Prepare Videos for iPhone

Ever since its launch, iPhone has turned into the new hype. Everybody on the Internet talked about it, Apple fans (and not only) were hysteric about it. Although all the sensation toned down a notch with the release of iPhone 2, the appeal of the device was still a craving desire for many.

One of the abilities of the handset is video rendering, but in order to enjoy this you have to feed it with MP4 movies cut down for its resolution. Converting movies to fit the 480x320 resolution does not sound like too much of a problem considering all the software ready to accomplish the deal. If you want to pinch some pennies, there are some really good programs to help you in the matter, although some of them come with adware, which hinders the experience.

If you're looking for a free solution to handle the job, with no adware to impede your maneuvers inside the application, WinX Free DVD to iPhone Ripper comes as a good choice. Just like its name suggests, it is completely free of charge and has been designed to aid you in your DVD ripping and converting needs in order to make a movie viewable on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

It can actually do more than this as two other options can be spotted in the interface: convert to Apple TV and extract the audio track in a DVD. Every choice it brings to the table is available directly from the main application window, leaving only the default configuration options under the hood.

As soon as the disc is inserted and ready to be ripped to an iPhone-fit resolution, all you have to do is click on the Disc button situated in the upper left hand part of the main application window. The program automatically detects the optical unit and reads the DVD in it. As soon as the data is loaded you are given the possibility to choose the parts to convert. All the titles are displayed together with info such as total duration, video, audio and subtitle selected by default, user-selected duration and name of the output file.

The changes you can make include picking the desired subtitle, audio track and part of the video you want to transform. For the latter, the application provides a video window “endowed” with a seekbar in order to navigate to the desired part of the video. For fine tuning you can enter the start and end time manually.

Working with the output parameters is easy as you benefit from a set of predefined profiles that do not leave room for error. Although you can create your own profile, there is really no use because you have three types of quality available (mini, normal and excellent) for every resolution you choose and according to the codec used (MPEG-4 or H264). There are no proper names assigned for them, but you can easily correct this yourself from the Options panel of the software. And given that you can mix up the different values for resolution, frame rate, kbps (for both video and audio) as well as the audio sample rate, you can create your own profile (I wouldn't recommend that as the default choices are properly balanced for a great result).

WinX Free DVD to iPhone Ripper is prepared for DVD-Audio as well and the Music conversion menu stands as proof. This means that you can rip music from DVD discs or just the audio track. It'll save to MP3 automatically and no other choice is given.

Setting up the defaults (default audio and subtitle, profile, and path to the storage folder) can be done from the Options panel. There is little to tamper with here and you can't go wrong if you know the specs of the device the video is prepared for.

All sounds pretty good up to now, but there are minor faults that may stir up some of the users. For instance, during the conversion process, there is no other hint to the progress of the operation other than a percentage bar. The application does not approximate the time needed to complete the task and does not show the remaining time. All it displays is info such as the current converted title, the start and end time selected (a detail the user surely knows), duration of the entire title, number of FPS and the currently processed frame. However, if you must know, WinX Free DVD to iPhone Ripper moves pretty fast and according to our tests it needs about one minute to convert 2'50'' of video. That is not shabby at all. The result was achieved using the 320x240 MPEG-4 Excellent profile under the iPod section on a 2GHz CPU with 3GB of RAM.

WinX Free DVD to iPhone Ripper is a great solution to your DVD converting needs, as long as the device used for rendering the video result is an Apple product. It moves pretty fast and despite the small set of faults it shelters great power.

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