Movies on USB drives that you can watch on your laptop?

[Mike]

I recently purchased a Dell mini-laptop (I later returned the Dell and bought the Acer Aspire One because the Dell hdd was only 8GB).
One of the things these netbooks are supposed to be able to do is play a full movie from a USB drive. Apparently a 90-120 minute
movie takes up around 2 GB on a drive, but I can't find much on the net about how to do it, or if specialized software is required to create a "movie" USB drive.
Anyone know how to do this, or where to get the software/movies from?

Cheers,
Mike.

[renrut]

Movies can be played from a USB drive with no problem. Most movies can be ripped down to about 700Meg in size and be just as clear as a DVD. They can be even smaller but the quality can drop off. You just need a good ripping program if you want to rip down a DVD. I had 21 movies on memory cards in my PDA. I removed the cards and put them in a card reader (USB drive) and could watch all of them on my laptop. I was in the middle of no where and needed something for entertainment. I could also watch the movies on my PDA which was a lot more portable. The 17 hour plane ride was a little bit easier when I was watching movies.

Legally, making copies of DVD's can be illegal depending where you live. In Canada, you are allowed to make a "backup" copy of what you already own. There are a lot of programs out there that will allow you to rip a DVD down to a file. I use a program called Pocket DVD Studio. It's quick but doesn't work on Vista very well at all. I have my PC setup for dual boot so I use XP to run the program. It allows me to setup the resolution and size. I use DivX codec because it's about the best compression available. The program is not free but there are some that are freeware.

Of course, there are movies available free on the net. I have a couple sites bookmarked at home but I'm at work. I try to post links when I get home.

[Mike]

Please post anything that's legal as far as movie source links go. I think I'd rather spend extra $$$ on USB drives
instead of pay per use software. I'd really be interested in a movie download website. Are you saying I'd need
some software (Pocket DVD Studio?) to rip movies to my USB drive? Is it free? From where? I'm running XP Home.
If you want to take this offline, PM me.

btw, if anyone's interested, there's a live TV website called atdhe.net. I have no idea whether it's legal or not,
so I'm not going to post a link, as that might be a problem.

[markopolo]

Pocket DivX Encoder used to work well for encoding movies for me. I haven't used it in a while. It does not allow you to copy a commercial DVD.

http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/EN_index.htm

The Philips surround sound DVD player I bought for my B+ had a USB port and the ability to play DivX encoded movies. Like renrut says, a 700mb file size produces a pretty good quality movie. That's like 10 movies on an 8gb usb drive.

The are some public domain movies available here: http://emol.org/movies/

[renrut]

Here is a site I've used for older movies and TV shows.

http://emol.org/movies/

The movies are in Mpeg format and are fine like that but you might try to compress them more with DivX to save space. DivX created AVI file format.

DivX is what I use to encode movies but I use another program to rip a DVD. There is a built in calculator in DivX you just fill in the length of the move and size you want it to be, and it will calculate the bit rate for the movie. It can be interesting getting started but once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy.

[Mike]

thanks. I'll have a look and download.
btw, I love the Stooges.
thanks.

[daytripper]

Are you meaning USB drives as in plug in 256mb and higher or the really high end 70gb stuff?
There is a program out there called demon drives which allows you to create virtual drives as well might be useful