Kicking the Tires of the Drive-In

March 5, 2007   1 Comments Drive-In is a new DVD-Archiving application from the developers of Flip4Mac. This tool allows you to store your personal DVD movie collection locally on your mac, without loosing the quality and DVD extras.

Drive-In creates an image of the DVD which can be quickly access, loaded, and played through DVD-Player. We found that creating a DVD image was quick. Based on the SKU on the back of the case, Drive-In downloads the correct meta data for your movies (Directors, Actors, Ratings, etc). This also makes your images search able with Spotlight. Movies not found in the Amazon Database can be entered manually. Drive-In takes a step further and save the DVD Cover as icon for easy navigation through the finder.

Playback is as simple as selecting the DVD title and clicking play. To watch the DVD in Front Row load the image and launch Front Row. The DVD will be loaded as a disc in the DVD player module.



The public-beta will expire May 1, 2007 when you will need to purchase the final release if you wish to continue to use the images you created.

There are very few competitors to Drive-In. MacTheRipper, creates video_ts files, but does not have the metadata features. HandBrake rips the video, but not the quality, extra features and menus.

Overall we thoroughly enjoyed usind Drive-In. The application was intuitive and easy to use, like all Mac applications should be. Preserving the menus, extra features and quality of the DVD's was the key feature in our review. We would hope that the Flip4Mac developer team would include a more seamless integration with Front Row. This feature alone would have us HTPC guys lining up to purchase it.

Requirements: OS-X 10.4, G4, G5 or Intel-Based Mac, Internet for Activation and Movie Information Download.

Labels: Software