Making mp3 files from DVDs:
Hey Skye, I used Total Recorder (available at http://www.highcriteria.com/ though there are plenty of other programs that will do the same thing). It was the cheapest ($12) and best reviewed of the programs I looked into. It's really easy -- you start the program and also start your DVD playing software (Media Player or whatever). Press record in TR and play on the DVD. It will record all audio until you stop it.
By default, TR encodes audio as a .wav file which are very very large. However, you can right-click the file in iTunes and select "convert to mp3", but be sure to delete the original .wav file so it doesn't keep taking up space on your computer.
Alternately, you can download an mp3 encoder to encode the file directly to mp3 in TR. I did this myself -- the driver is called "LAME mp3 encoder". I just Googled and found it, though I don't recall the details since it was a while ago.
A warning, when I first installed Total Recorder, I remember it changed some settings so that my audio in iTunes was garbled. I recall having to fiddle with some settings in Control Panel to fix this, though I couldn't tell you what I did.
Of course this is legal only as long as you OWN and RETAIN the source DVDs.
Hey Skye, I used Total Recorder (available at http://www.highcriteria.com/ though there are plenty of other programs that will do the same thing). It was the cheapest ($12) and best reviewed of the programs I looked into. It's really easy -- you start the program and also start your DVD playing software (Media Player or whatever). Press record in TR and play on the DVD. It will record all audio until you stop it.
By default, TR encodes audio as a .wav file which are very very large. However, you can right-click the file in iTunes and select "convert to mp3", but be sure to delete the original .wav file so it doesn't keep taking up space on your computer.
Alternately, you can download an mp3 encoder to encode the file directly to mp3 in TR. I did this myself -- the driver is called "LAME mp3 encoder". I just Googled and found it, though I don't recall the details since it was a while ago.
A warning, when I first installed Total Recorder, I remember it changed some settings so that my audio in iTunes was garbled. I recall having to fiddle with some settings in Control Panel to fix this, though I couldn't tell you what I did.
Of course this is legal only as long as you OWN and RETAIN the source DVDs.