Digital Home Thoughts: AutoBrake Speeds Up Backing Up DVDs

"Trying to rip DVDs to your home server consistently and without issue is not easy. After doing some research I came across a free application called HandBrake which is a fantastic video encoder and it just so happens that it can rip DVDs. However, HandBrake requires somebody to set it up each time you wish to rip a DVD. Obviously nobody is going to want to bother with that so I decided to write a small application which will do this automatically."

DVDs are a great media format. They can put up with a fair amount of abuse and pack away into a tiny little space. Still, they're not indestructable, so the need for backing up DVDs is important. Especially after you find your DVD player can't play half of your scratched DVDs. Handbrake is a program that lets you backup your DVDs onto your computer, and AutoBrake takes things a step further, automating much of the steps you need to take with HandBrake. Sure, it might only take a minute or two to do it yourself, but when you're ripping a couple dozen DVDs, you don't want to have to constantly come back to the computer for a couple minutes at a time. It's a small thing, but it really helps and frees you up on Backup Sunday.