Put your DVDs (and Blu-rays) in the attic!

With DVDFab open, under DVD or Blu-ray select the main movie option. When your disc is in, it will begin scanning for valid video files.

DVDFab tries to choose the right title, and selects the audio and subtitle tracks. You can choose as many as you'd like - more options increases file size, and I'm only going to show using one audio and subtitle track. If you are unsure if you have selected the correct video or audio title, there is a preview window in the bottom left.

By default DVDFab will attempt to make a DVD backup of your video. Since we are converting to a digital file, we just want to rip the movie to a folder on the hard drive. Click the browse button to select the folder you want to use. I created a new folder and named it "Ripped". Select the folder and choose OK.

Double check your file destination - if following this tutorial, it should show the folder C:\Ripped.
Volume Label - now is a good time to make sure the volume label matches the title of the movie you are ripping.
After checking these items, go ahead and click "start" in the bottom right corner.

If your disc is in good shape, you should see the completion notification. If your disc is scratched, it may alert you to disc read errors. As you can see in the highlighted statistic area, this rip took almost 25 minutes. If you are ripping more movies, click OK and finish (your disc likely ejected on its own), put in the next movie, and repeat the steps above. If you're done ripping, you can close the program.

When DVDFab is done ripping, here is how the folders look. We told it to rip the movie to C:\Ripped. It created a subfolder MainMovie (the method of ripping we chose) and another subfolder MUCH_ADO_ABOUT_NOTHING (the volume title from the final options before starting the rip).

Open Handbrake and go to "Tools" menu, select "Options". We need to tell the program where to save the files we are converting. I clicked the "Browse" button, and added a new folder I called "Compressed".

If you want subtitles, you'll need to configure this tab. You can set a preferred language, and choose for the subtitles to default to that language. Make sure you check the box to add closed captions when available.

To set the default preset, select the profile you want to use, click the set default button in the corner, and accept the change.

I've chosen the Apple TV 2 preset for my default setting - my reasons are:
1) Compatible with nearly all playback devices connected to a TV or computer
2) 5.1 surround sound compatibility
3) I don't use mobile devices for video playback

Limitation:
1) 720p MAX resolution - but that looks great for my needs (50 in and 40 in TVs are my biggest playback devices)

You can choose whatever you want - maybe you'll only use this for mobile devices, or maybe you want 1080p resolution. You can learn more about the presets on the Handbrake forums.

We're all set up to begin converting videos!

Choose the source of the movie you'd like to convert - click on the "Source" button and select "Folder". Browse to the folder C:\Ripped\MainMovie\THE_NAME_YOU_GAVE_THE_RIPPED_MOVIE. In this example, we will choose the folder MUCH_ADO_ABOUT_NOTHING.

After Handbrake loads the folder, you'll see it automatically take care of all the details.
1) It automatically load the title (since we ripped the main movie, there is only one title)
2) It automatically names the file based on the folder name we load

Double check the file name. I usually remove the title number at the end, but if I'm converting a TV series, I leave it in so I can identify and rename the files later. When you're happy with the file name, go ahead and push the "Start" button!

So I added the year of the movie to the file name - this is to help me organize my library and to help some other software I use to identify the movie. I'll run through that another day. As you can see at the bottom, this movie is going to take a couple of hours to process- I was using an older laptop to prepare the walkthrough.
In the prime of my complete digital conversion, I did about 10 movies per day. I think I've converted around 200 or so. Now, I just do them as I buy them.