Software Spot

I have a new favorite video conversion tool for getting Media Center recordings onto my iPod. ATI Avivo Video Converter is supposedly available for the ATI X1000 series video cards, however I have an ATI X300 and the video converter works fine, and it seems around 4 times faster than Videora. I'm not sure if it works with non ATI cards. To convert files is very simple. Just launch the ATI Catalyst Control Center in Wizard mode and select the Avivo Video Converter option. Select the source file and set the Output Video Format to iPod Video (and I suggest setting the Output Quality to High ). A bonus for me is that Avivo handles the Media Center .dvr-ms files directly, so I no longer need to pre-convert the recordings with DVRMSToolBox.

There are so many websites and tools available for getting DVD's onto the iPod it's difficult to know where to start. I've been using Videora for converting files to toi play on the iPod, but the Videora does no not handle DVD's directly. After much trial and error I've settled on the following process for ripping my DVD movie collection. Step 1: RIP the DVD There are lots of tools available to copy (backup) your DVD library to your PC. My personal choice is RipIt4Me . I skip the step to re-burn a copy to a black DVD, I just store the raw DVD Rip on my External USB Hard Drive. Step 2: Convert RIP'ed DVD to iPod Again there is a wide choice of tools available. The best free application I've found for this is Handbrake . Originally for the Mac, the latest version is now available for Windows. As with all of the video conversion tools I've tried you have to set the various conversion options which can be a bit daunting. I've settled on two different pro...