Rip DVDs to your iPhone / iPod Touch with Handbrake

1. This lens, obviously.
2. Your iPod Touch / iPhone, obviously, and have it connected to your PC
3. iTunes, obviously
4. Your fave DVD movie or series, obviously
5. A working internet connection in order to get hold of...
6. HandBrake

Wait a minute. HandBrake? What's that? Where do I get that from?

Allow me to explain...

HandBrake is a fantastic piece of software, and best of all it is FREE! You might even want to make a donation to the author if you think it is worth it.

The HandBrake web site describes HandBrake as "an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows." Pretty impressive uh? And the best thing is, you don't even have to know what that means. All you need to know is that it will convert your DVD movies for use on your iPod Touch / iPhone.

So what are you waiting for? Go on over to the HandBrake web site and follow the links to download HandBrake for your computer - it's free so you have nothing to lose.

Once you've downloaded it, installed it and run it, you should be seeing something like this, which is the Windows version 0.9.3, but I'm sure other versions will be similar:

I've got the DVD box set of Spooks from BBC TV. I want to spend my commuting time catching up on some old episodes, and so this is how I used Handbrake to rip the DVD.

You've already installed and launched HandBrake, and your DVD is in your computer's DVD drive. The next thing you need to do is to tell HandBrake where your DVD is. In the top left corner of HandBrake click on the "Source" button. You will see that a drop down list appears. A video file will allow you to select a file that is already on your computer, the "DVD/ VIDEO_TS Folder" option is for when you might have a DVD image on your hard disc somewhere.

For now you simply select the option that points to your DVD drive. In my case this is Drive E:, and I can confirm this is correct because the DVD title of SPOOKS_01 is shown. Once you have selected the DVD as your source HandBrake will spend a short time, maybe a minute or so, reading the DVD. What it is doing is analysing your DVD and finding out what format your movie is in and where to find it on the disc. You'll get a message like this on your screen. Be patient and soon we'll move onto the next step.

After HandBrake has analysed your DVD you will notice that things have been updated. A quick check at this point will assure you that you have the right movie on the DVD ready to go onto your iTouch. In this case HandBrake has found a source title that is 00:59:15 long. That's 59 minutes and 15 seconds, which sounds about right for a 1 hour TV show such as Spooks. It also shows that there are 9 chapters, which is correct for this DVD and there is another confirmation of the duration at the end. It looks like we are on to the right thing.

But wait a minute. Most movie DVDs will only have a single main source on the DVD and it will be easy to spot. This isn't always the case with boxed sets of our favourite TV programmes. I know that on this DVD there are two episodes of Spooks. Supposing I wanted to get the second episode onto my iTouch?

Have no fear, it is really easy to do. Click on the Title drop down box and you'll see that there are other things on the DVD that HandBrake has found. Some of these things might be the title sequence, the main menu, perhaps the DVD 'extras'. We are looking for something that will be our second episode. It looks like Title 17 is our target. It is just over 59 minutes long so it must be what we are after. In that case simply select Title 17 to be converted by HandBrake. For the rest of this lens we'll stick with the first episode, or Title 3 as we have become to know it as.

So we've selected the source, we now need to tell HandBrake were we want our converted DVD movie to go. We can't just put it directly on the iTouch, we have to use iTunes to do that. So we have to provide a location on our computer's hard disk. I have a folder called Films on my K: drive so I'll use that as my destination. Using the standard convention for TV series I'll name my file Spooks-S1E1.m4v meaning that it is Spooks, Series 1, Episode 1. The m4v part is added so that HandBrake, and iTunes later, know what file type this is.

Now here is why HandBrake is such a phenomenal piece of software. Not so long ago you had to know all the in's and out's of how movie files are stored, transferred and played. Nearly every hardware manufacture did something different, and the various formats such as DVDs, iPods, Windows Media Player, QuickTime all need to have the movie just as they like it, otherwise they won't even think of playing it. With HandBrake you don't need to know any of the details. You just select iPhone & iPod Touch from the preset menu in the top right corner. If you have a PSP or other device you can see that it is just as easy to convert movies for those devices.

A quick check and I think we are ready to start. So, er, just click on the Start button on the HandBrake menu. It really is that simple. Did I tell you just how brilliant this software is?

Once you've started the process you should see, at least in Windows, a command box open - thats a bleak looking window with old fashioned text in it. This is the workhorse of HandBrake and tells you what it is doing behind the scenes. More importantly it tells you how much time is left to go before it has finished its work. In this case it is 1 hour, 4 minutes and 23 seconds. Hmmmm..., perhaps I'll go get a coffee and read the newspapers.

OK, so we waited a while, and if you have a slow computer you waited a long while, and if you are modern and up to date you might have waited just a few minutes. Either way HandBrake has now done its job and we can say goodbye. We know this because the command box has gone and the message in the bottom left of the HandBrake window says Encoding Finished. If you are really interested in what HandBrake was doing behind the scenes for the past hour you can click on the Activity Window button on the menu, and get completely blown away by all the technical mumbo-jumbo.



It's time to close HandBrake now, and move on to the second part of the process using iTunes.

The small picture on the right shows the opening scene from Spooks S1E1 playing on my iPod Touch. It is so cool to be able to carry around TV series and movies so that I can catch up with them whenever and wherever I choose.

In a few minutes time you'll be able to do just the same. Just get your copy of iTunes (version 8 or higher) fired up and we'll be away. Are you ready? Is iTunes running? Is you iPod Touch / iPhone connected? Good. Then let's start.


As we are dealing with movies you'll need to select the Movies library on iTunes. Notice here that anything you might copy from your DVD will be classed as a movie for these purposes. So my Spooks episode, although it is a TV show, is a movie as far as we are concerned today.



Now we need to add the file that HandBrake produced to your iTunes Movie Library. You can do this by clicking on the Add File to Library... option on the File menu.

This will open a dialog box as shown below. You remember from the HandBrake steps that we had to enter a Destination for our DVD copy? I chose K:\Films\Spooks-S1E1.m4v so all I need to do is navigate to my Films folder on the K: drive. Select your file by clicking on it, then click the Open button. This will make iTunes grab the file and make it available for your iTouch.

OK, now here is probably the trickiest step of all, but it really is a doddle, it's just that the other steps have been so easy you've not even had to think about them.

As shown in the picture below, you first of all need to select your iTouch device in iTunes. This can be found in the Devices list in the left hand column under the LIbrary and the Store. My iTouch is called Nov 2008 because that's when I bought it and it reminds me how old it is so I'll know when I can justify an upgrade :)

When you've selected you iTouch device you then need to select the Movies tab in the main part of the screen. When you do that you'll see a list of Movies appear. Scroll up and down the list until you see the file you are looking for. In our case it is our old friend Spooks-S1E1 and there it is, right at the bottom of the list. Click on the small grey box next to the file name so that a tick appears.

Once you've done all that, click on the Apply button in the bottom right hand corner.

Great. You are almost there. Just a few seconds away from playing your fave movie on your iTouch. All you are waiting for now is for iTunes to finish synchronising your iTouch, what it is actually doing there is simply copying the file over.

Once that is complete you can go to your iTouch, Click on the Videos icon on the bottom bar and then scroll through the list of videos shown. On my iTouch, right at the bottom of the list is Spooks-S1E1. A single tap with my finger brings it to life and I can sit back and watch it whenever and wherever I want.