MacAttapp: Apple Software and Application Reviews

I have an iPhone and an iPod, and I’ve been looking for a simple solution for converting my DVDs to Video. A Quick Google Search will show you there are several different options out there - some free, some not-so free. Last night, however, I found my favorite of the bunch - Instant Handbrake.

Handbrake has been around for a while now, and the full sized version of the program has a lot of cool features and tweaks that you can play around with, but Instant Handbrake is a little different. It’s dedicated specifically to the Video iPod and PSP…and it is ridiculously simple to use.After you download the program, install it into your Application folder and launch it. You’ll see a small window (pictured at the top of the article) with a few options. You can insert a DVD into your drive, or point IH to a folder on your hard drive. Instant Handbrake will analyze the folder and then show you the separate video tracks, allowing you to select the ones you want to convert. I have read that some older DVDS - and a few of the new releases, like Stealth - give IH some trouble because of the way they were encoded, making it hard to find all of the video tracks on the disks. I didn’t have this problem with anything that I tested, but keep it in mind, none the less.After you select the tracks you want to encode you Tell it where you want the file saved, what format you wanted it saved in, and a few other options then you simply click Convert. It can encode in H.264 or MPEG-4. MPEG-4 was much faster, and, to me at least, the slightly higher quality of the H.264 wasn’t worth the extra wait time.After your video has finished converting, you simply import into iTunes, fill out the info on the file (so files will go in the right place, and you can keep everything organized), then load it onto your iPod and you’re ready to watch!

This software couldn’t be easier to use, and it really did a great job with converting everything I’ve tried so far. It didn’t completely eat my system alive either. I’m using a PowerBook 1.5Ghz with 1.5GB Ram, and I was able to have iTunes open (importing stuff onto my iPhone), Adium, and Firefox with several tabs open while IH did it’s thing in the background.

Click Here to download Instant Handbrake

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