How to play your DVD's on your iPod Video, iPod Touch or iPhone


One of the great features of your iPod video, iPod touch and iPhone is the ability to watch your DVD movies.

Sure you can spend $19 downloading a movie from the iTunes store, but why spend $19 when you already own the video on DVD.

So I am going to show you step by step how easy it is to take your DVD movies and play them on your iPod.

Please only make copies of a DVDs that you have personally purchased.


Step 1 - Download Handbrake

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

Go to http://handbrake.fr/ and download the version of handbrake for the OS you are using.

Handbrake can take your DVD movies and covert them the following files types: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM

Step 2 - Open Handbrake

I told you this was going to be easy.

Open handbrake and you will see a screen like this. Note: this demonstration was performed on a MacBookPro running OS 10.4.10.

Screen shots are from http://handbrake.fr/


Step 3 - Select your DVD source

Make sure you have your source DVD in your DVD drive.

Click the handbrake source icon in the upper left hand corner and navigate to your DVD. You want to browse to the "VIDEO_TS" folder and then click open.

In the handbrake source file path you should see something like this:

/users/yourusername/desktop/dvdtitle/Video_TS

Now select your destination. I suggest you just use your desktop as the destination.


Step 4 - Configure Handbrake

Now that you have the source selected it is time to configure handbrake to convert your DVD movie to an MPEGs-4 video file that is compatible with your iPod Video, iPod Touch or iPhone.

Handbrakes defaults are not set up for the iPod. So, go to the preset drawer. If it is not already open select "Window" from the file menu and then select "Presets Drawer". In the presets drawer select either iPhone / ipod Touch or ipod Hi-Rez or iPod Low-Rez.

Step 5 - Start the conversion

Click on the handbrake "Start" button to start the conversion process.

The length of time it takes to convert the VIDEO_TS files will depend on the size of the movie and your processor speed.

On my 2GHz Core Duo MacBookPro it took 1 hour and 40 mins to convert a 1 hour and 40 min movie and my processor was pegged out the entire time.

I would love to see how fast the new Mac Pro 3.2GHz Quad-Core does the conversion! I can only dream!

A 4.7Gig DVD Movie will compress to about an 800Meg mpeg-4 video file. This depends on the length of the DVD movie.


Step 6 - Play the movie on your iPod

After the conversion is complete you will have a file on your desktop with the movie name and the file extension .mp4.

Drag that file into iTunes.

Now sync your iPod Video, iPod Touch or iPhone with that video.

You are done. Enjoy!

Final Thoughts

Handbrake is a great application and very easy to use. It worked well on several DVD's that I own. I did encounter one conversion where the video and audio were out of sync but only for one chapter.

I did not try either the Window or Linux versions.