Ripping your DVDs to a playable format (XBMC, laptops, iPhone/iPad, etc)

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I get asked this question a lot: “How can I play my DVDs on my _____ (insert device name)?”  Well, here’s how:

Overview:

  1. Rip your DVDs to your hard drive
  2. If needed, convert your DVDs to the format that will work with your device
Step 1: Rip your DVDs to your hard drive
  • Download and install DVDFab (the trial version is fine)
  • When you start DVDFab, it will tell you it is the trial version (which is fine… we’ll be using HD Decrypter, which is free)
    • Click the “Start DVDFab” button on the “Please Register” window
  • Insert your DVD and let DVDFab analyze it
  • Choose a target (a folder in our case), label the output (usually the name of the DVD) and decide if you want DVDFab to shrink your DVD output file (usually I choose DVD5)
    •  (click image to zoom)
  • Click “Start” and it should rip the DVD to your Target Folder
  • When it is done, browse to your target folder and you will see a “FullDisc” subfolder.  Open the “FullDisc” folder and voila!  The contents of your DVD are right there!  (the AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS subfolders will be within the folder that represents your DVD)
But how do I play it on my computer?
To play the movie from your hard drive when it is in this format, you’ll need a program that can read VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders:
  • Download and install VLC
  • Start VLC and go to Media > Open Folder
  • Browse to your movie’s folder (in my case “Charly”) to the point where you see your AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS subfolders and click “Select Folder”
  • Your DVD will now play from your hard drive!  Use your mouse to select the DVD menus.
  • You can also hover over the buttons at the bottom of the VLC window to see what they do (e.g. Full Screen, fast forward, next chapter, etc)
Step 2: Convert your DVDs to the format you want to play on your _____ (iPad or iPhone or whatever)
So, you want to play this movie on your iPad, iPhone, TouchPad, or just make it into a single media file so you don’t have to use VLC?  No problem!
  • Download and install Handbrake
  • Start Handbrake and set a default output folder – ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Options’ > ‘General’ tab > ‘Default Path’ (set it to your desktop or something)
  • Click the “Source” drop down and choose “Folder” (since our DVD is now contained in a folder on our hard drive
  • Browse to the VIDEO_TS folder and select it
  • Handbrake will analyze the folder and automatically pick the entire movie (instead of the bonus features, for example)
  • On the right pane choose your format (e.g. for HP TouchPad and iPads choose “iPad”, for iPhone choose “iPhone”, if you just want a single media file choose “Normal”)
    • You can tweak all sorts of settings.  For most of us choosing a default format is fine
  • Click “Start” and it will start converting.
  • That’s it!  You should now be able to drag and drop your newly created media file onto your HP TouchPad (when connect via USB) or into iTunes so it can sync with you iPad or onto your network share so you can play it with XBMC (okay, I haven’t tried this with XBMC, instead I drag the entire movie folders onto my network share and XBMC plays the DVD from the folder.  I do this because I want XBMC to play my movies as if they were true DVDs, not media files).
But I don’t want to convert my DVD folders (the video_ts and audio_ts folders) to be a single media file.  I want to play my DVDs from these folders but the folders are too big, what do I do?
Running out of hard drive space, eh?  Well, you can shrink your VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders even more by using DVDShrink (you can’t download it from DVDShrink.org, you have to download it from somewhere else).
Once you have DVDShrink loaded, you can compress your VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders even more to save on hard drive space.

Keeping your Computer Running Smoothly

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Here is what I recommend:

Anti-Malware
* (free) http://www.malwarebytes.org (make sure the web page looks like this: http://screencast.com/t/GlZHYhAB4N )  If you want to download from my site you can get the exe file here.) After downloading and installing it, you’ll want to update it and run it.  I recommend a full scan.  It may need to restart after the full-scan is run.  Run this once a week or when needed.  (I just run it when needed).  The for pay version has real-time protection.

Anti-Virus
 * (free) Microsoft anti-virus: Microsoft Security Essentials.  (But you don’t get phone support with them).  This has real time virus protection, and it will warn you if it hasn’t run in awhile.

Web Browser
 * Firefox + AdBlock Plus (I use Fanboy’s Filter List… I know that sounds like greek right now but when you install Adblock Plus it asks you what filter list you want to use, I picked “Fanboy’s Filter List)
OR
* Google Chrome + Adblock Plus for Google Chrome

Router Configuration
* FamilyShield DNS (read about it here, you can sign up on the right, you don’t have to give your email address either).

Crashplan not working as expected, using rsync as my backup’s backup

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Two commands I’m trying to refine into a script and I don’t want to forget:

mount -t smbfs //Susan@192.168.1.115/r share
rsync -rlptDv --modify-window=1 ~/Library/ ~/share/rsync_bak/bethgiven/Library/

Why?  Because, my external drive keeps getting disconnected and I’m going to potentially start backing a few things up over the network… wahoo.

Family Gift Giving getting hard to manage?

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This just came across my email:

Family Gift Registry (Check out their about page to read everything it does)

Essentially, this guy (Chris) saw a need in his family when it came to gift giving.  He wrote the Family Gift Registry to make it easy to manage all the gift giving at Christmas-time and still keep things fairly anonymous and efficient.

I love two things about this:

  1. It is a great use of technology to make things easier/better for people
  2. The site is completely FREE and doesn’t even have ads

I can’t say that I build applications anymore (although I have spent time making code modifications to a local copy of Ward Photo Directory), but seeing this site makes me want to continue to offer help to people where I can.

Reason 42 not to join/use facebook

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PG-13 Article on FoxNews (Rated PG-13 because it involves mature topics):

Pedophiles find home for Social Networking: Facebook

Reading the article makes me sick… essentially Pedophiles have set numerous groups up on Facebook to discuss how to get better at what they do, share photos, even talk about potential targets on facebook.

Bleh…

(BTW: many of you know I have a facebook profile, however, those that are friends with me will know how often I post something or use it).