Spice Mines of Kessel

You have an iPod Touch. You also have a nice DVD collection. You want to know how to get those DVDs on to your iPod Touch (or any current, video supported iPod). Well, I have a couple of pointers for you to check out to accomplish this task. It’s actually quite simple and it works for Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X (I’m unsure about Linux; but I’m sure there’s a way).

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way encouraging you to illegally copy DVDs and distribute the content. This tip is to be used only for personal viewing of your DVD movies on your iPod Touch (or any current generation video iPod).

I will break this tip up into two different sections: Windows and Mac OS X. I’m not actually going to step you through the process of getting your DVDs onto your iPod Touch. All of that has been well documented. So, I will point you to the right tools. They will provide you with the instructions from that point on. Let’s start with Windows.

Windows:

For Windows users, I am going to recommend you do a Google search for Videora iPod Converter (or just click the link). This is a very nice program for converting decrypted video files to H.264 or *.m4v format. Best of all, it’s free. On the website—and in the program—there are very good and easy to follow guides to get your movies from the disc and onto your hard drive, ready for the move to the iPod Touch. I used this program (and the additional program they recommend you use) to convert nearly all of my DVDs to a format I can put on my iPod Touch. The only issue with this process is that there are some DVDs that have too strong of copy protection. To give you an idea, out of the 100+ DVDs that I own, there were about 5 or 6 that I couldn’t convert. Other than that, the process is fairly easy and it takes roughly 2.5 hours to complete.

Also, Videora is an ad supported program via Google supported ads (Adsense, I believe). However, the ads are not invasive and they are generally video-related.

Mac OS X:

For the mac users, I am going to give a strong recommendation to the program called, Handbrake. Handbrake has got to be my favorite software to use to convert DVD video to the iPod Touch. It’s pretty much a 2 or 3 click process (once you have the program open). Just point it to the DVD and tell it to start the process. After about 2 hours or so, you have a nice iPod-ready video file. Handbrake is free and open source software.

Final Steps:

Now that you have your video file ready to go on to your iPod Touch, you have one more thing to do. Regardless of whether you are using Windows or Mac OS X, you will need to import your video file into your iTunes library so that you can sync the video with the iPod (this step actually works with any current generation, video supported, iPod (i.e. Nano, Classic, Touch, iPhone)). To import the video, you just simply drag the video file from Windows Explorer or Finder on to your iTunes window. iTunes wil handle the import process. Then, connect your iPod to your computer and sync the videos.

Viola! Your video should be on your iPod waiting for you to watch.

As I said before, I’m not that familiar with Linux. I’m pretty sure someone out there has figured this process out for Linux. If you know of such a place to go for this information, feel free to post it in the comments.