ExpanDrive

Ok, so forget the last post. You love Cover Flow. You’re a law-abiding citizen who would never take any digital media off a peer-to-peer network.

You’re just a regular joe, who, back when they used a PC, ripped a lot of their DVDs into AVI files, and some of those AVI files had to be broken into two separate CD-sized files because your old laptop didn’t have a DVD player and you couldn’t buy a trillion-byte hard drive down at the corner store. Don’t worry, everyone believes you; no one is calling the MPAA in on your IP address just because you’re reading this article.

Anyway, now you’ve got a Mac, and all these movies are in a format you can’t play on either your iPhone or your iPod. In fact, some of them don’t even seem to play on your Macbook. Solutions?

In my experience, if something won’t run on Quicktime, just turn to MPlayer or VLC. They look sloppy and decidedly non-Mac, but both are free and extremely effective. MPlayer is a little bit more straightforward, VLC covers more formats and lets you do more cool stuff. If neither of these programs can run a video file on your Mac, the movie is probably corrupted.

Getting movies into a format an iPod/iPhone won’t choke on is a bit tougher. If you haven’t sold the DVD you originally ripped the movie from on eBay, Handbrake is an awesome DVD ripping solution. It has an amazing array of settings for the power user/control freak, but also some basic presets (iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, etc.) for people who want things to “just work”.

But no, I hear you. All you have is an AVI that won’t even open in Quicktime, and you need to make it iPhone-compatible m4v or mp4. My pick in 90% of cases would be iSquint, the dumbed-down (but free!) version of VisualHub from Techspansion It has the same fire-and-forget feel as Handbrake, with a fair array of output options for the technically ambitious, and smart-alec alert windows to boot.

For those other 10% of cases, when the AVI is split into chunks, do yourself a favor and do NOT buy Quicktime Pro to join the files. For some reason, it takes the pinnacle of Macintosh media playing prowess HOURS to join a couple 700MB files. D-Vision (why are all these video geeks French, anyhow?) does it faster, cleaner, and for free. Just click the big button that says “Tools” and you’re ready to rock. It’ll also fix up crummy AVIs for you.

In some cases, very rarely, you’ll run across video files that simply won’t work. I had an .mp4 of Batman Begins that just would not run on my iPhone. After hours of banging my head against the wall, I opened it in Quicktime and checked out “Movie Properties” under the Window menu. Turns out the voice track was a few fractions of a second shorter than the video. A tiny error, imperceptible in playback, but enough for my phone to reject it. I cropped a half-second off the beginning and end of the file, and all was well.

In even rarer situations, you’ll find a movie in your collection that some weird, Linux-using friend must have ripped for you (from your DVD, of course) in .mkv format with FLAC audio or some other bizarre combination of open-source formats. VLC is your best bet for these. It can (slowly, painfully, and unstably) export an MPEG file that iSquint can usually make iPod-worthy. It’s “Streaming/Exporting Wizard” under the File menu.

Good luck, and may the Force be with you.

We all hate EULAs. We don’t read them, even when the little checkbox that indicates we’ve read and agreed to them won’t go away until we’ve scrolled all the way to the bottom of the 5,000 words of legalese. When some enterprising soul does read one, usually in anticipation of new version of Windows or Mac OS, he’s always shocked at what he finds, and blogs about it to the world. The world blogs back, and blogging deathmatches ensue until the terms of the agreement are lessened. Of course, this has always been a mostly meaningless exercise, since there is already a law in place that governs how we can use software we’ve purchased. 17 USC Section 117(a)(1) tells us that you are free to make a copy to RAM of any software you own (regardless of what the EULA says) provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner

Seems pretty cut and dry. Even though you don’t own the copyright, if you buy software, you can use it. The copying of it to RAM would seem to technically violate the copyright, but this law explicitly says that it doesn’t. Until yesterday.

In a summary judgement for Blizzard, the Ninth Circuit held in MDY v Blizzard that this section of law does not apply to anybody. Purchasing a copy of software does not make one the “owner” of that copy under section 117. The section of law that applies to this class of people (“licensees”) is section 106, which makes it illegal to make a copy of any work to which you do not hold the copyright. The use of software is only legal if you are given the right by the copyright owner, in this case through the EULA, and therefore if you violate the EULA, you are in fact infringing on the copyright. Unless I am mistaken, the only way to be the “owner” of a copy of software is to be the owner of the copyright itself, making Section 117 redundant. I can’t imagine the law was intended to be interpreted this way.

This ruling also sets a bad precedent for the status of other legally purchased digital property. If this judgement is correct, Fair Use does not exist. While it hasn’t been tested in court, it is generally assumed that one has the right to copy CDs for archival purposes and transfer to a different medium (Section 117(a)(2) seems to say this, as well), but all it would take would be some text printed on the inside of a CD case to explicitly make that use illegal. No contract needs to be signed; the owner of the copyright simply has to make reasonably sure that “licensees” read the agreement. Of course, this amounts to agreeing to a contract you haven’t seen, since no stores will allow to open software boxes or CD cases before purchase, and most won’t allow you to return opened software or CDs should you not agree to the terms. Since breaking the terms of this agreement now makes one a criminal, that is a bigger deal than ever before.