Blind leading the blind

Tonight, as I was settling in for a night by the fire, I received an unexpected call from my nephew. He had received a new iPod as a holiday gift and was interested in ripping his DVD collection. Mind you, these are DVDs that have been purchased and are only being converted for backup purposes (not distribution). Fortunately, I had been through this process recently.

Presently, I am running Windows XP SP3 and my nephew is running Mac OSX (with which I have little experience). Undaunted, I began sending my young apprentice instructions via IM. After a couple minutes of research I decided to have him try MacTheRipper for the decryption. After a quick download and install, this worked immediately. From there, I had him try HandBrake to convert the decrypted video to m4p format. After we kicked that process off, we decided it was getting pretty late and he agreed to let me know how it went in the morning. I'm sure there are a hundred ways to get this conversion process done, but there was something rewarding about helping a youngster...because if I can bring an adolescent boy, and his digital media closer together, then I feel I've done my part.