Handbrake: Burning DVD’s to your iPad or iPhone

One of the things that I love about my iPad and iPhone 4 is that I can watch tv shows and movies on them. Watching shows on Netflix, Hulu Plus are nice, but you need an internet connection. Watching movies from iTunes means you have to pay money for them. Sometimes, I just want to watch a movie that I already own on DVD. That way I am not spending more money. But how do I get those DVD’s onto my iPad or iPhone? This is where Handbrake comes in handy. For this post, I will show you how to use Handbrake to get your DVD’s to your iPhone or iPad. You will also need a computer to do this.

The first thing you need to do is go and download Handbrake from the internet. The software is free and can be downloaded for your Mac or PC. Once you install Handbrake on your computer, go and find your favorite movie or movies that you want to copy. Insert the DVD into your computer. Click on the “Source” button in the top, left hand corner and then you will be asked to locate the DVD that you are wanting to copy over. Once you find your DVD, you can now click Open.

Once this is done, now you are going to want to set up the download so that you are downloading the video for the player you are going to use it on. For example, if I want to play the video on my iPad, I want to make sure I download the video in the right format. In order to do this you want to make sure you click on the “Toggle Presets” button in the top right hand corner. Then a pop out window will come out on the right hand side. From here you will be able to choose what format you want the video to be downloaded in. There are choices for the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. If you are going to want to download the video for the iPad, I chose the “universal” format and it worked fine for me.

Next you have to make sure that Handbrake is recognizing the actual movie part of the DVD. What I mean by this is that most DVD’s have all kinds of videos on the DVD besides the actual movie itself. You are going to want to make sure you click on the “Title” and make sure that it has selected the video that has the longest running time. Usually that will be the actual movie on the DVD. When this is done you can now begin the process of burning your DVD to your computer. Click the “Start” button and be prepared to wait, and wait….. Depending on the size and length of the movie that you are downloading it could take a while, so feel free to let it do its thing.

Once the movie is downloaded to your computer you are now going to want to get it over into iTunes so that you can watch the movie on your iPad or iPhone. In order to do this, open iTunes first. Then once it is open, drag and drop the movie into the “Movie” section of iTunes. The movies should now be copied into iTunes ready for you to sync.

Now, sync up your iPhone or iPad to iTunes. When you do this, you are going to want to make sure that the “Sync Movies” box is checked under the Movies tab. This will ensure that the movie that you want to watch is now going to sync with your device.

When the sync is done, you should now be able to see your movie on your device that you synced it to. I hope this post helps you out. Have fun burning those movies over to your favorite device.  Word of caution here, AppleLife by no means supports illegally burning DVD’s. We made this post so that you are able to burn DVD’s that you already own to your device of your choice. Thank you.