Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Converting DVD's to view on mobile devices.

Want to watch that new DVD on your mobile device? Here is a list of software/encoders to make it happen.

I use anydvd to remove the encryption from the DVD. It's not free but IMHO it's the best and easiest available. They have a free trial too. It just sits in the background and lets all the other DVD software think the inserted disk is not encrypted. I give it five stars.

If all you want is a back up copy of the disk in an easy to burn back to DVD format then use DVD Shrink along with anydvd. Here are a list of download locations. It also gets five stars.

If you want to create an .mp4 or .avi of the movie then Handbrake is the way to go. It has various presets that will encode the main movie direct to ipod/iphone/iTouch format. You can also tweak the format to encode to more generic formats. It gets 4 stars because it's a bi*** to get the formats correct if you don't have an ipod.

Apple folks are good to go at this point. The Handbrake conversion is all ready to be played on the device. If you have the HTC phone your not out of luck though. I've recently discovered Kinoma. It's an all in one media player/facebook/twitter/youtube/podcast/streaming radio/etc. player. Quite cool with a constantly updated library. They have a free version that's mostly the same as the paid version. Five stars too.

When all done the movies are about 400 MB in size so several will fit on your device.

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