How to combine two DVDs into a single movie

Macworld commenter Lisban Osorio has a multimedia problem that faces a few of us. He writes:

My copy of the Godfather II comes on two DVD discs. I’d like to play it on my Apple TV as one continues file. How can I do that?

First, you’ll have to rip each disc, a process we’ve described many times. The free HandBrake continues to be my tool of choice for such chores. I’d suggest that you rip them using HandBrake’s Apple TV 3 preset to get the best looking video.

Once you have the ripped versions of your two movies you must find a way to join them. Although you can do this in iMovie and QuickTime 7 Pro, the operation can take hours. To speed up the process I use MKVToolNix an open-source utility that converts video files into the MKV format. Among its talents is MKVMerge, which will combine multiple movie files and export them as a single MKV file.

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