You really have to love open source software.

I was listening to a podcast called Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott and Leo Laporte. I usually listen to this podcast weekly as there are pretty interesting topics centered around the world of Microsoft. This week I learned of an interesting little application called Handbrake. According to the Handbrake website:

"Handbrake is an Open-Source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 Converter, available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows."

I have a video ipod so I was interested in what I might be able to do with this fine little app. I downloaded Handbrake and I investigated what it can do. It turns out that it can encode video for most every device from Apple Tv to PSP. It also makes it very easy to create the video for your device because there are "Presets" built into Handbrake. So I chose the preset for ipod at high rez and then proceeded to select a VIDEO_TS folder for the source of my video. (I own a copy of the matrix so I ripped it to my hard drive using AnyDVD)

I placed the .m4v file in a movies folder under my itunes program folder and simply imported it from within itunes. I synced my ipod and Voilà the video displays perfect on the ipod and weighs in around 1.5 Gig (high rez). There are actually two options for ipod video. One option is high rez and the other is low rez. The low rez version weighs in around 850 Mb.

I just think this is the coolest little application! Check it out.

-Warren