Woooah! Don’t you just hate quiet days?
Don’t you?
I do! I mean, nowt to do, but watch telly?
Oy!
But let’s move on, shall we? Yes, let’s!!
Phew!
Something I know is it’s still surprising that bright people still can’t work out what, to me, are basic bits of software; it shouldn’t be, but it is*.
At any rate, Tim, bless him, pointed out that he’d find it handy to know how to back up a DVD to either the hard drive of either his desktop or laptop.
He’d not, up until then, heard of HandBrake.
HandBrake is an open source application that’s been doing the rounds, now, for some time; and it’s something I’ve used to to back up many of my DVD’s to both the Mini, and my long since gone G4.
In point of fact, I’ve most of the backed up video files on the Maxtor exterior drive, tucked just behind the monitor, as I write this.
Hmmm …
I’m digressing, there, aren’t I? Mildly, at any rate.
My point is that the cross-platform HandBrake is very simple to explain, and even simpler to use.
Your computer’s probably got an optical drive capable of at least reading a dvd sized disc; at least, if nothing else, you’ll have an exterior optical drive capable of reading one.
Then activate HandBrake.
Now, this’ll hold good for the current version of HandBrake, running under Mac OS X 10.5.x, by the way; as far as I know, it works pretty much the same way under Windows and Linux.
What’ll happen next is that HandBrake will scan the DVD you’ve inserted.
Once it’s done that, the next screen will have a drop down menu, so you can pick what you want HandBrake to rip.
And — on the OS X version, at any rate — has a slide out drawer where you can put pick some of the preselected settings. (You can pick your own, as well.)
After that, all you’ve got to do is hit the Start button.
And make sure you’ve told HandBrake where to put the results … !!
•••••
Now, there’s implications, and applications, here.
I’ve — occasionally — been known to use it to rip TV shows I’ve recorded, and transfer to my hard-drive.
Just until I can afford to get the boxed sets, you understand.
But some of the implications of this sort of software raise … issues …
After all, I’m thinking that a clever hacker could probably modify things like HandBrake, to work around any copy protection.
Probably already has, in factº.
After all, to an extent, that’s kind of the point with much open source software; “How can we get this piece of software to do that?”. It’s a scientific experiment, in other words.
But when you consider that — even without taking the professional DVD authoring software into account — that there’s a lot of DVD authoring software, out there …
Well, it’s a Pirates Market …
•••••
Phew!
Oh, just as another point, the last two pictures, on here, are of Blogspot’s ‘Share’ button.
Like you hadn’t worked that out!
Feel free to use them, folks!
* Adrian’s got a very good point that I should be a little more tolerant; I’ve got to admit — and apologise — for making a rather offensive post, a couple of day’s ago, on the Rollason Way Forum. He had a very good point, that, having had a dyslexic ex-girlfriend, I should be a touch more tolerant of people’s spelling.
º Actually, already does; I’ve just re-read the Wikipedia entry …
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