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Transferring movies to your Surface Pro 2

Anonymous
2014-03-28T00:35:59+00:00

The good, bad and ugly of transferring a movie from DVD to your surface pro 2 just so you can watch it on the airplane.  Now that I have the power cover with lots of power to watch movies and read books on the airplane, here's how I got a movie on the surface pro 2.  First of all you have to RIP a movie from your DVD collection to your desk top.  The USB port on the surface may not have the power to do this from an external drive.  Once ripped, the movie can be transferred to your Micro SD card on the Surface Pro and can be watched on the Surface Pro. DO NOT use a USB to USB cable to transfer files between computers.  This can blow the USB port.  You need a USB data cable with software to act as a gateway or network manager for file transfers.  I bought and returned a few to the store.  Most of them are for transferring your entire computer to a new computer.  Takes too long to set it up just to transfer one file. Best solution I found was to transfer the file to a flash drive with plenty of space (16g) - takes less than one minute - and then plugging it in the surface pro USB port and dragging it to the micro sd card.  Works great.  Movie plays just like it was on the hard drive.  Two DVD ripping programs are Open DVD Ripper and Magic DVD Ripper.  Both cost about $39.

Surface | Surface Pro | USB-C

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-04-12T12:42:58+00:00

    Update.  After transferring several movies from DVD to the Surface Pro 2, I have found the following to give me the best result:

    Read IO:  LIBC (the others ASPI and SPTI are good but not as good as LIBC.

    Video CODEC:  MGEG4 seems to work the best all around.

    VIDEO OUTPUT:  .MP4 is by far the best.  The file is larger than .AVI but the "rip" is much faster (actually twice as fast) and you get a wide-screen output file designed to play on the surface pro 2.  The detail of the .MP4 output is the same quality as the original DVD.

    I have now deleted all the previous .AVI video files and now use only the .MP4.

    In rare cases, when you still get a scramble video output file after ripping, change the Read IO from LIBC to ASPI and rip again and that usually fixes it.

    Peace out.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-04-10T16:38:15+00:00

    I don't seem to be getting through.  It is not feasible to convert over a thousand video files -- mostly movies -- everytime Microsoft releases a new version of its operating system.

    Microsoft has produced a tablet computer that cannot play a stand video format that its prior systems could.  The video format is one used by major digital recorders and is the native video format on DVDs. 

    One of the primary functions of a tablet computer is the consumption of video content.  The Surface line does not support one of the most widely used video codecs so it is obviously not for the non technical user who just wants to watch a movie.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-03-30T04:47:12+00:00

    >You can covert those movies from MPG to .AVI or MP4 with a free software called "handbreak." 

    First of all AVI is a file format not a video compression algorithm.  It is an envelope.

    Second I have over a thousand mpg video files.  I am not going to convert them because Microsoft decided it can make more money off its customers by unbundling functionality that was formally included in Windows and charging a separate fee for it.

    Third my mpg files transfer seamlessly between my Windows 7 system and my TiVos so it is Windows 8.1 that is broken and needs to be fixed.

    Surface is supposed to be a tablet computer.  If it cannot play standard video files out of the box what is it good for?

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-03-30T04:00:39+00:00

    You can covert those movies from MPG to .AVI or MP4 with a free software called "handbreak."  Handbreak does not "rip" DVDs.  In-other-words, it won't break the copy prevention or DRM restrictions but it will copy unprotected movies and change the output format.  If you have DVD that you want to rip and then save as AVI or MP4 you can use "Open DVD Ripper 3"....... costs about $39.  I have ripped DVDs on my desktop and then transferred them to the surface pro 2 using a flash drive and they play just fine.  Don't use a standard USB to USB cable to transfer files from your desktop to the surface, you can blow the USB ports by doing this.  A USB to USB data transfer must involve software that creates a network or gateway to monitor and transfer the data properly....... and this is a pain in the you know what because it takes too long.  Best to just use a flash drive, this takes under a minute each way.

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