Formosa Neijia

I use a lot of tools to work on the blog and some have been a lot more useful than others. I want to introduce some of the useful ones to you guys.

For downloading clips off youtube, nothing compares to Zamzar. This site is awesome. You give the URL of the clip you want to download (or upload one yourself) and this site converts it into the file format of your choice, emails a download link to you, and then provides the download. This is very convenient. I often download youtube clips in AVI format to burn to VCD or DVD. It’s a great way to archive video footage and then you’ve got it anytime you want it. Be sure to give them a small donation for this free service.

I order lots of DVDs off Amazon.com to play on my region-free DVD player. So it really burns me up when I can’t play a region one DVD that I legally bought because it won’t play on my region-free player. Grrrr. So I’ve had to find ways around this little problem.

DVD Shrink is a program that extracts the files off of a DVD. It’s free (no hidden catches or spyware) and, for once, it does exactly as advertised. If you try to search Goggle for something like this, you’ll go through dozens of links before you get satisfaction. The program installs easily and is a snap to use.

DVDFab is a great piece of software that works with your DVD burner. What this software does is show you exactly what is in the DVD file structure. You can select the parts that you want on the DVD and just burn those. Want to make a new compilation? Go right ahead. It’s a snap with this thing. Don’t need the French subtitles or the Spanish dub? Strip them off. But the best thing about DVDFab is that it allows you to make discs region-free. That’s why I use it. It might also allow PAL to NTSC conversion. Not sure, though. Get an older version of the software if you want it free. The latest version is only shareware. I use version 3.14 and it works great. Do not upgrade it, though, unless you want to pay.

I use a lot of pics on the blog. Photoshop is king of the photo world but it’s a hassle for small jobs. Irfanview is a great viewer and editor that does what I usually need to get pics up on the blog. It’s small and loads really quickly. Great for re-sizing photos.

HELP!

The one thing I don’t have is a free program to convert DVD files to a video format that I can cut, or that can just extract a section off the DVD in another format. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!