suitable location.

MacTheRipper’s interface is comprised of one window. The upper area displays information about the files that will be stored on your hard drive, and the total disk space that will be consumed. You configure which DVD elements will be saved in the lower area, which is comprised of two tab panes, Disc and Mode.

The Disc tab pertains to, well, the entire disc. Here you can set DVD region encoding, as well as remove Macrovision or User Operation Prohibitions (UOPs). You can leave everything at the default, unless the above display shows DISC RCE: -DETECTED- in red; in this case, you must identify the DVD’s region code. Select the appropriate region from the RCE Region popup menu: 1 through 8. (For most DVDs, will display DISC RCE: -CLEAR-. If this is the case, leave the RCE Region set to Off.)

The Mode tab allows you to choose exactly which portions of the DVD will be copied; click Go! to copy the disc. The Full Disc Extraction option extracts the entire DVD–features, extras, alternate versions, etc. For example, a full disc extraction of A Bug’s Life weighs in at 7.75 gigabytes (GB). (Our 80GB hard drive just groaned.)

DVDs have a default movie that plays when you insert the disc and wait. To extract only this default movie, select Main Feature Extraction. In our example, this saves 3.5GB—not too shabby. Depending on the DVD, there may be just one feature, or multiple versions of a single feature. If the disc has only one feature, this option’s savings will be fairly modest.

Our A Bug’s Life DVD has two versions of the movie, one in the 4:3 aspect ratio (4.19GB) and one in 16:9 (3.48GB). As 4:3 is the default, a Main Feature Extraction discards the 16:9. However, we prefer the theatrical 16:9 presentation. Title Only Extraction allows us to select among the different movies on the disc, and it discards any extras. For A Bug’s Life, it happens that the 16:9 version is smaller; we now have the theatrical aspect ratio, and we saved 4.27GB of space over the full disc.

After ripping a DVD, your movie should show up in the list of available titles. Add a copy of the cover art, and you’re done.

Tying in a Remote Control

This solution is great if you’re sitting at your computer, but what if you want to keep your keister on the couch? Fortunately, we can configure Keyspan’s Digital Remote can to control both applications.

Matinee’s functions all support key commands, so controlling it is a simple matter of assigning buttons to key commands; the list of key equivalents can be found in Matinee’s Read Me file on the disk image. We provide a keymapping convenience; download the map file and follow out how-to guide for adding Keyspan application keymaps.

MacTheRipper is more challenging, as it mind-bogglingly supports neither key commands nor AppleScript. To overcome this limitation, we turn to AppleScript and Apple’s handy GUI Scripting. First, however, we have to enable keyboard interface access. To do so, open System Preferences, select the Universal Access panel and check the “Enable access for assistive devices” checkbox. Now Applescript can control almost any interface element—menus, check boxes, radio buttons, etc.

We need an Applescript for each action we want to perform—these can be tedious to write, so just download our collection and install them. With the scripts and mappings in place, you can navigate MacTheRipper’s interface, select from a DVD’s features, and save them to your hard drive.

This solution doesn’t expose MacTheRipper’s full features, but it covers the basics and gets your movies to the hard drive while your feet remain on the coffee table. More importantly, the resulting movies are completely usable by an unsuspecting spouse, using only the remote control and Apple’s DVD Player.