I absolutely love that I can now buy movies and music digitally. But I also have a lot of old movies and music on DVD and CD that I would like to put on my iPad. Is that even possible?
With the rapid development in the field of legal downloads, you would almost forget that you (probably) also have a large collection of movies and music in your closet. Do you just have to throw it away like you once got rid of your VHS collection because everything was nicer on DVD? Well, you could of course consider buying everything again in digital form, but somewhere that is of course a mortal sin. Plus, not all movies need to look super sharp, right? It does take some work, but it is certainly possible to put movies from DVD and music from CD on your iPad!
You can download the world of movies from the iTunes Store, but what if you've already bought them all on DVD?
Music with iTunes Match
As you can read later in this article, it is possible to rip music from CDs and then save it to your iTunes library. However, that will cost you quite a lot of time per CD, and Apple wants to save you that time with iTunes Match. iTunes Match is a service that ensures that the music you have on CD is made available in iTunes. Of course you still have to load all the CDs once, but you don't have to rip them, because you get the music (often in higher quality) that is already available in the cloud. The disadvantage is that this service is not free, you pay 25 euros per year for it. The music is automatically available on all your iOS devices.
iTunes Match saves you time by making music you already have on CD digitally available.
Rip music with iTunes
Then of course there is also the option to rip music 'old-fashioned' with iTunes. What actually happens is that iTunes converts the music from the CD into a digital format that iOS devices can handle. That ripping is very simple, but it takes some time and that can take quite a few hours if you want to convert your entire CD collection. Moreover, the question is whether you have that much storage capacity on your iPad. So this is one of those projects that you should do in phases (a few CDs every week), rather than all at once. To rip music in iTunes, launch iTunes, insert the CD into the DVD player in your computer and wait a few seconds. iTunes will automatically ask you if you want to import the CD into your iTunes library. click on Yes, and the music will automatically be ripped into the correct file type for your iPad. Then, in iTunes, click iPad top right and then bottom right Sync, the music will be copied to your iPad (this requires the iPad to be connected to your PC or Mac).
iTunes will automatically ask if you want to import that CD into iTunes.
rip movies
Of course it would be great if iTunes had the same function for movies as it does for music, but unfortunately that's not the case. That means you will have to download additional software for it. If you search for 'copy dvd to iPad' you will be thrown to death with all kinds of programs, which often cost a lot. Fortunately, there are also free programs that are - in some cases - even better than the paid junk you can find online. Handbrake is a fantastic freeware program. Download Handbrake (for Windows or OS X). Insert the DVD you want to rip into the DVD player and click right below the heading presets on iPad. The correct settings are then automatically selected. Click now Start and the conversion starts. This can easily take half an hour, so it is a very time consuming process. Then drag the result to your iTunes library and the movie will be included when you sync your iPad as described under the heading 'Rip music with iTunes'.
To rip movies, you need external software such as Handbrake.
