Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters

Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters

videoconverterheader.png
So many video file formats, so many handheld video players, so many online video sites, and so little time. To have your favorite clips how you want them—whether that's on your DVR, iPod, PSP or desktop—you need the right utility to convert 'em into the format that works for you. Commercial video converter software's aplenty, but there are several solid free utilities that can convert your video files on every operating system, or if you've just got a web browser and a quick clip. Put DVDs on your iPod, YouTube videos on DVD, or convert any video file with today's top 10 free video rippers, encoders and converters.

10. VLC media player (Open source/All platforms)

vlc.png Ok, so VLC is a media player, not converter, but if you're watching digital video, it's a must-have—plus VLC can indeed rip DVD's , as well as play ripped discs in ISO format (no actual optical media required.) VLC can also play FLV files downloaded from YouTube et al, no conversion to AVI required. Since there's a portable version, VLC's a nice choice for getting your DVD rips/saved YouTube video watching on wherever you go.


9. MediaCoder (Open source/Windows)

Batch convert audio and video compression formats with the open source Media Coder for Windows, which works with a long laundry lists of formats, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+V2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio, AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia, ASF/WMV, Quicktime, and OGM, to name a few.

8. Avi2Dvd (Freeware/Windows)

Make your video files burnable to a DVD with Avi2Dvd, a utility that converts Avi/Ogm/Mkv/Wmv/Dvd files to Dvd/Svcd/Vcd format. Avi2Dvd can also produce DVD menus with chapter, audio, and subtitle buttons.

7. Videora Converter (Freeware/Windows only)

Videora Converter is a set of programs, each designed to convert regular PC video files into a format tailored to your favorite video-playing handheld device. The Videora program list includes iPod Video Converter (for 5th gen iPods), iPod classic Video Converter (for 6th gen classic iPods), iPod nano Video Converter (for 3rd gen iPod nanos), iPod touch Video Converter , iPhone Video Converter, Videora Apple TV Converter, PSP Video 9 , Videora Xbox360 Converter, Videora TiVo Converter, and Videora PMP Converter. Lifehacker alum Rick Broida used Videora in conjunction with DVD Decrypter to copy DVDs to his iPod.

Honorable Mention: Ares Tube for Windows converts YouTube and other online videos to iPod format.

6. Any Video Converter (Freeware/Windows only)

anyvideoconverter.jpg Convert almost all video formats including DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-4 movie format for iPod/PSP or other portable video device, MP4 player or smart phone with Any Video Converter, which also supports user-defined video file formats as the output. Batch process multiple files that AVC saves to a pre-selected directory folder, leaving the original files untouched.

5. Hey!Watch (webapp)

Web application Hey!Watch converts video located on your computer desktop as well as clips hosted on video sites. Upload your video to Hey!Watch to encode it into a wide variety of file formats, like H264, MP4, WMV, DivX, HD Video, Mobile 3GP/MP4, iPod, Archos and PSP. Hey!Watch only allows for 10MB of video uploads per month for free, and from there you pay for what you use, but it's got lots of neat features for video publishers like podcast feed generation and automatic batch processing with options you set once.

4. VidDownloader (webapp)

When you don't want to mess with installing software to grab that priceless YouTube clip before it gets yanked, head over to web site VidDownloader which sucks in videos from all the big streaming sites (YouTube, Google Video, iFilm, Blip.TV, DailyMotion, etc.), converts 'em for you to a playable format and offers them for download. Other downloaders for online video sites buy you a Flash FLV file, but VidDownloader spits back an AVI file.

3. iSquint (Freeware/Mac OS X only)

isquinthero.pngConvert any video file to iPod-sized versions and automatically add the results to your iTunes library. iSquint is free, but Lifehacker readers have praised the pay-for iSquint upgrade, VisualHub, which offers more advanced options for a $23 license fee. Check out the feature comparison chart between iSquint and VisualHub .

2. DVD Shrink (Freeware/Windows only)

Copy a DVD to your hard drive and leave off all the extras like bonus footage, trailers and other extras to save space with DVD Shrink. Download Adam's one-click AutoHotkey/DVD Shrink utility to rip your DVDs to your hard drive for skip-free video play from scratchy optical media.

Honorable mention: DVD Decrypter (beware of advertisement interstitial page), which Windows peeps can use to copy DVDs to their iPods.

1. Handbrake (Open source/Windows, Mac)


Back up your DVD's to digital file with this open source DVD to MPEG-4 converter app. See also how to rip DVDs to your iPod with Handbrake.
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What's your favorite way to convert video to the right format? Did we miss any good ones in this list? Let us know in the comments.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

MAC OSX 10.5 Leopard on a PC

Hack Attack : Install Leopard on your PC in 3 easy steps!

Mac OSX Leopard

Well its been only a day since the Mac OSX Leopard was released officially by Apple and the hackers have managed to create a patched DVD that everyone like you and me can use to install Leopard on PC's without having to buy a Mac. Please note the tutorial that I am going to post is still experimental and things might not work the right way simply because it is still early days in hacking Leopard to work on PC's. Well if you don't mind your PC getting screwed then go ahead and try out this tutorial.

Make sure you backup all important data before you proceed. Here are the things that you will need before Install Leopard on your PC…

  • The Patched DVD Image
  • The zip file containing the patch
  • One pen drive or USB Flash Drive formatted as FAT32

Well once you have all these you can go ahead and Install Leopard..

Step 1. Getting things ready  

  • Burn the DVD Image onto a Single Layer DVD-R using a software like Nero.
  • Format the USB Flash Drive and the drive label should be "Patcher" without the quotes. Please note it has to be " Patcher" only and nothing else for the patch to work when we apply it later.
  • Extract the Zip file and put its contents into the USB Flash Drive.
  • Now your USB Drive should contain a folder called " files", if it doesn't then check to see where you have gone wrong.

 

Step 2. Installing Leopard

  • Now that you have the Patched DVD with you, you can now install Leopard. Pop in the DVD into the drive and boot into it by pressing F12 at the BIOS Prompt.
  • Boot into the DVD and the installer should now load. It take a while though, so be patient.
  • Select your Language and make sure you select Customize and you need to deselect all the packages that are displayed.
  • Leopard will now install. This can take a while, so go grab yourself a coffee.
  • It will ask you to Reboot, so go ahead and Reboot. Before rebooting make sure that USB Flash Drive is connected to the PC.

 

Step 3. Patching Leopard

  • Now that you have got Leopard installed, you need to patch it. Before we do that Boot into the Leopard DVD like the way you did before.
  • Wait for the Darwin Bootloader to load. Once it loads up press F8. You should now see a prompt. Type -s and hit enter. The DVD will now load in Verbose mode. Watch for any errors. It should load without a problem because you have already installed Leopard.
  • Once the setup is loaded select your Language. Once done you should now be seeing the Welcome Screen. Once there navigate to Utilities-Terminal.
  • Once the terminal loads up, you now need to browse to your USB Drive, so follow the steps below, typing it exactly as it appears below in the Terminal.

    In the command line type the following as they appear here

    cd ..
    cd ..
    cd Volumes
    cd Patcher
    cd files

    Notice the space between cd and the 2 dots.

  • Now its the time to run the patcher to make sure Leopard will work on your PC. Type the following into the Terminal.

    ./9a581PostPatch.sh

  • The Patch should now run. You can answer Yes while removing the ACPUPowerManagement.kext
  • After the Script is done, you should now be able to Boot into Leopard after you restart.

 

Step 4. Congratulations! You've done the Impossible!

 

Well that was it. Please note this has not been extensively tested, so most of your Hardware like Sound, Network may not work. If something goes wrong for you or you want to help us, then please join the discussion over at OSX86Scene. If you noticed I haven't posted the links to the Torrent that contains the DVD image and the zip. Well I haven't posted them because I am sure the lawyers over at Apple are going to sue the hell out of me. If you wondering where you can find them, then head over to Demonoid and search for it. 

Well here are few screenshots by Mac.nub over at the forums who could get Leopard working on his system.

Leopard Leopard

Some Updates and Clarifications :

  • This Hack works on Intel PC's with atleast SSE3
  • You need to format your Leopard Partition to HFS+
  • Make Sure you install Leopard on MBR and not GUID or it won't boot.
  • More Patched DVD's from Uphuck, Netkas is in the works so it would be better if you wait for the polished releases to come out.

Simpson' Voices

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=8645764