Here’s how to copy a DVD to your harddrive and convert it to a movie that will play on your iphone, ipod or in quicktime on your computer. Go to http://handbrake.fr/ and click on ‘download it now’ to download the latest version of handbrake.

Instal and run handbrake.

Insert the DVD you want to copy.

Click the ’source’ in the top left of the toolbar, and select the DVD.

Under ’source’ select the title and chapters that you want. You can work out the chapters by opening DVD player and looking in the information window. To verify them you can check the duration. Click ‘toggle presets’ in the toolbar and this will give you a pull out window where you can select the output quality that you want.

AppleTV is better quality, iPod is lower quality and a smaller file.

I made my own setting called phone for my samsung mobile phone, which makes a very small file. I used: MP4 file, MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio. Video was 320×240 and 15 frames per second and 350kbps. Audio was 128 kbps and 24khz. This was as small a filesize as I could make with still an OK quality. Select a destination directory (eg desktop) and press the start button. It can take quite a while, allow a few hours!


I have a lot of .mov files. Each file is about 1 hour of movie footage but compressed to only 200-300MB. When I import them into iMovie it tries to convert them to dv files. Do you know a way to burn a collection of .mov files to a dvd so that they can be read with a normal dvd player?

Good question, let me explain a little bit about what you can and can’t do with CDs and DVDs.

You can’t put .mov files on a DVD to watch on a normal DVD player, but you can put the on a CD as a VCD to watch on a normal DVD player!

There in only one kind of DVD movie format – DVD.  But people started putting videos onto CD’s because it was cheaper, this is called VCD. When VCD format started becoming popular, companies produced DVD players that could play VDC’s.
Notice that although VCD is video on a CD,it can be played on most DVD players, but not CD players.

There are three main ways of putting video on a CD, from oldest to newest…

1. VCD 352×240. 72 minutes on a 72 minute audio CD. Very popular and will play on most DVD players.
2. SVCD: 480×576, 60 minutes of good quality SVCD on a CD. Slightly less compatible than VCD but better quality.
3. DivX. The newest video codec becoming very popular. higher compression and quality, but least compatible only new ‘DivX Certified’ DVD players play them.

Summary:

• VCD is older and worst but most compatible.
• SVCD is in the middle.
• DivX is the newest and best but least compatible.

I did a trial. I had a 600 MB DV file. I made DVD, a VCD, a SVCD and a DivX CD
Here’s the sized the turned out at:

• DVD: 76MB
• SVCD: 49MB
• VCD:30MB
• DivX:6MB

Now for the test I put them all in my 1 year old LG DVD player, they all played except the DivX one.

DivX is quite reasonable at 624×352, 1200kbps, with MP3 Audio. This is better than TV quality, not quite DVD quality, but good to watch. 45 minutes of Boston Legal takes 350Mb.

Unfortunately you can’t make a VCD on a DVD. You can only put VCD on a CD.
If you want to store a lot of video on a DVD disk you can copy it onto the DVD as data, but it won’t play on a DVD player.

Therefore you may as well go for the best – DivX. You could get over 4 hours of DivX on a DVD.

How to make a VCD….

The best free program is called burn. Download Burn from here.

It does all the converting for you. Just run it, drag and drop the quicktime movie onto it, select the format you want (VCD, SVCD, DVD or DivX) and click burn!

1. Insert the DVD/CD into your drive.

2. Run the TERMINAL application (In your Appplications Utilities Folder)

You will get a little window with a prompt something this: Macintosh:~ wayne$

3.Type the following and then hit return:

drutil status

It will give you some info like this:

Vendor Product Rev
SONY DVD RW DW-U21A AADB

Type: DVD-R Name: /dev/disk2
Cur Write: 4x DVD Sessions: 1
Max Write: 4x DVD Tracks: 1

This is information about your DVD/CD drive and the important thing to notice is the name, it will be /dev/disk1 or /dev/disk2

4. If it is disk1 type this: (If the name is different (eg disk2) then just replace all the disk1 references with disk2.)

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

This will make the DVD icon disappear from the desktop.
5. Type the following:

dd if=/dev/disk1 of=~/Desktop/file.iso bs=2048
6. Wait about 10 or 20 minutes while it now makes an image of the CD/DVD onto your desktop.

When it’s finished it will give a message like this:

2170784+0 records in
2170784+0 records out
4445765632 bytes transferred in 1335.111379 secs (3329884 bytes/sec)

7. Type this to make the DVD reappear on the desktop and you are done:

diskutil mountDisk /dev/disk1

It’s quite easy.
You use apple’s built in disk utility (in your utilities folder) to make a disk image of the dvd (select the DVD then select ‘new image’), it copies it exactly. The default options of compressed and none are fine.

You then use disk utility to burn the disk image you have just created back to a dvd. Select the image and choose ‘burn.’

It must be your own dvd, not a commercial one to to this.

This works with data DVD’s as well as movie DVD’s.

Wayne

1. Download and run “DVD Backup”. (The developers site has been down for a while, here is here. http://howto.dubbo.org/public/DVDBackup 1.3.sit
2. Insert the DVD. If the Apple DVD player runs automatically, quit it.
3. In DVDBackup click on ‘Add DVD Files’
4. Select the DVD in the left column and then click ‘OPEN.’
5. Make sure that Remove CSS Encryption is selected.
6. Click Process Files and select a name and location for where you want the DVD files to end up.

To Playback the DVD you need to do the following:

1. Open Apple DVD PLayer.
2. Go to Menu called FILE:OPEN VIDEO_TS or on newer versions FILE:OPEN DVD MEDIA
3. Select the VIDEO_TS folder of the movie you want to open.

When you’re watching a DVD do you get annoyed that there are those compulsory credits at the start, and copyright warnings, and you can’t skip them. Well, you can skip them with this simple program that modifies your apple DVD player so that it ignores the directions on the DVD about which bits are compulsory viewing.

You can download it from here:

http://xvi.rpc1.org/playerpatch.html

Then just run it, hit return when it prompts you to, type your password when it prompts you to, and then you’re away!

STOP PRESS: In the new Leopard DVD player you can do what you want so no hack is needed in Leopard. Thankyou Apple!

Here’s how I think I got it working, I tried a few things, this is what I think did it:

1. Downloaded FrontRowUpdate.dmg from apple web site, and copied FrontRowUpdate.mpkg from the disk image to the desktop.

2. Downloaded Enabler1.2.1.dmg and ran “Front Row Enabler” and selected “Enable Installation” which I believe hacks FrontRowUpdate that is on my desktop so it can be installed on any mac. (Before this step I tried installing FrontRowUpdate and it said you require a G5 something or other imac to install.)

3. Installed Front row by clicking on the new modified installer on my desktop. Restart.

3. Downloaded FRE.dmg and ran “Front Row Enabler” (this one has a nice icon and is diffferent to the above one) and then clicked the ‘install’ button. This I believe modifies some core services bezel file or something. Restart. DON”T DO THIS STEP EVER AGAIN or it can cause your menu to disappear or something like that.

4. Went to the system preferences and selected keyboard shortcuts in ‘mouse and keyboard’ preference pane and changed it from apple-escape to apple-F4. (Apple-escape clashes with Quicksilver)

5. Then I just programmed my ATI wonder remote so that when I press the TV button it presses apple-F4 and launches Front Row. I also had to set the button ‘C’ on my ATI wonder remote to be escape so I could exit from Front Row.

The Buttons that Control Front Row are right, left, return and escape.

There are good instructions here:
http://whenderson.blogspot.com/2006/03/installing-front-row-121-on-any-mac.html