Free Pick: HandBrake - Bring Movies on Your DVDs to iPhone

The iPhone and iPod touch are great ways to view movies on-the-go - while you're commuting on a train or traveling in a plane. Plug-in some earphones and it's easy to immerse yourself in a movie.

You can purchase movies from the iTunes Store, but what about DVDs you already own? How do you get movies from your DVDs onto your iPhone?

HandBrake is a free application that can digitize a movie from a DVD and compress it down to a reasonable file size, ready to transfer to your phone.

Insert a DVD into your Mac. Launch HandBrake, select the DVD as the Source, and click Open. HandBrake will quickly evaluate the contents of the DVD.

While there are many advanced options, all you need to do is click "iPhone & iPod touch" in the Presets list. Now, click the Start button in the toolbar. It takes about 45 minutes for HandBrake to digitize (aka transcode) a movie, depending on the length of the movie and the Mac your are using.

When HandBrake is done, you'll have a copy of your movie on the Mac desktop. Now, open iTunes and drag the movie file into it. Once the movie has been installed into iTunes, you can delete the copy on the desktop to reclaim the disk storage space. Now that the movie is in iTunes, you can select it to sync to your iPhone or iPod touch.

HandBrake makes it very easy to take movies with you!

Note: HandBrake requires VLC Media Player for Mac OS X to be installed. HandBrake needs some of the components VLC Media Player installs to do its thing. VLC Media Player is free, and a wonderful alternative to QuickTime Player for viewing videos.