Saturday, June 21, 2008

How to format DVD movies for your Ipod on a Windows PC

By David B Smith

Far and wide people have found that they can get their DVD movies onto their new video iPod for free. How do they do that? It's straightforward actually. Truthfully, if you have ripped a movie onto the PSP before, you in all probability already know how to get your DVDs loaded into your iPod. The transfer procedure is not very different at all, and all you require is some good DVD-to-iPod-Video converter software.

In our opening example we'll use Cucusoft's iPod Video Converter + DVD to iPod Converter suite. The Cucusoft package is a fantastic video format converter, and has the following features:

* Rip DVD to iPod video right (no need to convert DVD to AVI or VOB first)

* Convert AVI, WMV, MPEG, RM, RMVB, ASF, MOV, DIVX, XVID, MPG to iPod MP4 or H264 format

* Easy-to-use and fast conversion

* Can also rip DVD to AVI, DivX, VCD, SVCD, and MPEG

Here's the process, step by step:

1. Download the iPod Video Converter + DVD to iPod Converter suite

Visit GoRipper.com to get the program file for the software suite. Once there, go to the Downloads section and abide by the download instructions on the page that appears. Keep the window open as the file downloads. Afterwards, install and run.

2. Load your DVD

Cucusoft's iPod Video Converter Suite has a well-ordered, blue user interface that is intuitive and easy to use. There should be a series of three buttons to the right of the interface that says:

* 'Video to iPod'

*'DVD to iPod', and

* 'Quit' (for quitting the program).

Click 'DVD to iPod' converter factor before loading your DVD.

To load your DVD, then click the 'Open DVD' button or choose 'Open DVD' from the 'File' drop down menu.

After loading, some titles will materialize on the list.

Here's a prompt: If you want to rip chapters or segments you like, you can also choose 'Open VOB or Mpeg' or 'Open' from the 'File' menu.

3. Choose your Files.

The main file of the video should be the lengthiest heading. If you don't want to convert the other titles (usually the special features in your DVD), you can remove them by selecting that particular label, right-clicking and 'Remove'.

4. Save your Video Files

At the lowermost portion of the list of chapter titles, you will see quite a lot of additional options. Look for the one that says 'Subtitle' beside a drop down menu box. Click on the arrow down radio button to set the 'Subtitle' to what you like. To 'Output Folder', type in the full path name or opt for the path where you want to save your video files by clicking 'Output Folder'.

5. Convert to Video iPod format

To start copying DVD to iPod video files, just click on the huge circular 'Convert' button at the bottom right side of the user interface. You do not need to set 'Input settings' and 'Output settings'.

Naturally, the Cucusoft way is merely one way of doing it. If you find that converting DVDs to iPod using Cucusoft's suite is too drawn out, check out the alternatives. There are several video-conversion suites available and the catalog is growing.

If you're mechanically competent, there is certainly software available that gives you more options over the conversion process than the Cucusoft suite, but if you feel you have got better things to do than study video codecs and bitrates, the straightforwardness of the Cucusoft solution renders it very appealing.

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