[johnpop]

My powerbook setup is as follows:

12"
1.25gb ram
60gb 7200rpm hitachi drive
superdrive

I am wondering if compressing my DVD movies down to 1gb of mpeg4 and storing them on the harddrive would give a significant boost in battery life? I know that the processor will have to work harder to decode, but I think that will be less powerusage than the spinning superdrive.

What do you think?

[wilsonng]

I like compressing my movies down to 1 GB MPEG-4s but it takes a lot of time depending on your CPU.

On my 12" G4 867, it takes about 4 hours using 3iVX, DiVA, mAC3dec, and QuickTime Pro. So it probably isn't for everyone. My friend uses HandBrake.

If your PB isn't doing anything and you have lots of time on your hands, just let it rip and transcode. I usually set it up right before I go to sleep and let it transcode overnight.

If I am in a hurry before a trip, I'll rip several DVDs (movie only, no extras, or menus) and watch it off my HD. It's much faster to just rip it from your DVD and watch it off the DVD than it is to transcode it to MPEG4.

I don't know if an MPEG4 will spin less than a direct DVD rip but it certainly is better than carrying around your DVDs. Having DVDs means it is one more thing that can possibly get lost or scratched as well as one more thing to worry about. I usuallyl like to carry light. The less I have, the less I worry....

Playing a DVD from the SuperDrive definitely will consume more battery than playing off the HD.

I like ripping my movies to 1 GB MP4s, burn them on to DVD-Rs for backup and just copy the movie I want to watch on to my HD.

[johnpop]

CPU usage / Speed is not a problem.

In our house we have three Pentium 4 computers that I can setup to do tasks overnight when no one is using them by remote desktop, or vnc.

And because of the network I can easily have storage room for anything I rip.

[tooki]

If hard disk space is not an issue, I'd just rip the DVD to disk without re-compressing (i.e. just the MacTheRipper step).

The reason for this is that movie playback outside of Apple DVD Player uses more CPU. The power consumption from the hard disk will be roughly the same no matter what, but playing back a DVD-quality MPEG4 or MPEG2 without the hardware acceleration that Apple DVD Player uses means that the CPU is doing a lot more and thus using more power (and heating your lap more).

tooki

[johnpop]

What format does the apple dvd player accept? (I haven't received my powerbook yet..stil in alaska) I have some ISOs of DVDs with the extras and menu taken out, these will work right?

Tooki, your saying because of the way the Apple DVD player is coded it uses less cpu and resources than say VLC would?

4-4.5GB for the average DVD without extras vs say 1400mb for the average mpeg4 rip. I'd say I could carry plenty of movies around for a weeklong trip in mpeg2 (DVD rip) format saying I had 30 or so GB free on my PB. I guess I'll have to see once I get everything installed.

[wilsonng]

I put my TiBook's original 20 GB HD into one of those FireWire 2.5" external cases. It is bus powered and portable. I put all my MPEG4 rips onto that HD if I am tight for space on the internal HD. Then I would copy what I want to watch on to the HD for the day and then put away the Firewire external HD. As I finish watching I can just delete it off the HD.

I wouldn't connect the external HD to the PB as it may consume more battery power.

You can go to Apple DVD Player and select File > Open VIDEO_TS folder and highlight the VIDEO_TS folder. It's basically MPEG-2 video.

You should have plenty of space so just use MacTheRipper to rip only the movie itself without compression.

Otherwise do what I do and just let it rip overnight. I also rip when I leave the house to do errands. If your computer is just sitting idle, you may as well let it do something besides SETI.