Some people love a movie so much that they watch it time and time again. But spinning a disc over and over will surely wear it down to the point that it’s not watchable anymore.

So, instead of buying a new DVD copy every time the old one has been scratched to bits; a better solution would be to convert the movie inside the fragile physical disc into a digital file, store it inside a computer hard drive or portable media player, and watch the copy as many times as you want.

Apple has succesfully made the iPod the most well known name of portable media players, thanks to the great design, intuitive interface, and the high quality of the product. This makes the iPod the perfect home for the converted DVD movies. This article will help you effortlessly put a DVD movie onto your iPod.

The missing ripper

No doubt the best free tool to extract the content of a DVD as a video file is Handbrake. This is like a one click solution for your DVD converting needs.

But there are many online discussions mentioning that converting the DVD directly using Handbrake doesn’t always give users the best result. To keep the result as good as possible, the DVD has to be ripped first to the hard drive before being converted by Handbrake.

There’s only one name that keeps popping up as the best free tool to rip DVD: MacTheRipper.

This is a free app, but you actually have to do a little web searching to get the download link. There’s a story behind these extra steps : MacTheRipper is developed in a country where ripping DVD’s (even the ones that you legally own) is forbidden by law, so the developer had to take the down the link.  To honor the developer’s goodwill, I will not include any link here either. But worry not, finding the app is not that difficult. -cough-torrent-cough- ahem. ‘Scuse me.

Rip the DVD into a VIDEO_TS folder, then open the folder as a source from Handbrake.

Choose Your Configurations

In order not to mess things up with all the complicated configurations, the first thing you need to do is to choose the resulting file you want to produce out of the (ripped) DVD.

There are some pre-configured settings that you can choose from the preset pane on the right. Choose iPod because that’s the topic today. Choose Low-rez if you only want to watch the video on your iPod, but choose Hi-rez if you are also thinking of plugging the iPod to your TV and watching the movie from the real tube.

The video configuration will always change, reflecting what setting you choose from the right pane. Unless you understand what you are doing, I suggest you don’t change anything from the configuration in the main window.

Instead, go to the Audio & Subtitles tab. I also prefer not to mess with the audio configuration, but this is the place to go if you want to add subtitles to the converted video. Just choose one subtitle from the available option.

The last step is to click the “Start” button above and make yourself some coffee while waiting for the process to finish.

If you have more than one movie to be converted, click the “Add to Queue” button after finishing the settings for one movie, then move on to the next movie. After all the movies are standing in line, you can click the “Start” button.

After the conversion process is finished, all of the converted movies will be added to iTunes and automatically synchronized to your iPod when the gadget is connected to your Mac.

Now you can safely keep those discs and enjoy the pod.

Handbrake is also available in Windows and Linux version, while MacTheRipper is Mac only.

How do you use rip your movies for iPod viewing?   Do you have an easier way to do it?   If so, why not show off your expertise in the comments below?

By Jeffry Thurana via this link