Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"Whether you own an iPod touch, Zune HD, Nintendo DSi, or any number of other portable devices, there's one tool that makes easy work out of ripping DVDs and converting incompatible video files into manageable formats: Handbrake. This wonderful utility has just about everything you could ask for, including robust compatibility, a slick interface, and snappy performance. And if that weren't enough, the developers have chosen to give the program away for free, no strings (or trialware) attached."

Paul Lilly, at MaximumPC, has written a detailed "Power User's Guide" for HandBrake, a powerful video transcoder which is available for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. The emphasis is on converting video for use on various portable devices, and there appears to be a lot to like about the application, beyond its being available at no cost. For one, the developers present a keen sense of humor, using a pineapple and a cocktail (Pina Colada?) glass as their logo, and promoting their application as coming "with 21 essential vitamins and minerals!" There is also an active support and discussion forum, as well as available documentation. Find myself tempted to run out and buy a suitable device simply in order to give this application a try!

"Trying to rip DVDs to your home server consistently and without issue is not easy. After doing some research I came across a free application called HandBrake which is a fantastic video encoder and it just so happens that it can rip DVDs. However, HandBrake requires somebody to set it up each time you wish to rip a DVD. Obviously nobody is going to want to bother with that so I decided to write a small application which will do this automatically."

DVDs are a great media format. They can put up with a fair amount of abuse and pack away into a tiny little space. Still, they're not indestructable, so the need for backing up DVDs is important. Especially after you find your DVD player can't play half of your scratched DVDs. Handbrake is a program that lets you backup your DVDs onto your computer, and AutoBrake takes things a step further, automating much of the steps you need to take with HandBrake. Sure, it might only take a minute or two to do it yourself, but when you're ripping a couple dozen DVDs, you don't want to have to constantly come back to the computer for a couple minutes at a time. It's a small thing, but it really helps and frees you up on Backup Sunday.