Can anyone recommend a good, quickish, reliable & hopefully free software to convert movies to my ipad to help relieve my night shifts?

Thanks

Handbrake is a good place to start. Download VLC with it

Or just use VLC and don’t bother converting them – VLC can play just about any format and you can load files into VLC via iTunes (even if iTunes can’t play them).

Just done that very same thing… Drag and drop them into the VLC app thing in iTunes and it pushes the film across to the iPad.

Amazingly it works.

Does this VLC app handle disney films as i find nearly all my recent films are protected in some form and handbrake etc cant get anywhere near them.

So i download the VLS app on my laptop and i can then drag and drop dvd’s to I tunes?

Plex, and do it differently 😉

Been using Handbrake here too.

Can handbrake and vlc remove blueray protection? Last time I tried it couldn’t.

I buy most of my films through itunes anyway, but some stuff, like the BBC natural history output, I would prefer to buy on blueray. The compression used by apple seems to distort at times (say when looking at “ripply” water it can be quite noticeable).

Unconverted files are about three times the size of converted films…

I use DVD Decrypter (might still be available somewhere) to rip the DVD. This comes off as a .VOB file, which can be renamed to a .mpg. Ignore the warning.

I then use DVDVideosoft’s free converter to convert to a .mp4 – which is not as good as the .mpg on a decent sized television, but is fine on an iPad. I suggest using the setting for the best quality that your iPad will support.

I should like to point out that I own all the DVDs that I have ripped – this is simply for iTunes and the NAS drive.

If you’ve using OSX then MakeMKV and Handbrake do a good (although slightly longwinded) job of making a Blu Ray iTunesable.

I use one of these for my i pad air to import from an usb stick.
Files need to be mp4,create a DCIM folder on the stick,rename video files to an 8 digit number and they go straight in to your photo folder on your i pad.No need for i tunes.

VLC did the trick. Simple & fast, job done. Thanks for the info peeps.