The other day I talked about my new Cowon A3 and I was still trying to figure out how to get a movie from a DVD to the device to play. After a buddy did it on the first try with his Mac + Handbrake, I decided to give Handbrake a second try.
I used DVD Decrypter to rip Hackers to disc. Basically this is a one-click transfer.
I then followed these directions to use Handbrake. I chose the “Classic” preset with H.264 encoding. This resulted in 900MB file. I copied it over to the Cowon, and played it.
Everything worked like a charm, great resolution (most likely I can play it on my television with little loss, though I have yet to try), sound, and playback.
My PSP was disappointing with movies (UMD), as it just can’t keep up with anything even close to fast moving; it ghosts and blurs. The Cowon is beautiful!
Additional note that the forums on iAudiophile have a great section of the Cowon A3.
Just as a note, the max movie file size was about 2GB in size (roughly 2048MB, if you want to get more technical). Anything over that and the Cowon wouldn’t open it. This may have been fixed in firmware since I’ve tried it, but it might still be a limitation. Not that it matters much, it’s not like you’ll be annoyed at the resolution of a 2 GB movie on such a small screen, but if you’re like me you like the option to plug the Cowon back into a tv and play a movie that way. Still, the picture usually looks just fine.