Convert DVDs for playback on iPhone

Wouldn’t it be great if you could watch your purchased DVDs on your iPhone, iPod, or AppleTV? In this article I will show you how to extract the video from your DVDs, then compress and convert it to a format your Apple products understand. I will even show you how to turn your home network into a video-encoding super computer using Apple’s Xgrid. I’ve broken this down into four sections, each dealing with the particular tool for the job. If you already have the video on your computer, you can skip the DVD parts and go straight to Tool 2 – VisualHub. Links to all of the tools you need can be found at the end of this article.

Tool 1 – HandBrake
For ripping/encoding videos straight from DVD to computer, this is the one-stop shop. While it lacks some of the advanced features other tools provide (more on this later), it’s a fantastic tool nonetheless. Your first task, putting the DVD you want to encode in the computer. On most machines, this will cause the DVD Player to automatically open. Close DVD Player, and open HandBrake. Click “Browse” and you will see that your DVD has been chosen as the “Detected volume”. In the event that it was automatically chosen, select it now. Clicking “Open” will scan the DVD, getting information about the data on the DVD. After it’s finished scanning, it will return you to the main screen. From the drop down box marked “Title” choose the longest track, this will be your movie. Next click “Presets” in the upper right corner. The developers have conveniently provided a few pre-configured settings for various devices. I recommend selecting the HB-AppleTV, regardless of your destination. The AppleTV preset will output a file that can be played on all of your devices at a high quality. The tradeoff is that the HB-iPod produces a smaller file, at a sacrifice to quality. Choose where you want your movie saved under “Destination” – Your desktop is fine for the time being. You may want to also select “Create Chapter Markers”, although this is a personal preference. It has no major impact on the movie itself, but it will make it easier to skip around the movie. Optional: If you want to change the subtitles or audio track, do so from the “Audio & Subtitles” menu. All set? Press “Start”. On a reasonably fast computer it will rip and encode at a rate of about 1:1. This means for a 120 minute movie, it will take about 120 minutes to extract and encode the video.

Tool 2 – VisualHub
HandBrake might be the one stop shop for ripping/encoding DVDs, but VisualHub is the one stop shop for converting practically everything. Your first step in VisualHub is selecting the optimized format. Again, I recommend choosing the AppleTV preset. You can do this by selecting it from the drop down labeled “Optimize For”. In the “Quality Setting” I suggest setting the slider to “Standard”. While you may be tempted to move the slider further up to “Go Nuts”, you will discover that your files balloon in size with no appreciable difference in quality. Next place a check in the boxes labeled “H.264 Encoding” and “Add to iTunes”. Finally, drag your video file(s) into the main window and press “Start”. The time this process takes depends on a wide variety of factors, source file size, original format, quality settings, etc. When it’s done, it will automatically import it to iTunes, ready to copy to your device.

Tool 3 – XGrid
When you were using VisualHub, did you notice a checkbox labeled “Xgrid Encoding”? This is probably the most interesting feature of VisualHub, but it does take a bit of preparation. The first thing you will need are additional Apple computers on the local (wired) network running OS X 10.4. The more computers the better, although even a single Macbook can speed encoding times up significantly. So how does this work? Well, the short answer is it spreads the encoding out to several machines, assigning each one a small piece of the work. More machines = more power = Faster encoding times. Let’s get started, shall we? Your first step is enabling the Xgrid controller on your “main” machine. This will be the computer with the video file and the installed copy of VisualHub. To do this you will need the XgridLite application. Go into “System Preferences”, under the XgridLite preference pane and click “Start”. Next, you will need to enable Xgrid on each computer you intend to use, including the main computer. To do this go into System Preferences, Sharing, and select Xgrid. Click “Configure”. For the Controller, select the name of your main computer (it should be the only Xgrid controller available). Under “Agent accepts tasks:” place a check next to “Always”. For “Authentication method”, choose “None”. Press OK, and click “Start” to turn on Xgrid sharing. Repeat this for each computer. This next step is optional, but highly recommended. Download the Apple Server Admin Tools, install Xgrid Admin. Start your VisualHub encoding session again, but this time place a check in the box labeled “Xgrid Encoding”. If you installed Xgrid Admin (optional), open it up. It will ask you to select the controller, which is your “main” machine. Click “OK”. You will see the total number of “agents” (each machine connected to the Xgrid) as well as the total Xgrid CPU power. Back in VisualHub, click “Start”. It will begin doling out the jobs, and if you are watching the Xgrid Admin, you will see the tasks being handed out to each computer. There is a down side to this, because of the nature of the Xgrid, the status bar in VisualHub doesn’t continually update, not providing you with an accurate estimate to the time remaining. A small price to pay for really fast encoding. And just how fast is it? Well that depends on a lot. I conducted an informal benchmark using the same file. On my iMac it took 27 minutes, my Macbook took 42 minutes, and then the XGrid encode took 11 minutes. Your mileage may vary, but if you have the resources it’s worth trying.

Tool 4 – FFMpegX
VisualHub is great and all, but if you have only one machine, it may not be worth the purchase price (An affordable $23.32 USD at the time of writing). So what is the alternative? FFMpegX. At the very heart, FFMpegX is just as versatile as VisualHub, but it’s lacking a lot of the polish. I won’t go into detail about using it, but once you’ve gotten it installed the interface is fairly intuitive so you should be up and running in no time.

by Christian Sullivan

What is Xgrid?
Xgrid is the name given to software developed by Apple’s Advanced Computation Group that will allow a group of networked Mac OS X computers to distribute computing workload. It was originally created to allow researches and scientists to perform intense calculations using a low-cost grouping of machines.

What is H.264?
H.264 is a standard for compressing videos in such a way that they are able to retain (near) DVD quality at very low bit-rates. It has been adopted by Apple as the defacto standard for video on all of their devices. In addition to providing small file sizes in iTunes, H.264 (also known as Mpeg-4) is responsible for the super-clear iChat AV video conferences.

Leopard
Starting with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Apple has launched Xgrid 2. The new version of Xgrid will have a feature called “GridAnywhere”, allowing for ad hoc Xgrids to form without a specific controller, as well new features optimizing Xgrid computation and prioritization.

Links:
Handbrake – handbrake.m0k.org
VisualHub – www.techspansion.com/visualhub
XgridLite – edbaskerville.com/software/xgridlite
Apple Server Admin Tools – 
www.apple.com/support/downloads/serveradmintools1047.html
FFMpegX – www.ffmpegx.com

Additional Resources:
MacTheRipper (Alternative to HandBrake) – www.mactheripper.org
Enable AppleTV as Xgrid node -
wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/How_to_enable_your_AppleTV_as_an_Xgrid_node