Sorry for the late notice, but I just found this through a quick search. After taking a few plane trips recently and enjoying a digital copy of
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (included with DVD) on the 4-hour trip, I wondered how easy it was to move DVD's in our collection over to the
iPad. Truth be told, I first checked out iTunes to see how much it would cost for a DVD, but $15 seemed a bit steep especially if we had these already at home. So,
Google led me to
Daniusoft, and sure enough, the $20-30 program was being offered for free (after a
Facebook "Like"). Read on for the results of a LOTR conversion.
Installation was a breeze as normally is the case for all things MAC. Once the program was installed, there are a meager 4 steps involved (as detailed in the tutorial) in getting your DVD ripped and ready to go. First, you need to choose the DVD. I inserted "The Fellowship of the Ring" (if this application can handle this baby, it can handle anything), and chose the video in the finder window. A few minutes passed with the program "analyzing the IFO files". Once this was finished, I took a look at the output settings, pondered whether I should reduce any to save space (LOTR looked to take 5+GB - uh, I only have a 16GB iPad...), but I ultimately decided to keep everything as default for now.
After clicking on the icon in the lower right, we were off and running with the conversion process. Initially, the remaining time displayed fluctuated from 8+ hours to 4 hours during the process, so I disabled the preview (a tip offered to lower the conversion time), and closed all other apps (tip #2). Overall, the 3 hour movie took just under 5 hours to convert. Add another few minutes to move into iTunes, sync with your iPad (that's always a doozy), and you're talking an overnight affair at least.
Ah, but once you've got the movie on the iPad, success! The next few steps for me will be in tweaking the output settings (MP4 vs. H.264, lower bitrates) to trim the file size down (5+GB! for LOTR vs. 1+ GB for Sarah Marshall), so I can fit more movies onto the device. In the end, if you're reading this in August 2010, you don't have anything to lose, as the application is free
here, though for anytime after, you'll need to determine whether the program is worth $20-30. I'd say that for the ease of use and quality of application combined with the going rate of $15 per movie in iTunes, Daniusoft is well worth the price if you plan on carrying a few of your DVD movies on your iPad.
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