karbonfyber

Convert DVD’s for viewing on your Axim PDA
By: Karbonfyber

This tutorial applies to:
- Axim X3 and X3i
- Axim X30 (All levels)
- Axim X50 and X50v
- Axim X5

*Disclaimer: I do not take any responsibility for any actions you do that are illegal. Only rip DVD's you legally own. This tutorial is for legal educational purposes only!

This article is avaliable in PDF form here

I decided to write this tutorial to help others in the AximSite forum asking how to do this. This is an alternative to the other tutorials on how to rip DVD’s. This is the method I use because I feel it is much easier and comes out better. However, this tutorial contains software that is not free, but is relatively cheap and is available in trial downloads.

This tutorial will show you how to rip DVD’s into Divx .avi files that your Axim can handle.

Recommended Specs for Movie:
- Axim (duh)
- At least 256mb SD or Compact Flash card (Depending on model)
- Your DVD movie (mine is “Troy”)
- Divx codec (You will need the Pro version which is available as a 6 month trial version) http://www.divx.com
- DVDx (Free! ) http://www.labdv.com/dvdx
- Ashampoo Movie Shrink & Burn 2 (Not free ) http://www.ashampoo.com/frontend/pro...ssion_langid=2

Recommended PC specs:
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4ghz or equivalent or Intel Centrino 1.6ghz
- 512mb of RAM
- At least about 260mb of HDD space
- DVD drive

Step 1: Obtaining necessary software

DVDx is a program used to rip DVDs. You can choose different formats and codecs to fit your specifications. It’s one of my favorite programs.


Step 2: Conversion

Put in your DVD and play the DVD using whatever software you have. I’m using PowerDVD. This gets rid of the “Unable to read from *.Vob” errors by “unlocking” your DVD drive.


Click on “File” and “Open DVD root”


Open up your DVD drive and highlight “VIDEO_TS” and hit ok to continue.


The select title window will appear. Look for the longest clip which, in my case, was the first one. Your’s probably will not be the first. You can tell the longest because my movie is 1 hour 55 minutes and 17 seconds. Highlight and press select to continue.


Here is the “Input Settings” screen. Change your “Output Frame Rate” from “29.97 (NTSC)” to “23.976 (NTSC) as shown in the picture below. However, if you are in another country that uses PAL, adjust this step you fit your settings.

Select “SSE2 (Intel P4) in the iDCT dropdown list, check “Audio/Video synchronization” and uncheck “Use ASPI”.


It should look like this now. Hit play to verify you got the right clip.


Click “Settings” then “Output Settings”


Use these settings. I usually convert the DVD to watch on my laptop and then use that file to be converted for use on my Axim. However, you can change any of the settings to suit your needs. To change the Divx encoding settings, click “Pass 1 settings”. I usually use 1200kbps for my first conversions.

A word of caution though; hit the button labeled “Whole”. If you don’t, your movie will be cut off prematurely.


Click the little folder icon to bring up this screen. Press browse to specify the path you want the avi saved.


Afterwards, hit the red dot to begin encoding the DVD. This takes about 1:30 – 2 hours depending on the length of the movie, your output settings and the speed of your PC. It took me 2 hours to encode “The Incredibles” on my P4 2.6ghz.
So sit back, grab some lunch or go out and enjoy the great outdoors!

This is the Ashampoo Movie Shrink & Burn 2. This is another one of my favorite programs.


Move your mouse point over “Create movie files for PDAs” and click “MPEG-4 AVI files for PDA (.avi)”.


Check whatever suits your settings. 320 pixels will be the setting most of you will use. Click next.


Click on “Add Files”


Click on the AVI file you made in DVDx and select Open. “The Incredibles.avi” is just an example file.


Enter the size you want your movie to be. Keep in mind the quality of the output compared to your original size. Due to the tremendous size of my movie, I had to make it 300mb.


Click start to convert your movie. Again, the amount of time it takes depends on your system, how long the movie is, blah blah blah. Troy took about 40 mins to convert so it is shorter than the first conversion.


After it completes, just drag and drop from the source folder to your SD or CF card or directly onto your Axim through ActiveSync. Congratulations, you are done!


You need a Divx capable player on your Axim. I use Betaplayer because I (and many others) feel that this is the best player for videos. Go out and enjoy your newly encoded movie!

Gigi

Nice job. Have you tried FairUse? It converts DVDs in one step and is freeware.

karbonfyber

No I haven't but looking at their site, it looks like a great program. I do it this way because I like to rip a high quality version of the DVD to my PC so I have easy access to it.

tancerman

That is the way I used to rip dvd like 3 years ago. It takes WAYYYY to long to do. I find ripping the dvd with dvdshrink and use virtualdub mpeg2 to compress the movie down to a good size works the best.
By the way, you can skip that whole 2nd step by configuring the divx or xvid codec in dvdx output settings, relativly low bitrate, 320x240 or 640x480 screen res. This is only if you don't care about watching the video on a laptop.