Converting video easily with FFmpeg or Handbrake

FFmpeg is also a good tool for converting video, but it has so many options that using it is more complicated, you can download it from here (for Mac OS X).

Due to the number of devices that exist for playing video and audio, there are also different file formats. There are the .MPEG file (DVD), the .MOV (quicktime file), and the .AVI (video windows) and the new MP4 (for mobile or iPods). There are many more, but these are the common ones. What happens when we convert a DVD to play on an iPod? Well, we have to convert the file in the DVD (MPEG) format to anything that the iPod can read.

This process in a computer was a complicated process, we had to extract the MPEG DVD with some software (usually a commercial one) convert it to another format considering the number of frames per second, the size of frame and other concepts not too much interesting when the only thing we want is to watch the DVD in our iPod.

Well there is a free software that does very well this function, is called Handbrake and can be downloaded free of charge from here. Available in versions for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Handbrake interface

We simply need to select the source (either a DVD or MPEG file), if we do not want to think too much we can click in any of the presets that are in the drawer on the right, either for iPod, AppleTV, PSP. After that we have to click the Start or we can also add to a queue for processing later.

I recommend always when converting video, doing a small test with a minute of video and different presets to find the correct preset.

Happy encoding!