It’s a two step process..

Firstly you rip the file from the DVD player and convert it to a small MP4 movie.

Then you copy the movie into itunes. Here’s how to do it step by step.

1. RIP THE MOVIE FROM THE CD:

Download a free program called handbrake from here.

Then:
1. Put in a DVD in your drive.
2. Run handbrake.
3. Select the DVD.
4. Select then the iPod preset on the right column. (You need to do this as the ipod will only recognise certain formats of movies.)
5. Press the start button.
6. Wait a few hours for it to finish!

( For more detailed instructions on handbrake see here)
There should now be a file on your desktop which is an ipod version of the movie.

2. COPY IT TO ITUNES 

1. Run itunes.
2. From the ‘File’ Menu select ‘Import’.

3. Browse to the file you created in the step above (see the picture below) and ‘Choose’.

It will now import the movie into itunes, and should copy to your ipod automatically next time you sync with your ipod.

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!

Well, I’m on a bit of a run here with my new samsung D900 mobile phone, the latest being what are the best settings to compress a movie to watch on my phone. The phones resolution is 320×240, which I think is similar to an ipod. I use Handbrake to encode DVD’s, you can also use these settings to export from Quicktime pro, but Handbrake is free.

FILE FORMAT: MP4
CODECS: MPEG-4/AAC Audio

VIDEO:
OUTPUT: 320×240 You may need to CROP to get the aspect ratio right, for example, 150 or so pixels off each side, depending on the original. Just play with the crop settings till the picture looks OK and not stretched.
FRAMERATE: 15 frames per seconds (fps) (Normal framerate is 25fps, but it’s hard to notice this slower framerate except for panning which is a bit staggered.)
AVERAGE VIDEO BITRATE: 200kbps (Any lower and you start to notice a decrease in quality. I tested 850, 500, 300, 250, 150 and 100kbps.)
2-pass encoding
AUDIO:
FORMAT: AAC
BITRATE: 128kbps.  (At 96 I could notice a discernable decrease in audio quality.)

I saved this under a profile called ‘phone’ and it works well. A 2 hour movie takes about 12 hours to encode, but comes out at about 500MB and is almost perfect quality on the small screen.

Due to limitations in the QuickTime Architecture, AVI video files containing MP3, WMA or AC3 audio tracks will not play directly in QuickTime based applications. You may experience stuttering, loss of sound, no sound or an error message.

We have written a useful application called “DivX Doctor II” which can fix these problems, and other issues QuickTime has with AVI files. You can download DivX Doctor II from http://doctor.3ivx.com/.
Here is the direct link to the file:

http://www.3ivx.com/codec/DivXDoctorII2.2.sit

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!