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5 Simple Steps To Rip An Entire DVD To Your Hard Drive
DVD allow content creators to include high quality content, mainly due to the large storage capacity that they offer compared to CDs. The bar has been raised even higher with the arrival of Blu Ray discs. DVDs however continue to be a very popular media among people and content creators.
The thing with DVDs, as with all kind of optical drives, is that they are pretty easy to damage. DVD players need the DVD to be in a specific format, computers don’t have such restrictions and you can easily play content from your hard drive without needing the DVDs every time.
The obvious solution at least for playing them back on your computer would be to copy the contents of the DVD onto the hard drive and use the copied content instead of the actual DVD. The problem with this approach is that even if you are able to copy the contents, the files are oddly named and require more disk space.
A still better option is to actually rip the DVD to a hard drive in a file format of your choice. What’s more you can tweak various options so that you are able to view the file on your iPod and mobile phones.
Before we go any further, keep in mind that people have been ripping DVDs for the wrong reasons as well. So most DVDs are copy protected, meaning that they make it difficult to copy or rip content. While you can circumvent such restrictions as well, that is not the topic of discussion here. Let’s quickly jump over to ripping DVDs.
A number of software is available that let you rip DVDs with ease. I prefer Handbrake for the simple reason that it is easy to use and available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Handbrake also requires you to have VLC installed on your computer. So if you don’t already have the awesome media player, go ahead and download it as well.
Install Handbrake (+ VLC) and get ready with the DVD you want to rip. Insert the DVD and fire up Handbrake.
Point Handbrake to the DVD you just inserted. Handbrake will now scan the DVD’s content and get back to you when it has scanned the entire disc, offering you suggestions as to what you might want to rip onto your hard drive.
Choose whatever it is that you wish to rip. Generally the movies and or shows are larger in length making them easier to identify as opposed to other trailers and menu screens.
Choose where to store the ripped file and choose from among the various presets if you want to rip the video for the likes of iPhones and PSPs. You can also specify custom settings such as cropping the picture, applying video filters, adding or removing subtitles or audio tracks and much more. If you don’t know what all these mean, just choose a preset and you are good to go!
Hit start to begin the encoding process. This might take time depending upon your computer’s hardware and the length of the video file. You might also experience high CPU usage during the encoding process, which might make it difficult to use your computer during the process. So keep a cup of coffee handy!
Do you rip your DVD collection to a hard drive to keep them safe? What are your favorite applications for the task?
Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
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The Kindle Reader For Mac Has Arrived [Mac]
A few weeks before the release of Apple‘s free e-reader, iBooks, Amazon has released Kindle Reader for Mac. It comes about four months after the Kindle reader was made available to PC users. We reviewed that version here.
Back in December, I wrote an MUO how-to article on Kindle for the iPhone, and for the most part the Kindle for the Mac is basically similar for the readers of the other two devices; however, the beta version of the desktop version has a few important missing features.
Kindle Reader for Mac is available for free download, but of course you need an Amazon account. Like with the Kindle e-reader and Kindle for the iPhone, you can download free, paid, and sample versions of e-books from the Kindle Store.
The user interface of the Kindle for the Mac is pretty simple and rudimentary. It contains basically three parts: the Home section which contains all your e-book downloads; the Archive section which holds any purchased e-books you have archived (note: you can only archive purchased and free e-books. You can’t archive sample versions) and lastly, there’s a section to view all your notes and annotations, but more about that shortly.
Home Section
The Home section provides a thumbnail view of your downloaded e-books, which can be sorted by Most Recently Read, Title or Author. Unfortunately you can‘t organize by genre category or publication date. Furthermore, the Kindle interface doesn’t compare well, design wise, with Apple‘s iBooks. And unfortunately, you can’t search or shop for e-books in the reader itself. Clicking on the Shop in Kindle Store takes you to the Amazon website.
Reading e-Books
Reading pages of e-books is pretty straight forward. You turn pages by clicking back and forth rather than scrolling up and down as you do with most website pages. You can use the scroll wheel of your mouse, or use the keyboard’s arrow keys to turn pages of your e-book.
You can adjust font size as you do with the Kindle Reader and Kindle for the iPhone. However, there’s no night reading (black background and white fonts) feature as there are on the other two devices.
There’s also a control for navigating directly to the cover, table of contents and the specific page of an e-book. Kindle for the Mac also features the Whispersync technology that automatically synchronizes your bookmarks and reading location between devices registered to the same Amazon.com account.
You can also manually click the Sync button to download new items from your Amazon account or update the furthest page you have read if you’re further ahead on your other device of the Kindle reader.
A slew of keyboard shortcuts are listed here on Amazon.com’s help page.
Show Notes & Marks
I especially like the notes and marks feature because I like annotating non-fiction books that I read. Unfortunately, however, the current version of Kindle for the Mac does not allow for annotations, only bookmarking. It can only download existing annotations that you make in the two other devices. You also cannot save or print your notes, highlights or bookmarks. This is seriously odd, but I suspect an update for these features will be put into later versions.
In Living Color
Though the Kindle for the Mac may be lacking in a few areas, unlike using it in the other two devices, you can actually read books in full color on the Mac version. This is great for reading children’s books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks.
Overall, it’s great to finally have the Kindle for the Mac if you’re a serious Kindle user. While reading books on a desktop or laptop computer may not be the most leisurely form of reading, it can be useful for say more technical reading related to research and computer technology. However, not being able to make annotations in the reader is a serious missing feature.
Finally, Amazon has also said that it will be making the Kindle reader available for the iPad, which may provide a wider selection of books and competitive prices in the e-book market for iPad users.
So what e-reader will you most likely use most as a Mac user? Let us know how the Kindle for the Mac looks on your iMac or MacBook.
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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Download Files In Firefox & Autosave Them In The Right Folders
You won’t be admitted to the Grand Council of Uncluttered Minds if all you do is click on a download link and save the file in any location that presents itself. There’s a chance of admittance if you manually save the file in designated folders. But the high seat is reserved for those who set up the whole process on auto-pilot.
The hallmark of good computer organization is everything in its rightful place. Proper file naming follows in the steps of good folder organization. Check back into the directory structure of your computer. Do you have folders set up to store specific kinds of files?
If not, then you are a few steps behind on the road to productivity. Of course, the hallowed portals of the Grand Council of Uncluttered Minds shall always remain closed for you. If you are serious about organizing your computer, let’s go back to where it all starts – downloads.
Presumptively assuming that you use Firefox for downloads, let’s see how we can download files in Firefox and automatically put them into their proper folders. As it is with everything in Firefox, we fall back on two little browser applications from the Mozilla Add-ons Gallery.
Download Sort
Download Sort is a Firefox add-on that automatically sends downloads to specific folders depending on the file extension or a keyword in the URL. To make it recognize the file extension or the keyword, we have to get into the browser extension’s Settings and do a bit of work.
The important thing to remember is that the sorting of downloads in designated folders only works with the right click (Save Link As/Save Image As) – not with the left.
Here are all the options that you can tweak under Settings.
You can set up download folders or subfolders for each file type. For instance, any doc or PDF file that you download can go into your My Documents folder or alternatively, you can create an eBook folder within the documents folder to catch all the incoming PDF files.
Here are some of the other features you can find under the Settings for Download Sort (screenshot above)…
Instead of sub-folders, you can also collect downloads in a folder by bracketing them according to the criteria given in the dropdown for Autosave Sub Folder.
You can route downloads by catching them using a keyword that could be in the specific URLs. This is useful if you download a lot from particular websites.
Download Sort can be set up to prompt you for a filename or give an alert if a duplicate file is found in the target folder. A set of actions can follow – Prompt for a new filename, Auto-increment the filename, Cancel the download, Overwrite the file.
With some work on the rules for the file types and the corresponding folders, Download Sort cuts short a few downloading steps for us.
In spite of it not being developed further since 2006, Download Sort works fine with the latest version of Firefox. If you do mind that, let’s go on to the next Firefox add-on.
Automatic Save Folder
Automatic Save Folder is a similar download tool that automates the process of saving and sorting of downloaded files into specific folders. Again, you have to set up a few rules to catch files by their file types and redirect them to the right folders.
With Automatic Save Folder, you can set filters according to the file extension or the domain. But it handles downloads a bit differently from the previous Firefox add-on.
Automatic Save Folder’s download rules will only work if Firefox always asks where to save the files. This setting for the browser is under Tools – Options – General tab – Downloads. Make sure that’s checked as in the screenshot below.
Unlike Download Sort, Automatic Save Folder works with single clicking on a download link as well as a right click.
When a download link is clicked, Automatic Save Folder opens the File Explorer at the right download folder (as set for the file type). Alternatively, you can also go into the Options of the add-on and set it to save downloads automatically bypassing the File Explorer.
Similar to the previous add-on, dynamic folders can also be created on the fly to hold downloads. The download folders can be named with a variety of variables.
Automatic Save Folder is compatible with Firefox 1.5 – 3.7a1 pre and works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.
Finally…Pick Of The Two?
It all boils down to user choice. Automatic Save Folder has some distinct advantages. It can handle both left click and right click downloads. It is more flexible with its filters. But the clincher could be that Automatic Save Folder is being kept updated.
De-cluttering and organizing your computer is a habit. These two Firefox add-ons just make the habit a trifle easier to maintain.How do you download files in Firefox? Are you showing all your downloads the right path?
Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
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All Business Cards Giveaway Winners
There was quite a lot of commotion regarding this giveaway! As the saying goes, even bad press is good press. You have our assurances that All Business Cards does not require you to purchase and send in your own stock cards and ink in order to print these business cards. Our giveaways never have any strings attached. Winners shall be winners.
Speaking of which, here are the 15 winnesr who won themselves each a stack of 1000 free business cards!
Further information will be sent to your email addresses. Thank you for participating. Be sure to catch the next giveaway right now!
MakeUseOf would like to thank Jeremy from All Business Cards for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.
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Colour Your Room With PaintingWalls for iPhone [MakeUseOf Giveaway]
Let me paint you a picture (no pun intended): You’re about to move into a new place but have yet to paint the rooms to your liking. How do you know which colours will suit you best? Colour swatches are handy but they leave a lot to the imagination. Think of the distraught when you realise that the colour you painted didn’t turn out like how you pictured it to be.
PaintingWalls is a simple iPhone app that will help you to decide there and then. It simulates different paint colours on your walls and lets you make an informed decision. It usually retails for $0.99 but we have 25 codes to give away.
This giveaway runs for a little under 48 hours and will end tomorrow, 21 March 2010 at 2100hrs PST. Grab them quick!
In order to use PaintingWalls, you’ll need an image to work with. Either load it from your camera roll or take a new image. This iPhone application was designed to help simulate different colours on clear, empty walls but it works just fine if the room is furnished, as you can see from the middle image below. I was in Ikea yesterday and took a snapshot of a dimly lit Swedish living room. Tap the colour palette to select any colour (although its best to select a colour that contrasts the original colour of the wall you’re trying to paint), you can change the colour later.
After selecting a colour, tap on an area in the image you wish to fill with paint. The app will try to “fill” the surrounding similar coloured areas. Then here’s the fun part. Tap and hold the screen then move your finger in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction to expand/contract the painted area. Don’t try to expand until the entire wall is filled with paint — it doesn’t work that way. What you should do is tap on an unfilled area and expand the paint separately. Pretty soon, you’ll have the entire wall painted (even with furniture acting as obstacles). Now, you may use the colour palette to select a new colour and it will automagically replace the paint’s colour in your image.
Go ahead and experiment! Change the colour until you find something you like. If the image of your room is poorly lit (like mine was), PaintingWalls has this really cool feature which lets you optimise the paint according to the lighting in the room. When you’re done, it will allow you to save the image, send it to someone via email or share it on Facebook and/or Twitter.
PaintingWalls is a pretty easy tool to use and it really helps cut down on unexpected events when adding colour to your new home. We have 25 codes to share with MakeUseOf readers within the next 48 hours!
How do I become a winner?
It’s simple. Just follow the steps.
| STEP 1 | |
|---|---|
| Join our Facebook page by clicking on the Become a Fan button on the left. If you can’t see the fanbox, click on this link.
If you’re already a fan, skip this step. |
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| STEP 2 | |
|---|---|
| Share | Share this post with your friends by clicking on the Share button on the left. |
| STEP 3 | |
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In the comments section below, fill in your name, email address, paste the link to your Facebook profile in the URL field and tell us why you’d like to win.
Make sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win! |
This giveaway will end on Sunday, 21 March 2010 at 2100hrs PST. Be sure that you grab them quick — first come, first served! Codes will be sent to winners via email after the giveaway is over. Have fun!
MakeUseOf would like to thank Xavier from Enginy Studios for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.
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