Best How To Convert Media

Convert DVD to DivX Format

2010-12-11T20:38:00.004-05:00

Are you tired of backing up so many DVDs all the time?

Convert DVDs to Divx Format for easier storage and even easier playback! The Divx format can compress a 5GB DVD to around 1.12GBs without losing any video quality. This is the ideal format for storing video on your hard drive or playing on your home media player.

Now that I've backed up most of my DVD collection over the past few years. I'm starting to move towards the idea of buying a media player to play my movies from. For two reasons most HD media players aren't too expensive and huge external hard drives (1TB-2TBs) are reasonably priced. A media player plays most of the popular formats that many of your videos are saved in. (MP4, DivX, MKV, AVI, WMV, etc) This is a good thing for you because all you have to do is copy your movies/videos onto a flash drive or external hard drive and plug it into the media player and the media player will play it right on your TV.

Converting DVD to DivX format is free!

What you need to Start is Here!

Now that you have everything you need lets get started!

Insert the DVD you want to convert to Divx format into your DVD drive. Start up DVD Shrink then click "Open Disk" at the top left. Select the DVD drive that your DVD is in and click Ok. (Mine is the E:\ drive) Once it is finished loading the DVD you can click "Re-author". You want to select only the main movie file to backup since we are going to be converting the main movie file to DivX format.

Lets talk movie quality now!

The movie quality all depends on how much you shrink your DVD with DVD Shrink. By default DVD Shrink is set to the Automatic compression setting. Meaning it will give you a smaller file size but it does decrease the quality a bit. Since we are converting the DVD to DivX format it doesn't matter if the output files are larger than a single DVD disk 4.7GBs. To get the best DVD quality output for our DivX format file you want to select "No Compression" in the drop down box.

Backup!

Now click "Backup!" Select were you want to save the VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and click OK to begin the backup. Okay now that you are finished with the backup you have a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive with a bunch of files in it. (.VOB, .IFO, .BUP, Files)

It's time to open the DivX Plus Converter:

Start up the DivX Plus Converter and click "Add Files". Find where you saved your VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and select all of the ".VOB" files and click open. It will analyze the files and then give you an error message telling you that the DivX Plus Converter is unable to recognize the following files. Click Ok and then you will notice all the .VOB files you tried to add are showing up in the list still. Now the last two steps. Check the box at the top that says "Combine all videos into one file" and then "Start"

The conversion is going to take anywhere from 1-3hrs to convert depending on the speed of your computer. So I would suggest you start the conversion before work or bed so you don't have to tie up your computer when you want to be using it. Once it is finished you will have a single .MKV file that you can play on your computer or on a media player. The file will be much smaller than the files inside the VIDEO_TS folder with the very same quality and frame.

I hope this has helped you learn How to Convert DVD to DivX Format. If you have any more questions leave me a comment! :)

I Just Found 66 Movie Tickets in my Room!

2010-05-12T18:02:00.001-04:00

66 Movie Tickets that go back as far as June 2003!

After I go to the movies I normally put my movie ticket in my drawer in my desk. So today I was doing some cleaning in my room and I found 66 movie tickets!

I enjoy going to the movie theater best rather than waiting for new releases at Redbox. Also the large buckets of popcorn and oversized drinks from the movie theater are awesome. lol

So I'm wandering?

Do you have a large stack of movie tickets in your room too because you love to go to the movie theater or do you love Redbox's low prices?

Let us know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for reading ~Mark

How To Convert CDs to MP3s

2010-04-19T21:13:00.004-04:00

There are many reasons for wanting to learn How To Convert CDs to MP3s. One reason may be that you want to keep your original CD in perfect condition so you want to use a backup copy in your car. Or you might only like four or five songs on the CD so you want to rip (copy) those songs to your computer and burn a mix CD with some of the songs you like from other CD's.

Whatever your reason might be with FreeRIP Basic you will have no trouble doing it!

FreeRIP reads audio from your CDs and lets you copy the music to your computer in a variety of formats including MP3. FreeRIP also lets you Edit CD and Track Info for each song and has an integrated playlist generator for one click CD playing. FreeRIP's converter is a nice plus when you might have a .WAV formatted audio file and you would like to convert it to MP3 or another extension it supports .WAV, .MP3, .Vorbis, .WMA, and .Flack.

Rip (Copy) A CD:
The first thing you want to do is put the CD you want to convert to MP3 in your CD ROM drive. Start the program and give it a second to load the audio tracks and titles in the left column. If they do not appear select the drop down tab with the picture of the CD on the CD ROM drive in the top left below File and check "Ripper".

Once the audio tracks are on the left hand side you can select and edit any CD or Track Information.

When you are ready to rip (copy) the selected tracks click the drop down tab with the CD and blue arrow and click "Rip Selected Tracks to MP3". The Rip/Converting will begin and once it's done you have just converted your first CD to MP3.

I use this method all the time to keep my purchased CDs in perfect condition and rip selected tracks for making my own mix CDs. It's fast and very easy to do!

What you need to Start is Here!

FreeRIP Basic

I hope this post has helped you learn How To Convert CDs to MP3s. If you have anymore questions leave me a comment! :)

How To Convert Video to MP4 for iPods

2010-04-15T19:37:00.004-04:00

I'm going to show you How To Convert Video to MP4 for iPods and show you how to put the MP4 video onto your iPod.

The first thing you want to do is convert your video file to mpeg4 so your iPod will play the video.

Videora iPod Converter is a really nice free program that will let you convert your video to mpeg4 in a few clicks!

All you have to do is click the "One-Click Transcode" or "Transcode New Video" button to get started.

"One-Click Transcode" will have you select the video you want to convert and will begin to convert it as soon as you select and open the video file you want to convert with the last set settings.

"Transcode New Video" is the button I like to click when starting. When you click this button you will be asked to select the video you want to convert and it wont start until you click the start button. This way you can double check your settings for the video you're converting and set the process priority that I like to keep on high to improve converting speeds.

Setup Tab:
Videora iPod Converter's setup tab will let you change many things to your video. Change the resolution, aspect ratio, number of passes, and bitrate for the video and audio.

Put Video on iPods:
Now that you have your video you want to play on your iPod converted to MP4 start up iTunes and plug in your iPod to your computer. Once your iPod comes up click the video tab under your iPod and drag your MP4 video files onto your iPod.

Safely remove your iPod and enjoy the video!

What you need to Start is Here!

Videora iPod Converter
iTunes

Note: This method works for any iPod that can play video. iPod, iPod Video, iPod Touch, etc.

I hope this post has helped you to learn How To Convert Video to MP4 for iPods. If you have any more questions leave me a comment! :)

Convert Video to DVD for your Home DVD Player

2010-03-30T19:50:00.002-04:00

Converting Videos for your Home DVD Player may sound hard but once you have the right tools to help you it's easy!

All you have to do is convert the video to the right video format so your home DVD player will know how to play the files.

DivxToDVD and DVD Flick are both very helpful to convert videos for your home DVD player. What these programs will do is convert your videos to the (.VOB) format with (.BUP) and (.IFO) files all inside a VIDEO_TS folder.

Once you have the files I talked about above inside the VIDEO_TS folder all you have to do is burn the VIDEO_TS folder onto a data dvd disc.

Home DVD Players can read the VIDEO_TS folder and its files inside and will play the videos on your TV.

So How Long?
Video files around 700MB-1GB usually take about an hour to convert to the correct format. An hour isn't that long but it's still a bit of a wait so I like to start converting the videos before I go to bed at night or before I go to work so later that night or the next day I can burn them to a DVD and watch it on my home DVD player.

What program should I use to burn the files to DVD?
I like to use CyberLink Power2Go 6 because after you make the VIDEO_TS folder from above it lets you burn your existing DVD folder to a DVD very easily. CyberLink Power2Go 6 also lets you burn to CDs, DVDs, and Blu Ray discs. It also has a Audio Ripper and Audio Converter that lets you copy your music CDs to your computer and convert your music to other formats like (.mp3).

What kind of DVDs to Buy?
I like to use Sony DVD-R discs. Sony DVD-R discs look nice so if you want to write on the front of the disc there is plenty of space to write clearly and I haven't had many errors while burning with this brand like I've had before with other brands.

What you need to Start is Here!

DivxToDVD or DVD Flick
CyberLink Power2Go 6 or other Burning Software
Sony DVD-R discs

I hope this post has helped you to learn How To Convert Videos for your Home DVD Player. If you have any more questions leave me a comment! :)

How to make Backup DVDs

2010-03-29T21:38:00.009-04:00

Backing up DVDs doesn't take long and is easy to do!

It took a while for me to learn How to make Backup DVDs when I got my first DVD Burner but since then I've found a few helpful tools to make it a lot easier.

DVD Shrink is my favorite tool for backing up DVDs to my computer. If you are trying to make a backup DVD of a movie you own all you will have to do is start DVD Shrink and click the Open Disc tab load the DVD and backup the whole DVD or Re-author it the way you want it.

The backup will be ready to burn and watch on your home DVD player because it's a rip (copy) of a DVD so you don't have to do any extra converting to make it play on your home DVD player like I talked about in my Convert Videos for your Home DVD Player post.

DVD Decrypter is also a good tool for ripping DVD movies.

Is This Illegal?
Some will say that backing up a DVD movie is illegal and others say it's okay to do because you purchased the DVD. With these tools you are breaking the copy protected DVDs protection but I think it really matters what are you going to do with it next? Are you going to sell your backup DVDs to others for money or are you just making a backup of your DVD movie to watch it in your portable DVD player while you are on vacation to avoid getting scratches on your original DVD movie. Or are you ripping your DVD movie to your hard drive because it's easier to watch them when there already on your computer rather than searching in your DVD collection.

What I would say is if you are making backup DVDs of your purchased DVD movies just for personal use to keep your original DVD in mint condition your not going to have any problems making backup DVD movies.

What you need to Start is Here!

DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter

I hope this post has helped you to learn How to make Backup DVDs. If you have any more questions leave me a comment! :)

DivX Web Player Review

2009-11-04T17:58:00.056-05:00

I love the DivX Web Player!

The DivX Player Plus download file includes the DivX Player for playing DivX video files on your computer and the DivX Web Player that I use a lot that lets you play DivX Videos in your web browser like internet explorer or firefox for example.

Personally I don't use the DivX Player for my video files I already have on my computer very often because I prefer windows media player or VLC to watch them.

But the DivX Web Player is a must if you want to watch movies online in great quality as far up as 1080p HD with surround sound!

The Download also comes with a DivX codec pack that is useful if you want to play the DivX formatted video files on your computer that you might have made with the DivX converter you get in this download that can join split video files into a single file for easier converting for your home DVD players.

Watch in Full Screen.
Another nice thing about the DivX Web Player is if you have multiple monitors for your computer like I do you can watch a video full screen on one of your monitors while surfing the internet on the other monitor without effecting the full screen mode of the video player that happens with some other video players while in full screen.

Save Videos Automatically.
You can also change the settings of the DivX Web Player to automatically save the video to your computer once it's done loading. This option makes it really nice because the longer videos take a while to load. You can start loading a video and come back later to find it saved on your computer already to be watched with the DivX player.

Share DivX Videos.
If you like to share videos you have watched with your friends The DivX Code Generator that helps you find the right HTML code you can copy and paste to embed DivX videos where your friends will enjoy it makes it easy for you.

What you need to Start is Here!

DivX Plus Software Download Package

Try these sites to Watch DivX Movies!

I hope you enjoyed the DivX Web Player Review. If you have any more questions leave me a comment! :)