If you have ever converted your old VHS video cassettes to DVD you will know how frustrating and laborious the process can be.
The idea of now converting your DVDs to a format that can be played on a multimedia device could be quite daunting. Handbrake is another free application that easily converts a DVD to the popular mp4 format.
Using handbrake really could not be simpler. Double click the HandBrake icon and it will load the following easy to follow window :
Click the “Browse” button and locate the video_ts folder on the DVD and let handbrake do the rest. Note Handbrake does not work on encrpyted DVDs. Handbrake is a full featured application and allows the user to select a size (MBs) for the final file and offers two pass encoding for higher quality output.
HandBrake is a GPL’d multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter. HandBrake was originally available on the BeOS, but now has been ported over to MacOS X, GNU/Linux and now Windows.
Supported sources:
- Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (even encrypted)
- PAL or NTSC
- AC-3, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks
Outputs:
- File format: MP4, AVI or OGM
- Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer encoding)
- Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)
Misc features
- Chapter selection
- Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
- Integrated bitrate calculator
- Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
- Grayscale encoding
Top Tip : If you own DVDs of music videos generally each video is a DVD chapter. Handbrake allows you to rip chapters seperately so you can rip indvidual mp4s of each song.
If you own a Mac and do not have Handbrake installed click here.
[Note : This tutorial is for use with DVDs owned by the ipod / iphone owner. We do not condone piracy. ]
