----- Original Message ----- From: "Marilyn Dalrymple" <marilyn160@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: "List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students" <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 5:21 AM Subject: off topic : I am looking for a device on which I can upload my DVDs and CDs that are other than music (like my The Great Courses DVDs, for instance) so I can listen to them when I can't play them in my DVD player. I thought of an iPod, and an MP3 player. Can I upload my DVDs/CDs onto such instruments? : : I thought some of you who are much more technological savvy than I may be able to help me (my technological skills are that I can usually find the on/off and volume buttons on gadgets). : : Thank you in advance. Jodix's stuff has all been good.. http://dvd-mp3.org/index.html - small DVDtoMP3 freeware program that just works (and very well at that! :) ..then just drag and drop he mp3's to your mp3 player.. MP3 players are cheap and come in all manner of flavours from the expensive kewl ipods to the ugly Zunes to cheap chinese $10 4 Gb players - all work at what they do nicely. A lot of phones these days work as mp3 players too Sizes come from the older smallish (128Mb range) to 160Gb or perhaps bigger and some with no memory*. I have a few 4Gb's - a lowly 128Mb will hold around 25-50 songs/audio books/whatever and that's around 4 hours of playtime. 4 Gb will get you 66 hours. a LOT more than I'd listen to in one hit! a 2Gb cheapie will set you back around $20 on ebay including postage. But then I have no desire to carry my entire music collection + a few dozen movies around with me all the time! There are also car mp3 players - I've had a car CD//Radio for a number of years that accepts a USB stick or an SD card in the front as well as MP3's on CD or normal audio cd's. Again, the Chinese have been making such things and selling them on ebay for a long time (and a lot cheaper than the units sold by the bigger names that are often the same ones just rebranded) MP4 players play mp3's and also MP4 movies (again Jodix's stuff works *really* well for this http://www.ipod-video-converter.org/ "DVD/VCD and AVI, MPEG, WMV, RM, RMVB, DivX, ASF, VOB video files in your iPod with few clicks") Again just drag and drop to have this transferred. a 2Gb MP4 player can cost on ebay as little as $30 delivered. Having special software like itunes to manage your music collection is something I personally avoid. for one the default settings on iTunes and others like it send data back to various companies - spyware like activities - and it's another program that by default loads at startup and hogs system resources. another reason is that I feel no need to have anything managed - I keep all my music in one spot and I drag and drop it to the removable drive ass I see fit and remove it when I want. it's a bit like making the choice not to install camera manufacturers software on a computer - you can either use a card reader or connect the camera directly and have it report as a removable drive. All the camera programs do is intefere and interpose themselves between the OS and the device and give you a funky interface that you really don't need. hope this helps karl * the no memory units are things that double as card readers - for example I'm looking on ebay at a SC/MMC 'crad reader' with inbuilt MP3 player - you add an SD card of whatever size you like - buy it now price is $14 delivered. before you buy anything though do a google search on the functionality of the model - some are basic but do the job, some are menu monsters, some have odd quirks and some are very good. Adio quality is often discussed but the earbuds make a big difference in the music quality as does the bitrate.
