iPhone supports video H.264, MPEG-4 in .mp4, .m4v, .mov formats and audio files in AAC, MP3, M4a. If you want to play the unsupported format video on iPhone, you will:

1.Install codecs for the iPhone to play your video?

When our computer software player cannot handle the video format, we can download the corresponding codec for it but can we do this on smartphones? It’ll be very cool to watch various videos on the smartphone, but I’m sorry to say this method doesn’t exist yet.

2.Use the multi-format supported player- VLC4iphone?

As previously introduced in this post, VLC player is the media software coving most formats with all codecs built in. It’s used for all Windows and Mac OS and what’s more, it’s available for Smartphone like iPhone and iPod touch, that is, VLC4iPhone. In order to get VLC4iPhone at Cydia store, you have to jailbreak you iPhone or iPod touch.

However, I have searched online for this app and found the user experience for it is unsatisfactory.  Users’ complaints include no fullscreen as advertised, lag video and some annoying advertisements, only working well on a certain type of video, etc. Perhaps there will better version for it in the future or you may try your luck at it.

3.Convert the video format?

Converting the video format to the iPhone supported format is the best way to watch videos on iPhone at least for the time being. There are many excellent video converters and some are free like Avidemux, HandBrake and Xvid4PSP. They are powerful with great output quality.

If you want a tool to convert your video with faster speed, optimized video quality for your iPhone, you may be interested to check our iPhone video converter and free download to have a try. Or, if you would like to watch your favorite DVDs on your iPhone, you can use a DVD to iPhone converter to directly rip your encrypted DVDs to your iPhone with fast speed, excellent quality and ability to decrypt DVDs with new copy protection.

So is there any way to convert the FLV video to DVD with improved quality for the result video?

I’m afraid the answer is not. FLV is a flash video container format mainly used to broadcast videos through Internet, so it is aimed to lower the bandwidth consumption with lower bitrates for both contained video and audio compared to DVD.

Most FLV container contains stereo at 44.1 Hz and video bitrate ranges from 400 to 1200 kbps, while a common DVD contains 8000+ kbps video and 48 KHz, 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound.  And converting the DVD to another format will more or less reduce the quality but converting from other formats to DVD cannot enhance the quality.

You can make efforts like choosing better software to convert the FLV to DVD to get at least not worse quality , but no way to really improve the original poor quality. Therefore, if you cannot endure the poor quality of the video you got, you’d better seek for other video sources with higher quality. There are many HD videos online nowadays.  If you cannot find bette

However, you may meet such problem as the burned DVD that is converted from Blu-ray has no sound when playback in DVD players. One possible cause of this problem is the DTS audio track in the original Blu-ray file.

DTS is a series of multichannel audio technologies, used both in standard DVD disc and Blu-ray disc. All BD-ROM players are required to support DTS. However, although PC software players and modern DVD players can play DTS audio without problem, early DVD players cannot recognize DTS audio tracks, because DTS was not part of the original DVD specification and the DVD specification was revised to allow optionally include DTS audio tracks. The DVD title must carry one or more primary audio tracks in AC-3 or LPCM format (in Europe, MPEG-1 Layer 2 is also an allowed primary track format). The DTS audio track, if present, can be selected by the user.

Therefore, when you are converting your Blu-ray movie to DVD, you need to pay attention to the playback compatibility of the audio track in your DVD player. If your burned DVD has no sound in playback, firstly you can find out what audio track it has (see this in the video converter when converting or drop the converted file in MediaInfo for the file detail information). If the soundtrack is DTS format, you’d better convert it to AC3 when doing the conversion of Blu-ray to DVD.

Free video converters like AVStoDVD that can convert Blu-ray to DVD has this DTS to AC3 converting option:

convert to AC3 audio in AVStoDVD

If you would like to convert your Blu-ray movies to MKV format so that they can be widely played by your computer, portable players or standalone devices like HTPC, Popcorn Hour and Western Digital player, refer to this article: How to Convert M2TS to MKV for Free.

Then, why not backup the DVD 9 movie into AVCHD to fit on a DVD 5 disc, instead of shrinking the DVD to DVD 5 using DVD Shrink as most of us usually do? After all, AVCHD can give us much better quality. BTW the ultimate version dvd ripper is released. If you are thinking of this question, following are some facts for you to refer to:

1.An AVCHD disc requires a Blu-ray player, while a shrunken DVD with MPEG-2 codec disc can play in any DVD player.

2.DVD Shrink doesn’t re-encode the video and the process is fast, but if you shrink too much the quality suffers compared to using a good MPEG 2 encoder like DVD Rebuilder to re-encode the DVD as I talked in this article. By contrast, converting a DVD 9 to 4GB AVCHD will take much longer than shrinking or recompressing the DVD to MPEG 2, although it will give better quality.

3.You won’t get HD (high definition) video out of the conversion but SD (standard definition) video, so the quality gain you get from converting to AVCHD is not much but the time it takes is much. It may be worthwhile if you want to put two or three movies on a single disc.

Therefore, if you have a Blu-ray player and you think it is worth spending the long time to convert the DVD to AVCHD, you can do it. There are some free software tools to convert DVD to AVCHD format and multiAVCHD and Ripbot264 are the top two I will recommend.

However, if you are really after for a way to convert your DVD into HD video and small file size with fast speed,  there is indeed an easy way: using TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum. It lets you rip your DVD into HD video, with fast speed and different formats to choose from so that the output video can play in different video players. You can download it to have a try.

rip DVD to HD video with TouchUp DVD Ripper Platinum

“I used DVD Shrink to copy the whole DVD to my hard drive and the DVD folder works no problem with VLC, even the menus. Then I burned the DVD folder on a DVD+R DL. The burning went smoothly but I can’t play the burned DVD. My DVD player just shows a black screen and VLC gives an error message saying the media cannot be read. If I open the VIDEO_TS folder of the DVD with VLC, it plays various parts and when it go to the menu, the options on the menu don’t work at all”

So where is the problem? Why does the ripped DVD work on the HDD but not after burned? Is it due to the copy protection on the DVD?

To find out where the problem is, I think first you can try to compress the DVD to get below 4.7 GB and then burn on a single layer DVD disc. If the burned DVD SL works, then it’s the problem of the DL disc. Always stick to the kind of disc that always works. I have found that almost all the people who have successfully burned DL DVD use the Verbatim +R DL disc plus ImgBurn.

If the DVD SL DVD doesn’t work either, then the problem may be caused by the copy protection on the DVD as I talked in this article and you will need a capable DVD ripper.

When a 4:3 video is displayed on a 16:9 TV, the TV stretches the image to fill the widescreen and results in squashed look that everything looks shorter and fatter. So if you have some 4:3 DVDs that you want to play on your widescreen TV, how to make the look natural?

Fortunately, many widescreen TVs have different picture modes to help solve this problem. You can make 4:3 setting on the widescreen TV or on the DVD player which works by putting black bars on the sides of the screen, called picture boxing or letterboxed. Also it needs to be set to 480 where it is auto set to 1080p for 16:9 movies by the DVD player. If you don’t like the black bars, there is a mode that crops a little and stretches a little the picture to fill the screen without distorting the picture too much.

If you are unsatisfied with both the above modes to watch 4:3 DVDs in widescreen TV, you can try the below two free programs to convert the DVD with 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9, assuming you have ripped the DVD to the hard drive.

DVD Rebuilder

In DVD Rebuilder, go to Options/AVS Options/Advanced (Expert) Options/Convert from LB 4:3 to 16:9.

convert DVD aspect ratio in DVD Rebuilder

However, DVD Rebuilder is intended for DVD 9 to DVD 5 backup and the aspect ratio conversion doesn’t work for No Compression option. If you want to convert the aspect ratio without losing the original DVD 9 size, you need to add the following line to the [Options] area of REBUILDER.INI file: LAYER_BREAK_REMOVAL=0. Also change the target size in the [Options] area of REBUILDER.INI file to

TargetSectors (that produces DVD5 sizes at the default setting) =4050000.

IfoEdit

IfoEdit can also be used to edit the picture size in the IFO files on a DVD. Just double click on Where it shows the movie to be 4:3 to change to 16:9 and then Save. Check both the VIDEO_TS.IFO file and the IFO file for the main movie. If you are new to IFOEdit, you can check out the Tutes/Readme’s on IFOEdits site on how to use.

change DVD aspect ratio in IfoEdit

DVDPatcher

DVDPatcher can change the video headers in mpg/mpeg2 video including aspect ratio, framerate, resolution/size and bitrate. Just load the VOB file and change the aspect ratio.

change aspect ratio with DVDPatcher

The problem DVD movies are Taking of Pelham 123 (Sony Pictures video), Night at the Museum 2 (Twentieth Century Fox Film), Lionsgate’s W. (the George Bush bio pic). Following is the description of the problem:

“My DVD player can play the DVDs, while my computer DVD drive does not recognize them but it plays other commercial DVDs fine just not these. In the explorer, the drive shows empty with the DVD being in the drive, although it does try to read it when the DVD is inserted. DVD decrypting and ripping tool- DVDFab cannot detect the DVDs either.”

What makes people confused is that these DVDs can be played in the standalone DVD player but cannot be played in the computer DVD drive that play other DVDs just fine. Then what is going on in the DVD or DVD drive?

I have searched online for this problem but got nothing quite certain to solve it, so I’m not sure if this is another new DVD encryption method or it is the special copy protection scheme I referred to in the beginning. People complaining this problem didn’t mention they have found pressed marks on the discs, and I have no these DVDs in hand; otherwise, I will check the discs. Anyway, trying more DVD ripping tools is a feasible way.

What’s more probable is the problem of the DVD drive, so putting in another DVD drive can be the first try, since some DVD drives are more capable than others at reading discs. Also, check if the disc is scratched, though they are playable in DVD player and playback in DVD drive shouldn’t be picky with this.

Another possibility for the cause of this problem is the hard drive is changed to PIO mode from DMA mode. Normally, the computer HD is in DMA mode, but consecutive trying to read scratched or damaged discs will result in converting DMA to PIO mode, which will greatly slow the disc access. For details of the two modes and the solution, please refer to: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/316294-ripping-time-tripled and http://winhlp.com/node/10

Do you have similar story or problem? Please tell me and share  your opinion by leaving comments.

Again, such problem is due to DVD ripper failing to decrypt the DVD. The DVD ripping program may read the DVD and rip most of the movie but something of the main movie will be missed. In fact, this type of encryption is better than DVD rippers totally failing to read the DVD or DVD showing huge file size. After all, just the a little part of the movie is missed.

However, if you have such an encrypted DVD and have a quick temper or brook no delay to rip the whole DVD, you can try a capable DVD ripping tool that is updated constantly and timely to cope with the latest copy protection scheme.

a copy-protected DVD

At seeing of this disc picture, what do you think? Do you think it’s a disc drilled with two holes, or the photo was handled to look like this? Or is it just a defective disc?

I have just found this picture in a forum. According to the one who posted the picture, the two marks are not two holes (though they look like so in the picture), but two spots pressed on it and this is a copy protection scheme called Becker hole method to make his DVD drive not play it, so he was seeking for help to by-pass it so that he could rip the DVD to the hard drive.

How amazing this copy protection scheme is! It makes the DVD only be read by DVD players but not by DVD writers. That means old DVD drives that only reads DVD can read this DVD, but if the drive is a recorder, it doesn´t read it and just keeps blinking.

I have never seen such a copy-protected DVD and I’m not sure if there is a good way to back up the DVD. Perhaps it can be copied by using a “capture card” to capture the video from the output jacks of the DVD player so long as it can be played by a DVD player.

There are various reasons for famous websites like Google Video, YouTube and many others, for not allowing users to download videos from their sites. This is because when they allow downloading videos from their sites, there may be possibility for copyright problems to occur and next the more important reason for websites not allowing this facility is that, they badly need their visitors to come back and back to their website. They need more traffic in their site to get good response. Apart from these issues there are many ways for you to get your favorite videos from websites.

Rip your favorite videos without using any software:

You can convert all the online videos to any one of common video formats like the .vob or .avi from various sites, which are only meant for ripping these videos and then providing their download links.

Here about three conversion services are provided for you, using which you can have your favorite video in any file format you desire.

Zamar:

First let us have a look at the working of Zamar. Open the Zamar window first. Then copy the URL of your favorite video either from YouTube or from any other website source. Mention the copied URL in the Zamar site. Then select the file format to which the video should be converted. After entering the file format, it will request your e-mail id. Provide it in the space provided and just click convert button. Once clicking this, Zama automatically converts your favorite video and will send you a mail containing the download link for that video. You can then click on the download link and enjoy your favorite video. The only drawback of Zamar is that the download link will expire after 24 hours and providing your e-mail address may also lead to some problems. But you can convert the video into any kind of file formats you like.

Try for Vixy:

Vixy is also similar to Zamar. The difference between Vixy and Zamar is that, you need not provide your email address here in Vixy. The only problem with vixy is that it is capable of converting your video into 5 file formats. But once your provide your video URL it will convert, upload the video and provide you the link as soon as possible.

Media Convert Can Also Be Used:

Media Convert is the best among the three and it is very flexible in nature. The file formats associated with Media Convert is many and is much faster than the Trojan.

Both Zamar and media convert allows you to convert your files with any kind of formats and also you can upload any of your pictures, music files in net and then you can convert to any file format you desire.

Check Out the Options of Real Player:

While installing the real player, it will ask you an option for “download video form sites”. Select the option. Now, click on the download sign from the website offering you video and follow the instructions given. Do not forget checkout our video converter software.

From the Source Code:

In the website offering you video, right click and select the view source option. Now you will get html codes in a notepad. Press Ctrl+f, you will get a window. In that type .mov or any file format you require. Then identify the URL and download the video using any download manager.