Ripping & encoding DVD’s is a process many beginner-level users have problems with. They search on Google and find references to apps that don’t even exist anymore or are highly illegal. MacTheRipper was one of those apps, which is not available anymore.
In fact since the early days the term “ripping” became popular a lot has changed and things came onto stage that made things a lot easier, e.g. VLC and HandBrake.
As an alternative for MacTheRipper the Finder and VLC can be used to rip (copy) the contents of a DVD onto the drive.
It is advisable to check your countries’ copyright laws whether encoding or ripping is prohibited!
When the DVD is copied to disk, you need “something” to encode the data to a format that uses less space, otherwise your disk is filled with DVDs quickly. HandBrake is one of those apps that make this process as painless as possible.
HandBrake is also an app that can directly encode a DVD on the fly. This way you don’t have to copy the DVD first and then encode it, you just encode the movie directly.