Lionheart
May 25th, 2010, 09:14
Hey all,
For those of you that have a nice DVD collection and would like to migrate some to your iPod device, you can do this with Hand Brake. Its a pretty nice program and so dang simple its pretty amazing. For me, until I found this one, all the others seemed a little bit too sophisticated. You had a zillion settings to setup and instructions were usually lacking. With Handbrake, you basically 'Scan', select output format, and click Go.
Format time will usually be over an hour.
For those of you doing this in Mac OSX mode, you will need the 64big VLC program as Hand Brake uses this. 2 weeks ago when I got this, VLC 64bit was taken off line. I did find it at another website though via a google search. VLC is a media player for Mac's and it is freeware. Hand Brake in Mac 'needs' this. I do not know about Windows mode versions though. It may not need it for Windows OS, probably using Media Player for that.
ALBUM ART
One of the things that Hand Brake cannot do is select Album Art (CD Case Cover) for your movie, so programs like iTunes will use 'frame 1' as the screen icon of the movie. But.... You can edit/change this. In iTunes, you can right click on the movie and get Album Cover. If that doesnt give you anything, then right click again and choose Get Info. In the top of that section, click the Album Art tab, far right. There, you can drag and drop your fave high rez poster art onto the window and click OK or Save.
Now, if you play movies through nice media players and want all your data to show up in its remarks and data readouts, there is a very cool program that adds all this, including permanent Album Art (movie poster in this case) tags. Its freeware, very nice, very easy, and called MetaX. Now, I downloaded this in Mac. I do not know if this is available in Windows. Just google it and see.
For iPad, you will want a really nice, high rez poster art. If you find one online that is only about 300 by 450, it will be fuzzy in iPad. Try to get one that is 600 to 1000 or greater in resolution and in iPad it will look proper. In iPod/iPhone, it doesnt matter as the screen is quite small. 300 width pixels will be fine.
RESOLUTIONS:
For iPhone and iPod Touch, you may wish to compile to iPhone/iPod format. This will not be the best resolution though for playing on your computer.
For iPad, I was told that Apple TV format is best. This is 'M4V' format, full screen size. It plays great on my iPad and on my iPhone. The screen on iPad is extreme resolution, so the better the rez, the better it will look. Its not limited like iPhone. I place some movies in my iPhone that are Apple movie format and they run fine. They are larger files though, so its taking up space.
FILE SIZES IN M4V FORMAT
My movies usually compile to around a Gig to 1.8 Gigs, as in Avatar, which is a very long movie. With one DVD of 3 episodes of Last Exile, it is 849 Megs or .849 Gigs. If you have a 32 or 64 Gig device, you can imagine how many movies you can put in that thing.
So now, the next time you are stuck at the car license office for an hour, or in the Hospital waiting room, or waiting for the wife to finish shopping at the Sakowitz special sales day event, you now can put on your ear-buds, relax, and watch a good movie on your device.
:d
For those of you that have a nice DVD collection and would like to migrate some to your iPod device, you can do this with Hand Brake. Its a pretty nice program and so dang simple its pretty amazing. For me, until I found this one, all the others seemed a little bit too sophisticated. You had a zillion settings to setup and instructions were usually lacking. With Handbrake, you basically 'Scan', select output format, and click Go.
Format time will usually be over an hour.
For those of you doing this in Mac OSX mode, you will need the 64big VLC program as Hand Brake uses this. 2 weeks ago when I got this, VLC 64bit was taken off line. I did find it at another website though via a google search. VLC is a media player for Mac's and it is freeware. Hand Brake in Mac 'needs' this. I do not know about Windows mode versions though. It may not need it for Windows OS, probably using Media Player for that.
ALBUM ART
One of the things that Hand Brake cannot do is select Album Art (CD Case Cover) for your movie, so programs like iTunes will use 'frame 1' as the screen icon of the movie. But.... You can edit/change this. In iTunes, you can right click on the movie and get Album Cover. If that doesnt give you anything, then right click again and choose Get Info. In the top of that section, click the Album Art tab, far right. There, you can drag and drop your fave high rez poster art onto the window and click OK or Save.
Now, if you play movies through nice media players and want all your data to show up in its remarks and data readouts, there is a very cool program that adds all this, including permanent Album Art (movie poster in this case) tags. Its freeware, very nice, very easy, and called MetaX. Now, I downloaded this in Mac. I do not know if this is available in Windows. Just google it and see.
For iPad, you will want a really nice, high rez poster art. If you find one online that is only about 300 by 450, it will be fuzzy in iPad. Try to get one that is 600 to 1000 or greater in resolution and in iPad it will look proper. In iPod/iPhone, it doesnt matter as the screen is quite small. 300 width pixels will be fine.
RESOLUTIONS:
For iPhone and iPod Touch, you may wish to compile to iPhone/iPod format. This will not be the best resolution though for playing on your computer.
For iPad, I was told that Apple TV format is best. This is 'M4V' format, full screen size. It plays great on my iPad and on my iPhone. The screen on iPad is extreme resolution, so the better the rez, the better it will look. Its not limited like iPhone. I place some movies in my iPhone that are Apple movie format and they run fine. They are larger files though, so its taking up space.
FILE SIZES IN M4V FORMAT
My movies usually compile to around a Gig to 1.8 Gigs, as in Avatar, which is a very long movie. With one DVD of 3 episodes of Last Exile, it is 849 Megs or .849 Gigs. If you have a 32 or 64 Gig device, you can imagine how many movies you can put in that thing.
So now, the next time you are stuck at the car license office for an hour, or in the Hospital waiting room, or waiting for the wife to finish shopping at the Sakowitz special sales day event, you now can put on your ear-buds, relax, and watch a good movie on your device.
:d