Many co-workers have asked me how to get a movie from a DVD onto their mobile device, usually a mobile phone. Some may say, “Wow Kevo! That’s an awfully tiny screen to stare at for an hour and a half!” Yes. This is mainly going to appeal to Smartphone and Pocket PC users. A slight bit of trickery – and law-breaking – is necessary. Why should I have to purchase a movie more than one time to enjoy it on the go? Soapbox alert!!! Please be forewarned that this is not for the squeamish! I do not subscribe to the many “one-click” solutions that are scattered all over the Internet. I have a need to be in control every step of the way. If you like getting your hands dirty than let’s get to it. A few things to keep in mind:
– The websites listed below are not mine, nor do I know the people administering them. If a link is broken or a download doesn’t work…sorry. Keep trying.
– This guide will not go into specifics on each application. This is a general breakdown of how I do it.
–There are about a bagillion cell phones, smartphones, and PDA’s in the US market right now. I don’t know which one you have and they don’t all playback the same audio and video formats. This guide is for general reference.
Software
DVDFab HD Decrypter or DVD Decrypter (Google is your friend)
DGMPGDec (a.k.a. DGIndex or DGDecode)
AviSynth
ffmpeg (will require a freeware zip utility called 7-Zip)
VirtualDubMod
NicAudio (AviSynth plugin)
LAME [ACM] (MP3 encoder)
Xvid Codec
The Core Pocket Media Player
Procedure
First thing to do is to make a backup copy of a move that you have purchased legitamately and get it onto your PC’s hard drive with DVDFab HD Decrypter or DVD Decrypter.
Next, the movie must be indexed. Launch DGIndex and drag and drop only the VOB files that are the movie (no extras or special features) to DGIndex’s main window. Choose Audio menu – Output Method – Demux All Tracks. Then click the Video menu – Field Operation – Forced Film. Last, pulldown the File menu and Save Project. Give it a name and away we go. DGIndex will scan the entire movie. Depending on the length of the movie and the speed of your PC this will take a few minutes. When it finished close DGIndex.
Now we need to create an AviSynth script so that we can feed of movie into an encoder. The reason I use frameserving is for the ultimate in flexibility. Ya see, a frameserver allows us to “trick” the encoder into thinking our movie is something it’s currently not. Open a new Notepad document and immediately save it with a *.avs extension. A script can look like this:
loadplugin(“c:\…\dgdecode.dll”)
loadplugin(“c:\…\asharp.dll”)
v=mpeg2source(“c:\…\filename.d2v”).lanczosresize(320,240).asharp()
a=nicac3source(“c:\…\filename.ac3″)
audiodub(v,a)
This simple script will look like a video file to both ffmpeg and VirtualDubMOD, thanks to the AVS file extension. Take a close look at line 3. The lanczosresize command is all that was needed to get our movie down to mobile device size. That’s 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high. Some mobile phones will need this changed to 176,144. I added the asharp filter as personal taste. Of course, it hasn’t really been down yet; it’s just a text file! AviSynth will do the resizing one frame at a time when the encoder starts running. Pretty cool, huh?
All that needs to be done now is to feed the AVS file into either ffmpeg or VirtualDubMOD, set your parameters that will comply with your mobile device, and you’ve done it.
