Guide to copying a DVD to a digital file

Its fairly straight forward to copy a DVD to a blank DVD, but what if you want to copy just the movie to a file? Here is a guide on how to copy a DVD to your hard disk for playback on devices such as an AppleTV, Xbox 360, PS3 or a video capable iPod.
In this guide, I am going to use my Mac mini running OS X Leopard to copy a DVD for playback on an AppleTV.

Step 1: Encode the DVD to a file

Download Handbrake and install from www.handbrake.fr (Mac OS and Windows compatible - free). Insert the DVD into your DVD drive and then launch Handbrake. You will be prompted to locate the video source so browse to the DVD and select the VIDEO_TS folder.

Step 2: Configure the settings

To start off with, I would advise that you use the many available presets that come with Handbrake (see picture below). I have my settings configured as below which include "AAC + AAC3" audio for 5.1 surround sound pass-through and also uses 2 pass encoding which doubles the processing time but improves the picture quality.

Step 3: Begin the copying process

You can either click the "Start" button or "Add to Queue" if you have multiple DVD (folders) to process. This is the longest part of the process and can take up to  movie length x 1.5 on a modest computer.

Step 4: Tag the file

I use a program called MetaX which tags the movie file with the DVD cover art  as well as other information such as Genre, Storyline, Rating etc. It does this by searching web sites such as Amazon and IMDB. Check the information you require and then click the "Write and Share" button. You can download MetaX from http://www.kerstetter.net/page53/page54/page54.html (Mac OS - free).

That's it! Your file is now ready to be copied into iTunes (or whatever you choose to use to manage your movies and sent to the AppleTV (or whatever device you have connected to your TV).

For more information on encoding movies with Handbrake, please visit:

http://handbrake.fr/?article=documentation

http://handbrake.fr/?article=documentation

WWDC '08: My 2t

Yesterday, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for the World Wide Developer Conference and made a number of announcement. Some old and some new; here is my take:

iPhone SDK: Not much new here and just more demos of how easy it is to code for the iPhone. This, in my opinion, was the most boring part of the keynote.

The only new item was how the iPhone would handle applications that need to keep running in the background such as Instant Messaging clients. Apple will use a push notification service that developers can tap into to push text alerts, icon badges and sounds to the iPhone. This is a brilliant idea as it allows such programs to continue getting notifications without draining memory and battery resources on the phone (loved the picture of the Windows Mobile task manager to illustrate this point).

The iPhone SDK (now at beta 7) will go live on July 11th.

iPhone OS 2.0: Again, nothing much we didn't already know about in here. A lot of focus has gone into Enterprise features such as Exchange support (push email, contacts and calendars), Cisco VPN support, enforced security policies, remote wipe, WPA2/802.1X, certificates and identities etc.

Apple has also tweaked the existing applications by adding instant search to AddressBook, multi-email deletion/move, support for iWork documents and all MS Office documents.

I suspect more will be revealed when the iPhone OS 2.0 is released on July 11th. Here's hoping for Copy/Paste and a better Bluetooth stack (A2DP)!

iPhone 3G: with the new version of the iPhone OS, Apple has also announced a new version of the iPhone. Dubbed the iPhone 3G, it adds two hardware upgrades, namely, 3G (HSDPA) connectivity and a-GPS receiver. Everything else, spec wise, remains the same. The back of the phone is now a glossy plastic white or black. As with the original iPhone, I will reserve judgement until I actually hold one of these in my greasy palm.

Apple has halved the price of the iPhone to $199 (£99) for the 8GB model (available in black only) and $299 (£159) for the 16GB model (available in black and white).

MobileMe: MobileMe is Apple's take on Cloud computing. As a subscriber of Apple's .Mac service, this update has been long overdue. MobileMe will offer push email, contacts and calendars just like a hosted Exchange account but will also offer a photo gallery and snazzy web 2.0  apps for access to these services. The services will cost $99 (£60) per year and includes 20GB of storage.

Anyone else notice the resemblance between the MobileMe logo and the Windows Me  logo? Creepy!

Mac OS X - Snow Leopard: For the second year running, OS X has taken a backseat to the iPhone at WWDC. In fact, Steve Jobs only mentioned this upcoming version in passing during the keynote. Not much is know about this cat except that Apple has put a hold on new features and will instead focus on performance, stability and frameworks to move the OS into the future (I have a feeling this is how they came to the name "Snow Leopard").  Snow Leopard will bring native Exchange support to OS X applications, read/write support for ZFS file system,  extends the 64-bit technology to address up to 16TB (terabytes) of memory, improve support for multi-core processors and OpenCL (allows developers to tap into the processing power of the GPU for general purpose computing)

I actually like this plan. In this day of "bringing the wow" at the cost of everything, it is very refreshing to see a company focus on tuning its OS to save hard disk space and gain performance. I do however hope that they don't charge full price for this update.

OS X Snow Leopard is not due out until June 2009.

Summary:

As with just about any Apple event, there were a lot of rumours, hype and speculation as to what was going to get announced. Unfortunately this leads to many people feeling disappointed with reality (really, expecting Apple to announce a new iPod at a developer conference was simply not going to happen).  I for one am pretty happy with the direction Apple is going.

Many people see the iPhone as a hardware device akin to a Sony Ericsson this or HTC that  and they point out its missing features. They are missing the bigger picture. The iPhone IS the start of the third great platform (Desktop belongs to Microsoft, Internet belongs to Google,  Smart-phone - no clear winner). Unlike other Smart-phones, the iPhone is built on the best desktop OS on the market and has a great, well thought out ecosystem. On top of that, one cannot underestimate the fact that it is being steered by the company that invented the personal computer. While this may sound like the rantings of a rabid fanboy, one cannot argue with history. Apple lost its market lead in the desktop OS market due to its own mistakes such not listening to customers, alienating developers, inability to form partnerships and over-pricing its hardware. Looking at where the iPhone is today, you can see that  Apple  clearly learnt its lessons. They have added most of the features people requested, the SDK is free and has had over 250,000 downloads (WWDC was sold out to over 5000 attendees), it has partnered with key players such as Microsoft (for Exchange/ActiveStink....sync), Google (for Google Maps and mail) and Yahoo (Yahoo push mail and contacts) and finally slashed the price of the phone by half!

With the above information,  I have no doubt that the iPhone will surpass and turn Windows Mobile into another PlayForSure effort for Microsoft (who will then release the ZuneFone). It will however face a tough fight unseating the Blackberry platform from the Enterprise.

iPhone Bookmarklets

The Safari browser on the iPhone is probably the best mobile web browser out there. It does however some shortcoming and some of these can be addressed by using bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are snippets of JavaScript code that you can run in a browser to perform certain functions. To add a bookmarklet to your iPhone, create a bookmark/favourite in Safari/IE (on your Mac/PC)pointing to any web site (I use www.google.com)  and then edit its address to the bookmarklet's JavaScript code.  Here are the bookmarklets that I am currently using on my iPhone:

1. Bare Bones: This little gem I wrote myself and basically prompts the user for a web site address. Once that's gathered, it passes the address through Google and returns a lighter version of the web site. This is especially great when using GPRS/Edge as the data connection is slower. Hopefully this will be retired when the 3G iPhone comes out :-)

javascript:var%20url%20=%20prompt%20(%22Please%20enter%20the%20url%22,%22%22);var%20google%20=%20%22http://google.com/gwt/n?u=%22;var%20result%20=%20google%20+%20url;window.location%20=%20result;

2. Bare Bonsify: In the same vein as the Bare Bones bookmarklet, this one will convert all links on any web site to return a light version of the linked web site

javascript:var%20as;var%20google;var%20i;google='http://google.com/gwt/n?u=';as=document.getElementsByTagName('a');for%20(i=0;i%3Cas.length;i++)%7Bvar%20org;var%20result;org%20=%20as%5Bi%5D.href;result%20=%20google%20+%20org;as%5Bi%5D.href%20=%20result;%7Dalert('all%20links%20have%20been%20bare-boned');

3. iTransgromify: The clever bookmarklet will analyse a web page and convert any links to YouTube flash video to return the .H264 encoded equivalent which can then be played straight on the iPhone!

javascript:if%20(typeof%20iTransmogrify%20==%20%27undefined%27)%20%7Bd%20=%20document;s%20=%20d.createElement(%27script%27);s.setAttribute(%27src%27,%20%27http://itransmogrify.googlecode.com/files/iTransmogrify.js?q=%27%20+%20(new%20Date).getTime());d.getElementsByTagName(%27head%27)%5B0%5D.appendChild(s);%7Dvoid%200;

4. Find on this page: will prompt for text to find on the current page. The matches are then highlighted in yellow.

javascript:void%28s%3Dprompt%28%27Find%20text%3A%27%2C%27%27%29%29%3Bs%3D%27%28%27+s+%27%29%27%3Bx%3Dnew%20RegExp%28s%2C%27gi%27%29%3Brn%3DMath.floor%28Math.random%28%29*100%29%3Brid%3D%27z%27%20+%20rn%3Bb%20%3D%20document.body.innerHTML%3Bb%3Db.replace%28x%2C%27%3Cspan%20name%3D%27%20+%20rid%20+%20%27%20id%3D%27%20+%20rid%20+%20%27%20style%3D%5C%27color%3A%23000%3Bbackground-color%3Ayellow%3B%20font-weight%3Abold%3B%5C%27%3E%241%3C/span%3E%27%29%3Bvoid%28document.body.innerHTML%3Db%29%3Balert%28%27Found%20%27%20+%20document.getElementsByName%28rid%29.length%20+%20%27%20matches.%27%29%3Bwindow.scrollTo%280%2Cdocument.getElementsByName%28rid%29%5B0%5D.offsetTop%29%3B

5. Open links in new window: converts all links on a web page to open in a new window.

javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20a=doc.comument.getElementsByTagName('a');for(var%20i=0,j=a.length;i%3Cj;i++)%7Ba%5Bi%5D.setAttribute('target','_blank');var%20img=document.createElement('img');img.setAttribute('class',%20'new-window');img.setAttribute('src','data:image/gif;base64,'+'R0lGODlhEAAMALMLAL66tBISEjExMdTQyBoaGjs7OyUlJWZmZgAAAMzMzP///////wAAAAAAAAAAAAAA'+'ACH5BAEAAAsALAAAAAAQAAwAAAQ/cMlZqr2Tps13yVJBjOT4gYairqohCTDMsu4iHHgwr7UA/LqdopZS'+'DBBIpGG5lBQH0GgtU9xNJ9XZ1cnsNicRADs=');img.setAttribute('style','width:16px!important;height:12px!important;border:none!important;');a%5Bi%5D.appendChild(img);%7D%7D)();