Steve Maskery
Established Member
On another thread there has been some considerable discussion about the legacy nature of DVDs and how they are very inconvenient compared with direct download and streaming.
Just as a bit of background to show why I am where I am with this...
I'd been writing for Good Woodworking magazine for over a decade and had loads and loads of old articles. I've always had poor eyesight and no formal woodworking education (but lots by osmosis - dad was a cabinet maker, granddad was a pattern-maker), so I had, still have, limited hand-tool skills. I learned about jigs from the writings of Bob Wearing and FWW, and they helped me to overcome my shortcomings. So I made jigs. Lots of jigs. And I wrote about them.
So I thought about writing a book, but the medium of the moment was the DVD, and so I bought a camera and started to film. I knew the square root of zero about videography, but I learned. My jig DVD became two. At the time, download speeds were dire and DVDs were still mainstream, so I chose the DVD as my medium. If I were starting again now, of course I would go straight for downloading, but that was 2007 and this is 2016.
Then I invented the World's Greatest Ultimate Tablesaw Tenon Jig
and I made a DVD about that. Along came the Bandsaw trilogy and finally the Tablesaw set. By now it was 2012, but I was about to lose my home and workshop and not coping very well with that, so doing anything other than desperately trying to finish filming before eviction day was a non-starter. So everything has been DVD for historical reasons.
You may have seen my workshop build thread. I now have a workshop again and I would very much like to start filming new stuff. I have a lot in my head. But I have not fully recovered from being ill, it takes me ages to do anything (I'm currently decoration my downstairs - I started it in July) so nothing has happened yet.
Actually it is not quite nothing. I have bought a nice new camera, a friend has funded the purchase of a good radio mic and another friend has donated a proper set of lights. It's helped enormously and I am very grateful, of course, because the Workshop Essentials project has never made any real money. It took several years for sales to repay what I originally shelled out and current sales are less than a quarter of what they were, say, 5 years ago. I know some people think that this is a gold mine, they do not know what they are talking about! If it were I would not be living where I am and how I am. If I'd had to pay a salary, the business would have gone bust years ago. It is very difficult to compete with Free, no matter how good the content, especially when Free is constantly promoted. It doesn't matter that the two are not the same, if people perceive them as being equivalent, Free wins out every time, doesn't it?
So I do it for the glory, mainly.
Right, enough background. That is why I am where I am.
A few years ago I did look at trying to supply my films as downloads, but a 4.7G ISO file is a big download and not a convenient format for viewing, and at the time I could only find commercial services who would convert for me. I was reluctant to spend yet more money on the project and so walked away.
MusicMan was kind enough to say some nice things about my work and we have been having a conversation by PM. He has successfully ripped my DVDs to MPEG4 format and can now watch me and hear my dulcet tones wherever he wants on his phone or iPad. He has very kindly sent me this info of how to do it and I am passing it on to you. I don't know if it works with all DVDs or just Workshop Essentials ones. This is how he did it.
1. Download Handbrake. It's available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, and it is free (i.e. someone else pays for it).
2. Learn how to use it. Apparently it is easy. MusicMan took 10 minutes and there are online tutorials.
3. Each DVD rip takes about half an hour, you can keep your chapters for easy navigation of the DVD and a DVD takes up about a gig of data in MPEG4, compared with 4.7G on a physical disk. You can then add your videos to your video library, such as iTunes, and watch them on your phone or tablet anywhere you like.
I've not yet done it myself, but that looks MUCH easier than it was a few years ago. I shall have a go and then see how I could supply them in this format.
So if you have a a legacy woodworking video library on DVD format, why not have a go at ripping them and enjoy a Martini* woodworking watch?
S
*Anytime, any place, anywhere
Just as a bit of background to show why I am where I am with this...
I'd been writing for Good Woodworking magazine for over a decade and had loads and loads of old articles. I've always had poor eyesight and no formal woodworking education (but lots by osmosis - dad was a cabinet maker, granddad was a pattern-maker), so I had, still have, limited hand-tool skills. I learned about jigs from the writings of Bob Wearing and FWW, and they helped me to overcome my shortcomings. So I made jigs. Lots of jigs. And I wrote about them.
So I thought about writing a book, but the medium of the moment was the DVD, and so I bought a camera and started to film. I knew the square root of zero about videography, but I learned. My jig DVD became two. At the time, download speeds were dire and DVDs were still mainstream, so I chose the DVD as my medium. If I were starting again now, of course I would go straight for downloading, but that was 2007 and this is 2016.
Then I invented the World's Greatest Ultimate Tablesaw Tenon Jig
and I made a DVD about that. Along came the Bandsaw trilogy and finally the Tablesaw set. By now it was 2012, but I was about to lose my home and workshop and not coping very well with that, so doing anything other than desperately trying to finish filming before eviction day was a non-starter. So everything has been DVD for historical reasons.You may have seen my workshop build thread. I now have a workshop again and I would very much like to start filming new stuff. I have a lot in my head. But I have not fully recovered from being ill, it takes me ages to do anything (I'm currently decoration my downstairs - I started it in July) so nothing has happened yet.
Actually it is not quite nothing. I have bought a nice new camera, a friend has funded the purchase of a good radio mic and another friend has donated a proper set of lights. It's helped enormously and I am very grateful, of course, because the Workshop Essentials project has never made any real money. It took several years for sales to repay what I originally shelled out and current sales are less than a quarter of what they were, say, 5 years ago. I know some people think that this is a gold mine, they do not know what they are talking about! If it were I would not be living where I am and how I am. If I'd had to pay a salary, the business would have gone bust years ago. It is very difficult to compete with Free, no matter how good the content, especially when Free is constantly promoted. It doesn't matter that the two are not the same, if people perceive them as being equivalent, Free wins out every time, doesn't it?
So I do it for the glory, mainly.
Right, enough background. That is why I am where I am.
A few years ago I did look at trying to supply my films as downloads, but a 4.7G ISO file is a big download and not a convenient format for viewing, and at the time I could only find commercial services who would convert for me. I was reluctant to spend yet more money on the project and so walked away.
MusicMan was kind enough to say some nice things about my work and we have been having a conversation by PM. He has successfully ripped my DVDs to MPEG4 format and can now watch me and hear my dulcet tones wherever he wants on his phone or iPad. He has very kindly sent me this info of how to do it and I am passing it on to you. I don't know if it works with all DVDs or just Workshop Essentials ones
. This is how he did it.1. Download Handbrake. It's available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, and it is free (i.e. someone else pays for it).
2. Learn how to use it
. Apparently it is easy. MusicMan took 10 minutes and there are online tutorials.3. Each DVD rip takes about half an hour, you can keep your chapters for easy navigation of the DVD and a DVD takes up about a gig of data in MPEG4, compared with 4.7G on a physical disk. You can then add your videos to your video library, such as iTunes, and watch them on your phone or tablet anywhere you like.
I've not yet done it myself, but that looks MUCH easier than it was a few years ago. I shall have a go and then see how I could supply them in this format.
So if you have a a legacy woodworking video library on DVD format, why not have a go at ripping them and enjoy a Martini* woodworking watch?
S
*Anytime, any place, anywhere
