Converting DVD to MP4

My big DVD conversion project has begun. As an aside, I finally got CloneDVD Mobile to work correctly for me. Based on this article from Slysoft, which isn’t as easy to find as it should be, I disabled the Tablet Input Server, added CloneDVD Mobile.exe to the BlackList inside RoboForm 7 AND set the EXE to run in Compatibility Mode for Windows XP SP3. Bloody hell, that’s just ridiculous. But after all that, I’ve decided NOT to use CloneDVD Mobile to rip my DVDs to MP4 format. And there’s a couple of reasons despite the fact that the quality of the file is actually quite good with CloneDVD Mobile. First, it doesn’t allow you to specify your output options like File Size, specific bitrate, audio bitrate, etc. The slide is good, but that’s not enough control. Second, CloneDVD Mobile isn’t very sophisticated, meaning, it rips a DVD and you move on to the next. What if I have a whole […]

Converting my DVDs to a Digital Library

So I’ve begun laying the groundwork for my big DVD conversion project. The goal – to rip my most watched DVDs to a 3TB drive so I can watch them anytime, anywhere. And last night I thought I had it all worked out. I planned to rip everything to AVI since that was the easiest format. But then, as I pondered some more, I realized that would be a dead end road. AVI is easy to rip and watch on my PC, but what about my iPad, iPod, Mac Mini and Kindle Fire? When you jump off the PC platform, the AVI format gets no love. I realized I was going to crash headlong into a wall. MP4 is the format I should be looking at, and then it hit me like a thunderbolt, I should be using Handbrake. But then I hit a dead end with that too. Handbrake hasn’t been updated in over a year. Handbrake is good, […]

Bit of a shopping spree

Well now, looks like I went on a bit of shopping spree. But hey, who can pass up a deal. Amazon has a sale on some of the classics. The real classics – Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. I just bought 400 sounds for around $8. That’s a hell of a deal no matter who you are. And there is always room for Bach. Since I was in a buying mood, I broke down and bought Hitbox volume 1 and 2 by Max Raabe. If you haven’t heard this guy you need to check it out. If you like Pink Martini this should entertain. You can check him out on Amazon and Youtube. His rendition of Queen’s "We Will Rock You" is something you need to hear. Do you remember Taco’s "Putting on the Ritz" from the 80’s. It sort of sounds like that, only so much better. Give it a try, it’s a lot of fun to listen to. I […]