Copying DVD to iPod (Help)

[Terran Starek]

I just bought a Video iPod the other day, and I was surfing the web to figure out how to put the DVDs that I own onto it. I know this isn't illegal, since I'm putting my legal property onto my iPod, but it's a tough process, and I'm not super savvy when it comes to this stuff.

Can anyone direct me to a website tutorial on getting the DVD to .avi (or other suitable movie) formatt? I've got a program that will convert the .avi into iPod formatt, but I'm lost before that. :) Thanks for any help.

[Jedieb]

There aren't any instructions at the Apple site? That's where I'd start my search.

[Terran Starek]

Well, they show you how to convert your movie (after you have it on your hard drive) to be played on the iPod, but I don't know how to rip it from the DVD.

[Terran Starek]

I got it figured out.

I downloaded a program called DVD43, which disables the copyright protection on my DVD. (Again, I don't believe this is illegal, because this is my own DVD and I'm ripping it to my own iPod. It's completely for personal use. :)) Then, I run a program called Handbrake, which encodes the DVD from its VIDEO_TS files (.vob files, etc.) into .mp4, which is what iTunes reads. At the same time, it sizes it and formats it for watching on an iPod.

Anyway, that's the story for anyone who's interested. :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Were any of these programs free, by any chance? :angel I've been previewing a program that rips and reformats DVD to iPod for a while now, but it leaves a big "PREVIEW" in the middle of all my movies because I can't cough up the $40 to buy it. ^_^;

[Terran Starek]

Yes ma'am they are. Are you using PQDVD? I only ask that because it's $40 and I saw it online.

Anyway, here's what you need to do.

Download DVD43 (http://www.dvd43.com/). What this program does is strip the copyright from the DVD so you can rip it.

Download Handbrake for Windows (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tivo-mplayer/HandBrake-0.7.0-GUIAndCLI-20060115.zip?download). This program encodes directly from the DVD to .mp4 format for you iTunes/iPod.

Ok, so you've got both of them downloaded. First, run DVD43. It just sits in the background, in your system tray, with a little green happy face. Then, pop your DVD into the dirve. The green happy face will turn into a different face for a minute, then return to a green happy face (this takes maybe 10 seconds). The DVD is now ready.

Open Handbrake. Handbrake will ask for your directory - select your DVD drive. It will take just a moment to scan in the title, then it will come to the next screen. For a movie, in the "title" tab, select the longest track. I. E., Episode III is about 2 and a half hours. There are 7 DVD "titles" available for me to rip. 1 is 2:22:34, 2 is 00:01:41, 3 is 00:00:25, 4 is something else, etc. You would pick "title" 1, because it's the longest.

There are three very important settings. At the bottom of the first tab (General) is "bitrate." You should set this to 800. In the "Advanced Video" Tab is "codec." You should set this to x264. In the "Advance Audio" Tab, the only option should be set to 44100. You can tweak the rest if you like. Let the audio use the default - the other tracks are commentary and things, and you don't want to let your computer spend 2.5 hours ripping a movie to find out you put the wrong audio track in it!

I think that's about it. I typed this from memory, so that titles may not be exactly right, but the important settings are. I remember those clearly. :)

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Sweet - I had a question thread up about this about 6 months ago and could never figure out a simple way to rip my DVDs. The only one I could find had like 15 steps and 5 programs and didn't work anyway. ^_^;

[Terran Starek]

Yeah, I was looking through some pretty complicated rubbish! :P

On the "output file" name, always name it [insert movie title here].mp4. That way, you save it as .mp4 and you dont' have to convert it into iTunes. Then you can add it to your library and voila. :D