While there are many ways to transfer a movie from a DVD to a 5G Video iPod, an application called DVDFab Platinum provides a method that's as simple and easy as they come.  DVDFab's DVD-to-iPod transfer process is not only painless, it also produces perhaps the best-looking iPod video we've seen - and that's saying something.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to transfer a movie from a standard DVD disc to a 5G iPod with DVDFab Platinum.

Step 1: DVDFab Platinum

Before you can begin copying DVD movies to your iPod using the method shown here, you must download and install DVDFab Platinum.  There are other versions of DVDFab available, but to transfer a DVD movie to a mobile device, you'll need to install the Platinum version.  Click here to download the software.

Once you have DVDFab Platinum installed, you're ready to go:

Step 2: Transcode DVD Video to Hard Drive

To "transcode" video is to convert it from one format to another.  In order for the DVD movie to play correctly on the iPod, it must be put into an iPod-compatible format.  Don't worry about the specifics of this process because DVDFab does the work for you, but in Step 2, the DVD movie will copy to your computer's hard drive as it's transcoded from the standard DVD format to an iPod-friendly format.

NOTE: In this tutorial, we'll be copying the movie Fargo to our 30GB 5G iPod, but you can obviously use whatever movie you'd like. 

Place the DVD disc containing the movie of your choice in your computer's DVD drive. Open DVDFab Platinum. You'll see that DVDFab scans your source disc and identifies its contents in the Source field:

NOTE: You can use either widescreen (16:9) or full screen (4:3) formatted DVD discs, but you'll likely get better viewability if you use 4:3, or full screen, discs.

Now that the disc is ready to be copied to your hard drive, it's time to tell DVDFab where to store the transcoded iPod video.  We suggest that you create a folder in the root C:\ directory of your hard drive for each movie you transcode (new folders can be created in My Computer or with the Make New Folder button in Browse for Folder mode), but how and where you set up your folders is up to you.  We've created the folder Fargo_iPod on our C-Drive (C:\Fargo_iPodhow\), which is where we want the iPod-formatted version of Fargo stored.  Whatever its title, your destination folder should appear in the Target field:

After you've set up the target folder, you must set DVDFab to transcode the DVD movie to the format you need, which in this case is iPod format.  On the left-hand side of the main screen, select iPod from the DVD to Mobile menu.  Uncheck any subtitle or language selections you don't need on the right side of the screen, then click Next:

NOTE: By removing unneeded audio languages and subtitle files, the resulting iPod video file will be smaller.

The next screen allows you to tweak the soon-to-be created transcoded file to your specifications.  You can leave each of these selections as they appear, or you can change them to better suit your needs.  For example, you can change the file name, increase the audio quality bit rate, or change the resolution of the video output: 

When you've made your changes, if any, click Start.  Allow the video to be transcoded to your hard drive.  The process may take as little as a half hour or as much as several hours; it depends on the DVD, your DVD drive and the overall speed of your computer.  It is recommended that you not use your computer during this process.

Step 3: Move Transcoded Video to the iPod

Once DVDFab Platinum gives you the ...Successfully Completed message, you're ready for the final step: moving the newly-encoded video file to your 5G iPod.

First, you'll need to locate the new video file.  Remember the folder you set as the Target of the transcoded video?  That's where the iPod-ready video file will be stored.  In our case, that folder is C:\Fargo_iPod\:

As you can see, the new video file is about 500 megabytes in size, approximately 1/8 the original size of the DVD movie. 

To move the file to your iPod, connect the iPod to your computer and open iTunes.  Wait for the connection to complete.  With both the folder window (the folder where your iPod video is stored) and iTunes open, drag and drop the video file to the iPod in iTunes:

Allow time for iTunes to transfer the video file to your iPod; this may take a few minutes.

The movie should now show up in your iPod's menu under Videos > Movies: 

You can now watch the movie right on your iPod or connect your iPod to a TV and watch it anywhere!

Final Thoughts

DVDFab Platinum can be used for other projects, including backing-up DVDs, copying DVD movies to your hard drive, etc.  This tutorial only addresses the process of creating a file compatible with a 5G iPod digital audio player.  

While there are free methods available for transferring video from a DVD to a 5G iPod, we found them to be more complicated and resulting in lower-quality results.  If you're interested in trying a free method of transferring a DVD movie to an iPod, e-mail us by clicking the link below.  If you know of a free process that produces the same quality results, we'd like to know that, too.  We'll post it!  

Was this tutorial helpful? Let us know.

Still have questions? E-mail us.