Marvel at that gorgeous screen glaring back at you. Now imagine using it to watch the prime parts of your DVD collection. Not sure how? Best follow our little guide then. You’ll be a mobile movie mogul in minutes.
What’s the point?
Take your movie collection on the move and watch flicks in crystal clarity on your mobile phone!
Is it free?
Why, hell yes.
Sold! How do I do it?
Step 1: You’ll need some software to rip and re-size your DVD films, but it’s a piece of cake. Whether you’re a PC or Mac man grab a free copy of HandBrake. Install it, slip in a DVD and choose to rip in MP4 format, then hit ‘Picture settings’ and set the output to the same size as your phone’s screen. You can find you screen’s dimensions on Nokia’s site under technical specifications. For instance, the E61i has a 320x240 screen.
Lastly you need to set the average bitrate to 128kbps – it’ll make playback smooth without a needlessly large file.
Because you’ll be ripping the film into a relatively small format it’ll be quick to convert. You shouldn’t be sat waiting for longer than an hour, and ripping a whole DVD could take half that time on a really speedy machine.
Step 2: Although Handbrake will encode video smaller than the original, the file you’ll get will still be pretty big. A full-length film will clock in at around 200 megabytes, so shove it onto your handset using USB. Hook up the cable that came with your mobile, plump for ‘Mass storage’ or ‘data transfer’ when your phone asks which mode you want, and copy the file to the removable disk that’s just appeared on your computer. It’ll take about four minutes for the file to copy over.
Step 3: If your phone comes with RealPlayer installed, use that to load the film. If you’ve got an N95 then flip open the second slider with playback keys to control the action though RealPlayer.