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It's a racket. Most things are, but this one really bothers me. When DVDs were about to become the next logical step in home video, I was thrilled, thinking I'd be able to watch all those foreign movies that never saw release in the States. The NTSC/PAL/SECAM VHS issue had foiled me for too long, and I was finally, finally going to be able to enjoy my movies the way the rest of the world got to see them.

But of course, no. Regions. We're told that DVDs are region encoded to protect copyright and film distribution rights, which basically means that if a movie is released theatrically in the U.S. in January, and the DVD is released in June, they don't want people in China to be able to buy the DVD before it's released there theatrically in October. What this boils down to is that I can't watch the British 5.1 DTS surround sound version of Flash Gordon on my DVD player here in the States.

Or can I?

After reading a bit about a program called Mac the Ripper, and putting that together with the capabilities of my Macintosh, I decided to give this a try. I would buy a region 2 encoded DVD, use Mac the Ripper and my Mac's DVD region switching capabilities to rip it to my hard drive, then use Toast Titanium 7 to burn to a region 1 encoded disc to play in my Toshiba DVD player. I'm happy to report the experiment was a success...mostly.

First, a warning. No, not a legal warning. I couldn't care less if you break copyright laws. Not my concern. I bought the disc I transferred, and I have the right to back it up, so no problems here. You, however, have my permission to do what you gotta do. My warning, rather, is that converting a disc from another country isn't entirely about the regions. There's also the NTSC vs. PAL issue. See, the NTSC and PAL video formats used by different countries each have their own color palate, their own video size and their own frame rate. Some of this is covered in the RipDifferent forums, but the general gist of it is that this creates either some anomalies in the playback or complete incompatibility (apparently, Sony DVD player owners may be out of luck). If you're in the U.S. check your DVD player and TV to see if they have PAL capabilities before buying and attempting to convert a PAL DVD. On my Toshiba HD-850 player, the DVD played fine, but the color was a bit washed out and a tick too blue in parts, and it also played a bit too quickly. PAL video plays at 25 frames per second, while NTSC video plays at at 29.97 frames per second. Although my wife couldn't hear the difference, I noticed this right away, but I was so minute that I was able to get used to it and still enjoy the movie.

This whole problem is covered quite well in Anton Lineker's "Send Video Abroad" article in the March 2006 issue of Macworld. Anton even details two methods of converting from PAL to NTSC in a manner that eliminates the problems I mentioned above, but both require Apple's Final Cut Studio, and that's probably more expensive than a region free DVD player and a new TV. Still, if you already have Final Cut Studio, Anton's instructions will become a key step for you in this process.

So, with all the possible pitfalls, if you still want to do this, here's the method I took. First, I downloaded a copy of Mac the Ripper. Hurry up with this, even if you don't intend to try this right away. Because of a possible lawsuit (of course), Version Tracker may have to pull this down soon, they report. Once I had Mac the Ripper installed, I placed the region 2 DVD for Flash Gordon in my iMac. Mac OS X notified me that the disc was incompatible with my currently selected region, and asked if I wanted to change. I affirmed, as Mac OS X allows you to do this five times before the setting becomes permanent. Because you'll have to switch the system back to your "home" region to again watch standard DVDs (the computer doesn't need to be set to the region for which you're burning the disc), be careful when going through this process. If you plan to do a bunch of discs from a particular region, it's best to save them up and rip them all at once. It bears repeating; you can only switch your Mac's DVD region five times.

If you do plan to convert many discs, I recommend getting an external DVD burner that is region free if you don't already have one in your Mac. Again, the Rip Different forums are helpful in selecting a workable drive. Pioneer, NEC and Plextor seem to be good choices. Avoid Sony and Panasonic (otherwise named Matshita, which many modern Macs have). There are also hacks available if your current DVD burner can't handle multiple regions, but I'm not even going to get into that. If you're comfortable with hacks, you already know where to find them.

Another option, if you have two networked Macs, is to set one to the region of the DVD's from which you're most likely to rip, and the second to the DVD's region to which you're most likely to burn, then simply transfer the files from one computer to the next.

Regardless of your method, let's say your Mac is now reading a region 2 disc and you've launched Mac the Ripper. Once it has recognized the disc, it will present you with various options. You can chose one region for the final burn, pick a few regions or pick all regions. You can rip the disc in its entirety, or you can just rip elements of it—selecting specific audio tracks, skipping those annoying previews, even choosing only certain chapters. Mac the Ripper comes with a good manual detailing your options and why you may want to be selective (don't be intimidated; it's a quick, easy read). In this case, I just chose to extract the entire disc. I left all of Mac the Ripper's settings at the default, except for my destination region selection. The default was for all regions, but some DVD players do have trouble with region free discs. Although I know mine doesn't, I decided to encode my new version for region 1 specifically. Better to be safe than sorry, and it's not like I'm going to playing this DVD in China, anyway. Some players get confused when the DVD is enabled for regions 7 (unassigned) and 8 (airplane/cruise ship) enabled, but enabling only regions 1 through 6 will pretty much cover the entire world and not sacrificing any compatibility.

I will point out that one of the reasons you may not want to extract everything is because of file size. The British release of Flash Gordon ships on a dual layer DVD. It's possible that if I'd left out the bonus features and a couple of the audio tracks (stereo and 5.1 surround, for example, leaving only 5.1 DTS surround), I could've fit the resulting file on a standard DVD instead of having to spend $60 of 15 Memorex dual layer DVDs. But, I wanted it all, so I spent the money.

Once my selections were made, I clicked "Go!" then waited about 45 minutes for the process to complete. This will vary depending upon the speed of your DVD drive and the size of the disc. When completed, I had a folder named FLASH_GORDON_SE on my hard drive, containing folders named AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. These are the newly regioned contents of the DVD. Seriously, folks, it's that simple. Back this up. Archive it. Do what you gotta do...you never know when you may need these files again.

If you've used my method of simply using one of the Mac's five region switching turns and you're done ripping the foreign region DVDs, you can now switch back to your home country's region. There may be a way to do this from within the system, but I couldn't find it, so I simply placed a region 1 disc back in the Mac and let the software ask me if I wanted to switch. With that done, I ejected the disc and put in my blank DVD.

There are different programs out there that will allow you to burn content to a DVD playable in your standard DVD player. Roxio's Popcorn is one, but they now include that capability in Toast Titanium 7 (which I recently reviewed for Applelinks), so I used that. As with the extraction process, this couldn't be easier. Simply tell Toast you're burning a video disc (as opposed to music or data), then click DVD-Video from VIDEO-TS in the Formats drawer. In the main Toast window, you'll see a large folder and a Select... button. Click the button, then choose the video that contains your AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders (it'll mostly like end in _SE). Remember to let Toast know to what media you're burning your video (this is selected in the bottom right of the window, right above the burn button). Mine defaulted to standard DVD, so I had to tell Toast I was using a dual layer DVD. Make sure your DVD player can read and write dual layer DVD discs before trying any of this, of course.

At this point, all you really have to do is click the burn icon, then sit back and wait another good long while. With the disc done, I popped it into my DVD player, and there it was! That Queen soundtrack remixed to the glory of 5.1 DTS audio! The most confusing movie trailer ever made! Brian friggin' Blessed's audio commentary! Again, although I was a bit disappointed by the slightly faster play, it didn't ruin my enjoyment of the film. And honestly, although the color is a bit off, it's still better than the transfer on the original (and now out of print) U.S. DVD release.

So, a couple minor grievances aside, the experiment was a success for me. I'll most likely try it next with a Japanese DVD...some vintage Godzilla, a Shonen Knife music video disc or that trippy live action Cutey Honey movie. The benefit there is that once I bypass the region encoding, the Japanese use NTSC, so I won't have to worry about NTSC/PAL issues. Regardless, although the process isn't perfect in all instances, it's surprisingly easy and very effective. And if, like me, you're not willing to wait forever for a foreign release to hit your country (if it ever does), this is absolutely the way to go.

Take that, you...MPAA region people...or whoever.