One side project that I’ve been working on for about a week is ripping my catalog of DVDs for use on my iPod and the recently built Mac Mini media center. The iPod has supported video for about 18 months now and I have a video iPod but up until recently, the resolution of the video had to be 320×240 (or 480×480 in some situations). That resolution, while decent on the small iPod screen, isn’t respectable enough for TV playback and that was a pre-requisite for ripping my DVDs. I don’t have enough desire to watch videos only on my iPod to rip my DVDs once for it and then have a second copy for TV playback.

When Apple started selling download-able movies from the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) they made them available at 640×480 and released a firmware update for the video iPod that supported that resolution. For the unfamiliar, that is the effective resolution of NTSC (analog TV) video.

A popular program for ripping DVDs for iPod/computer/Sony PSP use is HandBrake. There are many programs to convert video for iPod use (including iTunes itself), but HandBrake can convert encrypted (read commercial) DVDs that represent most first-run store-bought DVDs.

The original HandBrake program has more-or-less been abandoned by the original author but has been picked up volunteers who have recently added full 640×480 resolution encoding (currently in beta form) and have renamed it MediaFork.

As a disclaimer I have to state that circumventing the encryption on a DVD is currently against the law. Personally, I feel that my use falls logically under fair use as I am doing this for my personal use only on DVDs that I have already bought and paid for. I don’t see why I must spend another $15 to get a lesser quality copy of a DVD I own just to have it on my iPod.

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