How to Rip a Movie using FairUse Wizard

[Stillrockin]

OK, I have been ripping a few movies here lately and thought I would document how its done for the Treo. In fact, you might have a better way, either through another app, or through this one! But this is how I do it!
First thing you will need to do is to grab some FREEWARE!!! Thats right boys and girls! This isn’t going to cost us anything but time! Lets start with what you need for the TREO. The Core Pocket Media Player, better known as TCPMP. This link isn’t to the TCPMP.org web site, but most times when I try it, it times out, and this is their alternate link when this happens. For that reason, I thought I would save you the trouble! Unzip the TCPMP Palm OS zip file:

• tcpmp.palmos.0.72RC1.zip

When you unzip it, you will see several files! But to get us started, we are just going to worry about three:

• tcpmp.prc
• tcpmp_mpeg4_plugin.prc
• tcpmp_mp3_plugin.prc

This will be all you need to view the movies you rip in FairUse Wizard. I install them to the Treo, and then move them to the card with zLauncher. You can use filez or another method, but this isn’t going to work until you get this app and your movies on the SD card. The Treo doesn’t have enough memory to house your apps and movies also, so get it installed, and on the card!
Next, we are going to install FairUse Wizard to your PC. The free limited version is all you will need. Got it? OK, lets rip a movie and get it on our Treo!

• Pop your DVD in your DVD drive. If it you get the auto-launcher, cancel it!
• Now, lets go ahead and create a folder on your PC to house the files that Fair Use Wizard is going to create. For this example, I am burning a Lost DVD, so I have created in My Documents/Videos a folder called Lost.
• So we need to “Create a new Project”, name our project and navigate to the folder that that we created in the previous step. Hit next and select your DVD Drive, and “OK”.

• Next, it will read your DVD files and when its done, you get the following Screen:

• Which Files do you select? Well, you can usually tell by the file size! Select the language and the larger file(s)/Time and tell her next!
• This one might take a few minutes, let it do its thing. When its done, you will see something similar to the following screen:

• Starting at the top left: Frame Range- Don’t touch it! That is unless you want to edit out the beginning or the end! Cropping Region- For this setting, hit the “Auto Set” button. This will trim the outside edge of the movie slightly. Thats it! Hit “Next”

• For this next screen, hit the auto detect button to let FairUse Wizard determine what kind of interlacing the DVD contains. It will recommend one, and select it for you! NEXT!

• Under Preferences, select XviD.
• Audio track: English- I don’t think I have ever messed with this one!
• Encoding Speed- I have tweaked these settings a few times, most of the time, I leave this alone, and get the same results taking the default.
• MP-3 128kb’s I don’t mess with this setting either. You can make it smaller, but MP-3 is already pretty well compressed, so I take the default.
• I don’t select anything around “preferred resolutions, rotating the screen or TV Mode.
• I select a Screen resolution at 336X226. Remember, the Palm Treo is 320X320. Stretching the movie to the full size of the screen will not degrade the picture too terribly from this resolution providing you haven’t skimped on megabytes for the length of the movie.
• Final file size is 200 Megs! This is a pretty safe size for a full length movie! (I have read that a good rule of thumb is 1.78MB/min of the movie)
• Output file segments should be 1. Splitting after each chapter is unchecked, as well as Defer Processing. I now hit “NEXT

• You can bet that when it says that you should go away and do something for a while, that it means it! If you would like for it to, it will shut down your computer when its done. Depending on the movie, or episodes you are ripping it can take anywhere from 90 minutes to about three hours to complete.
• So when its complete, its time to get the movie to your Treo! Hotsync right? WRONG! Pull your SD Card out of your Treo, and put it in your computer’s card reader! Don’t have one? You can pick them up for as little as $5.00, and any Walmart, Target, or your local super Electronics store will have them! Pick one up, because you can use it for other file transfers between your Treo’s SD card and your PC.
• Navigate on your PC to the folder where you placed your Movie Files. This folder will contain several files that FairUse Wizard created to complete your movie. You are looking for the movie file itself. (.avi) Not the FairUse file or any chains or text files it created . . . Copy the movie and paste it onto your SD Card! The top level of the card is fine!
• Place your SD card back in the Treo, and Launch TCPMP!
• With TCPMP Launched, go to menu/open files. Locate your movie! It should be something along the lines of name-session-00.avi. Select it, and hit play!
• CONGRATULATIONS! But don’t stop there! Grab the Prefs button and you can adjust the volume as well as the video. I usually select the “Fill Screen” Option from the full screen mode.

Also, at anytime, you can open that FairUse Wizard file of the movie and tweak to use for other formats!

I know this is a little long, but as many times as I have seen it asked, I thought I would try to put a very detailed Step by Step in place. I hope you enjoy it, and if you encounter any pitfalls, or have a better approach! Share them here, please!

[MleB]

Vista users may go thru all this and get a dialog box stating 'The DVD cannot be converted >> Unable to create temp file' at the final ripping stage.

Seems that right-clicking the FU.exe file and choosing 'Run as Administrator' (or turning off UAC in Vista) solves this problem.

[Stillrockin]

Since I posted this, it was later edited and presented as a feature article. This article might be the better one to follow for any anyone attempting to rip a DVD for Treo viewing.

MleB, thanks for the very valuable info on FU and Vista compatibility.

[LoJac963]

excellent write up but is that only for the palm software?

[Stillrockin]

FairUse Wizard will rip a DVD on any Windows based Computer. Any WM media player supporting the AVI fomat should play the movie ripped with FUW. . . . . . . . Of course, you will need to compensate for the WM 240X screen size vs the 320X of the Palm OS . .

[RandallFlagg]

Bumping.
I did it and it worked great! Watching Revenge of the Sith on my 680 was a trip for my Sons. The sound was a bit skippy and an occasional captioned word would appear on the screen, but it's sweet!
Thanks for posting.

[Stillrockin]

Just realized that the photos are gone. I think I still have them. A hacker entered my personal site through a hole in a Joomla component and deleted several folders on my site. One of which was the folder where those photos reside. Give me a day or two and I will see what I can do about getting the photo examples back up . .


Oppsss . . No longer have the pictures . . . But following this link includes the article with pictures