A quick follow up to the troubles I was having converting my DVDs to run on my PSP. The world has changed quite a bit since my 2005 post on making PSP movies. It’s a lot easier to get things running on the PSP with the latest software. Here’s a short set of instructions on how to get the movies converted.

I’m not an expert on all of this, and perhaps there are better ways to do this. If you’re an expert, please chime in below in the comments (especially if you have a better understanding of how the PSP does 2.35:1 display). Also, please do not convert movies you don’t own or violate copyright laws in any way. I’m assuming that this is legal where you are and that you’re following your local laws. If not, don’t follow these instructions. Seriously, follow the laws in your area. I only convert movies I own so I can make them compatible with other devices I own.

iPod users, Handbrake comes with an iPod setting so you should just follow it where you can. You can basically stop reading the instructions below after you have HandBrake started up and just hit Start.

What you need:

You’ll want a reasonably modern Mac. Rule of thumb: the newer the Mac, the faster the conversion. This same process works on my G4 iMac, and it flies on my new Intel-based iMac, for example. I’m assuming you have a DVD drive (just a reader, don’t need a SuperDrive or DVD-writer).

Obviously, you’ll want a PSP or iPod. For the PSP, which is the only device I’m really familiar with, you’ll want the latest firmware which you can download using the built-in software. Doing that is beyond the scope of this article, but you can find resources online. You’ll also need a memory stick to store the movies on for playback on the PSP. I recommend at least a 2 GB card which can store about 2-4 movies and is relatively cheap.

You’ll also want lots of disk space. I have a Western Digital 1 TB My Book Pro II External Hard Drive that’s great for storing both the in process DVDs as well as the final movie files. I use it for more than just videos, though, so you can definitely get away with far less space. I would recommend having at least 20 GB sitting around plus whatever space you want to store the converted movies.

Finally, you’ll want the latest versions of two pieces of software. The first is HandBrake, a very clean, free DVD to MP4 conversion program. Technically, you can probably get away with just HandBrake, but I also recommend getting a copy of MacTheRipper. While the latest release is also free, I strongly recommend donating to the project so you can access the beta versions. For example, I wasn’t able to convert Casino Royale using the released version but the beta already had a workaround for the new RipGuard/ARccOS protection used on that DVD (once again highlighting the futility of these copy protection schemes. More on that later).

Step-by-step instructions:

One you have all of that ready to go, the steps are pretty straightforward. You want to use MacTheRipper to take the data off of the DVD drive and put it somewhere on your hard drive. This is what people refer to as “ripping” the DVD. Then you’ll use HandBrake to convert the movie to a PSP compatible version. Here are the steps:

1. Start up MacTheRipper (MTR) and pop in the disc
2. If the “DISC RCE” box (bottom right of the top half/display part of the app) says anything other than “-CLEAR-”, you’ll need to select the region of your DVD (1 for North America) in the RCE Region box on the bottom right. See the screenshot for more detail.
   
3. If MTR says to follow some other steps, also do what it says. For example, newer Sony DVDs like Casino Royale can only be extracted using “Main Title Only Extraction” which you’ll have to set by going to the Mode tab in MTR.
4. Click Go to start converting the DVD. Remember where you decided to save the extracted files (I’ll refer to them as VOBs from here on).
5. Now that you have your VOBs, take out the DVD.
6. Start up HandBrake
7. In the window that comes up, select DVD Folder/Image and click the browse button. In the next window, find the place where MTR extracted the DVD. For example, MTR generally saves DVDs in the directory you specified as another directory with the name of the DVD. See the screenshot for what I see when I correctly select the GARDEN_STATE DVD.
8. Click Open and that will return you to the main screen.
9. Go to Preferences (under the Handbrake menu) and put the following into the x264 Encoder Advanced Settings Flags box: bframes=3:bime=1:b-rdo=1:direct=auto:level=21:me=umh:mixed-refs=1:no-fast-pskip=1:partitions=all:ref=2:subme=7:threads=1:weightb=1. Not sur what all of that does, but found it on some of the forums and they work well.
10. See this screenshot below to see the settings I use. Note that this is for a 16×9 DVD, not a 2.35:1 DVDs. The back of your DVD case will tell you what kind it is. Basically, the PSP has a resolution of 480×272. Make sure your output matches those dimensions. You can change the output resolution by clicking the Picture Settings button. The height should automatically adjust when you reduce the width to 480. Make sure the height is 272.
    

    If you try to set the width to 480 and the height only comes out at 208 (with Keep aspect ratio checked), you have a 2.35:1 DVD. All you need to do is set the Crop setting to custom and make them all 0. Here’s a screenshot:

    

    Hope that helps eliminate some questions. Doing the math, though, I think this squishes the movie a tiny bit horizontally (a height of 208 would make the width 489 or so, not 480). Anyone have any suggestions here? I’ll have to try other settings to see what makes the PSP happy but keeps the ratio right.

11. Note the other settings. I use 2-pass encoding and an 800kbps average bitrate because I want decent quality, but that does add to the encoding time and file size respectively. With these settings, the 2h24m Casino Royale came out to 962.5MB, which would be tight on most 1GB cards. I’m still playing around with different bitrates, and I’ve found folks online claiming good quality as low as 600kbps. I’ll update this as I try more settings.
12. Another hint: Change the output filename to something you’ll recognize. For example, with TV shows I include the episode title or something else.
13. You can hit start and then walk away for a while. I actually click the enable queue checkbox bottom left and do conversions in batches. In other words, I rip multiple DVDs to my drive, then queue them all up in HandBrake as I go to bed. By the time I come home from work the next day, they’re done. I delete the VOBs from my drive and start ripping the next set of DVDs while I work at my home computer. Lather, rinse, repeat.

That’s basically it. You should end up with a nice .mp4 file that will run on your PSP. Let me know if you have other questions or comments. I’m willing to help with as much as I know.

This weekend I finally decided to pick up the SlingBox after struggling with the lack of a TV in my home office. I’ve been in there a lot lately, working late and have been going nuts without the background noise of TV. I’ve ended up buying silly movies from iTunes. I’ve also gone through my DVD collection several times over. I think I just need background noise after growing up in a house that was never quiet.

So, why the Slingbox? I have a house that’s just about 90 years old. That means no cable in most rooms and no phone jacks. As it is, we have an Ethernet cable running across the floor upstairs to connect my office into the router in the other room. The idea of running a coax cable across the floor isn’t appealing. And yes, we’ve thought about having the house wired. That’s coming, but not for now.

To deal with this, and also to get ESPN and live sports into my office, I started looking into IPTV solutions. There was the open source route with MythTV, but that would require another box with a computer’s power supply. There’s enough power getting drawn by devices in the TV room already. Then there’s Sony’s LocationFree. Their devices don’t have a tuner and need a set-top box to control. I don’t really want to interfere with whatever Heidi might want to watch in the other room, so that was a non-starter. On the other hand, Sony has a PSP player and I own a PSP. On the other hand, the Slingbox has a version that has a coax in and has an analog tuner built in, so that’s the one I ended up going with, especially after reading reviews.

So far, it’s been great. The viewer is a bit of a CPU hog (probably because the stream is encrypted) and the box runs very hot, but those are my biggest complaints. Setup was a breeze, installation was painless, and I had TV on my computer within 15 minutes of opening the box. That includes wiring it all up (granted, I’m pretty good around my AV gear).

I wondered a while back whether it would run on a G4 Mac. While it takes up 50% CPU on my dual core Intel-based Mac, Heidi’s 1.25Ghz eMac kept skipping and pausing trying to play the video. Again, the encryption was probably to blame. On my iMac, I can program, run Eclipse, do whatever with minimal impact on the video.

If you look closely at the screenshot of the player, you’ll see what it looks like in it’s smallest mode. It’s tight. Click one button and a remote control pops up where you can punch in any channel. Quick channel buttons are included right at the bottom, and clicking the little inverted triangle to the right exposes more presets. The most important feature, though, is the “Always on Top” option, something that too many players forget (I’m looking at you, iTunes!).

You also may notice the bit rate on the bottom right of the picture. Yes, that’s 6 Megabits, really. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much sustained bandwidth flowing across my home network. Good thing I’m upgrading to Gigabit at home right now. (OK, Gigabit won’t improve anything, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? Don’t tell my wife…).

The one feature I haven’t had a chance to test is the remote viewing. Slingbox apparently allows me to watch TV across the Internet, even on some mobile devices. I had some trouble with getting this set up with my router (some UPnP issues for the geeks) so no joy yet. Seems like these network apps are still problematic, and it’s not just limited to the Slingbox. The key feature, not obvious unless you’re a techy, is that the player and the box are adjusting the bit rate dynamically based on connection quality. That feature alone enables Internet viewing of this video. It’s pretty much a must have for a consumer device.

Overall, after the first few days of actual use I’m really happy with the purchase. I recommend the device if you’re looking for TV over your home network.

A small side note: I’m out of network ports in my living room. Basically, I have 4 ports on the router. One goes to my office (where there’s another 5 port switch), one goes to Heidi’s office, and the Tivo and XBox360 take up the other ports. I’ve had to disconnect the PS2 (no major loss). So, right now the Slingbox is plugged into the switch in my office with another cable running across the floor. Needless to say, the 8-port GigE switch is on the way from Amazon.

Technology Liberation Front has a good article up about how eMusic might represent “The Future of Music.” I found this article via Kareem’s blog, and normally it would just be a headline link here, as it was on reemer.com.

It’s not a headline post because, coincidently, Atrios has been plugging eMusic for a few days and I went ahead and gave it a try because of the 50 free MP3 trial offer. So far, I’ve found some cool Indian-influenced music that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. On the whole, though, I’ve found the whole thing quite daunting. It’s a very big catalog of less-than-well-known music and, because of that, it’s very, very hard to navigate it all. I use the same approach as I do with iTunes, relying on top sales lists, but previewing clips is too complicated on the Mac.

That’s probably the biggest problem I have. The site offers .m3u files (MP3 playlists) for previews. It’s all nicely standards based, but the default behavior on the Mac is to play the .m3u file in iTunes. That means that I have a clutter of random streaming MP3 clips stuck in iTunes that I don’t really want. I tried switching to just using Quicktime for .m3u files, but then it downloads the file to my disk, where I have to double-click it (or the icon in he download center) to play the file. In the end, I stayed with this system, previewing entire albums so I would only have to do it once per album.

I’m open to any suggestions people have with using eMusic on the Mac.

The article is a good read, by the way. You should check it out.

In what has to be a record, I’ve just finished filing my 2005 Federal Tax Return. It’s amazing what owning a home can do to motivate you to file that return as early as possible. That, and well, there’s that looming wedding which makes the refund check more than a nice thing.

One problem I ran into this year was that H&R Block discontinued TaxCut for the Mac. I’ve happily used that software for the last 3 years and was looking forward to using the new version this year. So, I was faced with the choice of either switching over to TurboTax or going the web route with H&R Block.

Ultimately, I chose using the online tax preparation tool, TaxCut Online Premium. A word of warning, I had trouble getting started using Safari. For some reason, I was unable to launch the application and I don’t think it was the popup blocking in Safari. I switched over to Firefox and had smooth sailing from that point on. There were some visual glitches in the interface. For example, some of the buttons seemed to only show their top half (they’re the green slivers you’ll see). I was able to get through the whole preparation interview, though, and file my federal taxes.

Overall, the online offering felt a lot like the Mac program from last year. It offered all the features I needed at a reasonable cost. The help was as robust as the desktop application and the UI made smart use of JavaScript and DHTML. I wish that they had a desktop application, but I’m sure I won’t miss it. Hopefully, filing my state returns will go as smoothly and I’ll have a successful experience with the product.

One nice thing in the report at the end of the product shows you your effective tax rate vs. what bracket you’re in. My effective tax rate was 12% lower than what it should be according to the tax schedule. Had I donated another huge chunk of money to charity (something like $8K more), I would’ve actually dropped a bracket. Something to ponder when comparing our tax brackets to those in other countries.

The Connecticut software hasn’t come out yet, but once that’s out, I’ll be done my taxes earlier than ever. Gotta love it.

Someone just passed on that Full Tilt Poker now has a native Mac client for their poker games. Pretty sweet. Finally, someone sets one up. No more ugly Java apps (not that I play online much).

Apparently Microsoft introduced more about Windows Vista at CES. That prompted a mac fan out there to create a couple of videos to demonstrate the great new features of Vista. You can watch Episode 1 on the innovative user interface and Episode 2 on search and parental controls. Good natured jab.

(Found at Crooked Timber)

The heart and soul of the Mac world is the large community of small software developers that make some of the best software on the Mac platform. I’ve had my favorites over the years. Watson, by Dan Wood, was one of the favorites (it helped me get my job at ESPN.com) and Dan is one of the good developers in the Mac software world.

Watson was run out of business more or less by Apple, and for the first time that I remember, Dan has put the story up on their company blog. The story is especially relevant because the rumors about iWeb make is seem like Apple is about to railroad Dan’s new product, Sandvox. It’s a good read, especially if you want to get into the Mac software business.

My Mighty Mouse finally arrived in the mail today. I’ve been using it for the past hour or so and have a couple of quick thoughts.

First, the mouse is cool looking and much easier to get used to than I originally imagined. When I tried the mouse out at the Apple Store, the mouse felt a little bit awkward, like my hand was not in quite the right spot. Based on my use now, though, I think that may have been caused by the fact that I was standing up when I first used it and now I’m sitting down in my normal position (slouched, leaning back in my chair). It is a bit trippy not actually feeling the buttons, but after about 30 seconds, you really don’t think about it much.

Couple of problems have come up right away. I sometimes miss on my right-clicks and end up getting a left click. Not that big a deal for my work computer, but I’m thinking I don’t want to play games with this mouse. It could really suck to get the wrong click at the wrong moment in an FPS, for example.

Second problem is that the scroll wheel equivalent (which is essentially a little trackball) doesn’t give me the response I was expecting. It sometimes seems to skip and miss scroll events, but I think I may not be putting enough downward pressure on the thing (I’m afraid that I might click it). When I push down a bit more, I get a more consistent response, so I’ll play around with this some more.

The side buttons seem kinda useless because I don’t really drive things like Exposé or Dashboard from the mouse (the keyboard just seems more natural to me for those things…). I need to think of a better thing to map to it.

I’ll write more once I use it some more, but those are my quick impressions.

A couple of notes about Tiger… Damn you Apple for making Spotlight exactly like the little bastard cousin of LaunchBar, then using the same UI paradigm and activation key. I’m going to try keeping Spotlight with the default Cmd-Space hotkey, but that means retraining my brain to hit something else to get LaunchBar… which I now do almost reflexively (today, after installing the new LaunchBar, I hit Cmd-Space to launch LaunchBar… and wondered why nothing happened.)

I’m switching back to Safari on my machines at home, just to see the new features and play around with the RSS integration. I’m curious if Safari is better in this release, but I’m also looking forward to the next update which claims to be ACID2 compliant. Not even Firefox can make that claim, so I’m curious to play around. With some of the DHTML things we want to do at work, I’m hoping we have a solid platform to work off of.

Quick links of things to look at:

• Safari and setting your default feed reader
• Brent Simmons on Automator (and why it’s the best feature of Tiger
• Dan Wood, author of Watson, gives his rundown of Tiger (he’s excited about Quartz Composer, I think )
• John Siracusa’s technical rundown of Tiger in Ars Technica

More on this later. So far so smooth. I did have trouble installing the update on my iMac. Turned out there was minor filesystem corruption on the computer that Disk Utility couldn’t fix (incorrect number of thread records). In fact, the installer just choked and said something like “Installer encountered an error. Please retry installation ” or something. I ended up running Disk Utility off of the installer DVD manually where I saw that Disk Utility was choking on this error. I suggest running Disk Utility and verifying your disk manually if the installer wigs out.

Luckily, I have a copy of DiskWarrior around from my iSight troubles and I was able to use that to fix things right up. BTW, if you have the downloadable copy of DiskWarrior, it’s tough to actually use it because you need to boot from something else. Making a bootable CD/DVD is just annoying enough that I found it easier just to boot my iMac into Target Disk Mode (hold T while booting your Mac). The computer then behaves like a big firewire drive. Just run a firewire cable between the iMac and my PowerBook and I can run DiskWarrior from my PowerBook. After about 30 minutes or so of chugging along, I had a working disk and the installer got moving past the disk check.

Spotlight took a LOT of hours to get through my disks… I have over a half-terrabyte attached to my iMac now (530 GB per mfr), and it’s about a third full. My PowerBook only took a few hours to get indexed, though.

On the whole, though, big thumbs up for Tiger. I’m busy with my own projects right now, but I hope to dive into Automator and the new SDKs soon.