“Apple Computer’s video iPod may not be the first portable movie player, but it is by far the best. The one serious flaw in this svelte little device is how difficult it is to load with video. Apple’s otherwise handy iTunes application flatly refuses to transfer a legally purchased DVD to the iPod,” Declan McCullagh writes for CNET.
“Don’t blame Apple for this glaring oversight. You can thank our esteemed public servants in Congress,” McCullagh writes. “In 1998, politicians bowed to pressure from the entertainment industry and voted overwhelmingly for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Part of that law made it a federal offense to sell or distribute software that can rip DVDs. In other words, believe it or not, Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be guilty of a federal felony if iTunes transferred DVDs to an iPod as easily as it can music from a CD.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews reader “Too Hot!” for the link.]
For ripping DVDs for use on Apple iPod, give the free HandBrake DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter a try (Mac-only, Windows port under construction): http://handbrake.m0k.org/
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That is so dumb. Why don’t they just do what TiVo is planning to do with their TiVoToGo service to allow video onto the iPod and the PSP. They just embed a hidden serial number of each the TiVo it came from on the video. So, if it does end up on the internet, you simply cut off the service from the person to uploaded it or go after them legally. This would allow fair use and an easy way to track people who do illegally share the video. Since the entire video track has this code embedded in it, it is incredibly hard to get rid of – probably harder than breaking their encryption. And it’s personal – hackers don’t tend to like people knowing who they are, so it’s a good social defense.
Like I said on Cnet:
I think that the next logical step is for the media companies to license fairplay (Apple’s DRM). The media companies will never allow the law to change. They spent too much money getting the law passed, and now that Apple is here they will just allow the law to go back? This causes too many issues with illegal copying again.
If they license fairplay and put an iPod compatable version of movies on the Blu-ray (or Microsoft’s backed next-gen disk) for downloading to iPods (with some sort of registration I am sure through iTunes to prevent copying) then we could see movies purchased on DVD availible for iPods. I bet Apple and some of the movie studios are probably working on this already in their skunkworks labs.
Don’t bother with Handbrake on a Powerbook. Make friends with a PowerMac owner. PowerMacs rip DVD’s more than 10x as fast and stay cooler.
I find this article funny for two reasons.
One, no one should be using Handbrake to begin with since it’s against th law to rip commercial DVD’s and secondly, that the reviewer didn’t realize that you could do this (illegally) to begin with. iTunes is not designed to perform this task and probably never will be, so it’s not a ‘flaw’ as he puts it.
I’ve seen a demo of Handbrake, and it works really really well to allow DVD’s to be transferred to an iPod.
Handbrake works great!
Out of 100 DVD’s I got about 90 of them, all on the first try.
However do read these instructions and be aware that you have to set the Picture Settings for each DVD
http://macteens.com/index.php/features/fullstory/putting_dvds_onto_your_ipod/
If you don’t have a dual processor machine or better, just forget about ripping any large quantity of dvd’s.
On a sp each dvd takes hours, on a dp it takes under a hour and on a Quad it take minutes.
I have an iBook and just leave it ripping overnight.
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Wake up and voila! A shiny new movie to watch on the school bus
Better try DVD2one, it’s much faster (20-25 min on a 1.25 GHz eMac). There is a free trial for 30 days, after that, shell out 40 bucks.
I’m converting my Seinfeld DVD’s as I type using Handbrake. I’ve got a Dual 2.0ghz G5 with 2GB’s of memory. I’m encoding in H.264 at 500kbps 320×240. Takes about 15-20 minutes to do one 22 minute episode. I’ve heard the Intel iMac does it much faster. If it does, I’ll be getting a new computer!
By the way, screw Congress. Screw the RIAA. Screw the MPAA. And screw the DMCA. These are my DVD’s. I’ll do with them what I want. I don’t share them. I don’t steal them. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to have them tell me how I can watch my purchased DVD’s.
The studios should offer an iPod version of the video on the DVD that can only be extracted by iTunes.