Ripping DVD's for portable devices

[brewthunda]

About a month ago I got a new cell phone - the T-Mobile MDA. I needed something to handle all my work email and this thing is pretty spectacular. It has a Windows Pocket PC operating system, Wi-Fi, quad band, pocket versions of Outlook, Internet Explorer, Word and Excel, MP3 and video player, stereo sound and a keybord that pops out. I can check all 4 of my email accounts with ease and can surf the web when I'm bored. It also has a slot where you can slip in a flash drive for extra storage. I picked up a 1 gig MiniSD drive at Fry's for $30.

So with the extra storage and the ability to play media, I wanted to figure out how to watch movies on this thing for when I'm traveling. After a bunch of trial and error using various programs, I finally figured out how to easily rip DVD's and convert them into a size and format that plays on my phone. This should work for other devices like video iPod's, too. Since this is the repository of gadget knowledge for my fellow knife nuts, I figured I'd post this info here so that if anyone searches for "DVD ripper" or "ripping DVD" or "converting DVD" . . it will lead them here. It was a pain in the butt to sort through all the freeware and shareware and trial programs to come up with this system, so maybe this will give you a head start.

I've settled on this very user-friendly setup:

DVDShrink: http://www.mrbass.org/dvdshrink/
This lets me copy DVD's to my computer. I set it for no compression and I strip out all the extras and all the sound tracks other than stereo English. Note that I'm only doing this for DVD's that I actually own. I tried it out last night with Supertroopers and it worked great. It broke the movie up into 5 files of less than 1 gig each, which makes converting and moving files easier.

Sompy MovieEncoder: http://sompy.com/sw.html This converts movies into AVI format, with the proper dimensions and compression optimized for portable devices. I just used the standard settings to convert those 1 gig files from DVDShrink into ~40 meg AVI files.

TCPMP: http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download This is a media player for portable devices that blows away Windows Media. It plays more formats and is easy to use.

Enjoy.

 

[jerrinfla]

You already found pretty much all you need for your purposes. One thing to keep ini mind, though, is that DVD Shrink can't handle the new sony arcoos protection.
Some of the titles with that copy protection are "Ultraviolet", Basic Instinct 2", several others - I don't remember which are which anymore.
If you buy a dvd that Shrink can't open, you might assume it's a bad disk.
There are a few newer rippers (DVD Shrink hasn't been updated for ages and the author now works full time for Nero, so it ain't gonna get updated again, ever.) The one I've been using is DVD Fab Decrypter. It's a free ripper only, you can't strip out the unwanted audio and features with it, but once you rip the dvd to your hard drive, you can use "Open Files" with shrink instead of "Open Disk" and navigate to the folder you ripped to, and `Shrink will open them like a regular dvd disk. Then you can "Reauthor" and strip out your unwanted audio streams etc and proceed as usual.
Obviously, it's preferable to just use Shrink, as you save an extra step, and those arcoos disks take a long time to decrypt. To give you a time frame, I have the "tripping the Rift" tv series on dvd. (No arcoos). It only took me about 25 minutes total time to back up my dvd. (That series is on single layer dvds.)
Backing up the last arcoos protected disk I bought took an hour and a half just for DVD Fab Decrypter to rip it. Not because it's such a slow ripper, but because the arcoos disks just seem to take a lot longer (as well as most of them being dual layer disks),
Sadly enough, there is no progress window in Fab Decrypter, so it can leave you scratching your head wondering if it's still running or if it locked up. Hoever, it's only failed on one used dvd I bought that was scratched so badly it wouldn't even play on my standalone dvd player.
Anyway, you can find Fab Decrypter, as well as a ton of info on using Shrink and other programs here.
http://forum.digital-digest.com/forumdisplay.php?f=43

 

[beefangusbeef]

I've been using Iriverter. The quality isn't he greatest, but it looks good on my zen vision:m, just when I connect using a/v it's not the greatest. The nice thing is you do'nt have to convert it, it rips and converts in one package.

 

[cockroachfarm]

I purchased Pocket-DVD Studio to put copies of animated movies on the SD card in my Treo-650. Works great! (Must be simple to use because _I_ am using it! And yes, I only make copies of DVD's I have already purchased.)