The iPhone can only play movies that are encoded using MPEG-4 and H.264 codecs and have the extensions ‘.mp4′ or ‘.m4v’. In this tutorial I will show you how to convert movies that are in other formats (for example, wmv, avi, mkv, etc.) to iPhone playable movies.

How To Use HandBrake To Convert Movies To The iPhone Format:

HandBrake is an freeware application that can convert movies from any DVD-like source such as: VIDEO_TS folders, DVD images, real DVDs, .VOB and .TS files and any other multimedia formats. It can convert them to MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM using the MPEG-4, H.264, Theora video codecs and the following audio codecs: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3.

You can download the free tool from Handbrake. Just download it and install it. Now launch Handbrake and let’s see how we can convert a typical .avi movie into a playable iPhone one.

When you launch Handbrake, click on the ‘Source’ button from the menu bar, to select the movie that you want toconvert. As you can see, you have two choices: a video file or an DVD/VIDEO_TS folder. Choose what you prefer and then browse to the desired video file.

Now click on the Browse button and choose a destination folder for the new video and type its file name.

Next, select the output settings for the video file. This can be done from the presets panel on the right. Simply click on the ‘iPhone & iPod Touch’ option and all the output settings will be set in automatically. Also, if you will use thisapplication only for this task, you can click on the ‘Set Default’ button at the end of the panel and make the ‘iPhone &iPod Touch’ preset the default one.

Finally, click the Start button, found near Source. Handbrake will begin the encoding process and a command window will open with details about the process.

When the process ends the window disappears. For this test I used a 22 minutes video file that had 175 MB by default. The encoding process took 13 minutes and the final video file had 91.7 MB. The codec used for the encoding process was H.264 which is the best for image quality.

If you want a smaller file and fewer minutes for the encoding process you can select a different codec, like MPEG-4 XviD or MPEG-4 FFmpeg, from the Video tab.

For example, the MPEG-4 FFmpeg codec made from the original file a new video that had only 38.7MB in 2 minutes. Unfortunately the image quality was quite poor this time. So you have to sacrifice one thing for the other.

The last step is to connect your iPhone to the PC, start iTunes or other alternatives and upload the movie.

Some other free tools:

There are also some other free softwares available but they have got their own drawbacks and i have found handbrake to be the best out of these. However you can still give them a try. They are :

Agree Free AVI WMV MPEG ASF MOV to MP4 Converter

DVDVideoSoft Free Studio (Free Video to iphone Converter)

Kvip

Just Follow these simple steps.

Steps:

• First of all you will need the latest developer version of the Google chrome, in order to install the extensions.

For that purpose download and install the latest google chrome from the following link

Google Chrome 4.0.249

For details on how to get started see the following post http://techtoggle.com/2009/12/google-chrome-beta-extensions-now-available-in-the-gallery/

• After the successful installation, Go to the extensions page and Download the StumbleUpon extension by clicking Install button right at the top.
• After the installation you will notice a toggle button just next to address bar as shown in figure.

• Simply login to the toolbar and then start stumbling as you do in Firefox using the stumble button in the toolbar.

Login

Stumbling:

Replying:

• Thats all. Its very easy. Start Stumbling on Chrome as well.

After you take the screenshot, you will be given 4 option:

• Edit Image in Aviary
• Save to Desktop
• Copy to Clipboard
• Host at Aviary

Aviary’s Firefox Add-on Screen Shots Tour:

Download Aviary’s Firefox Add-on

This app is portable, so there is no need to install. All you need is a 4 GB flash drive and an ISO image of Windows OS. If you have a DVD, then you may use it instead of an ISO image.

1. Plugin your USB stick in your system.
2. Click on Format USB button.
3. Choose either DVD or ISO version.
4. Click Start ISO to create bootable USB stick.

Click here to download this small App.

Also try out Phone conference with Powwownow.

First of all, create a text file on your desktop, you can create it anywhere in your hard drive. Name it Read Text or anything you like. Write some data in it. For instance i have written “Hi this is Ali from techtoggle.com”.

Now, go to Microsoft Visual Studio (i am using the 2005 version) and create a Visual C# Windows Application and name it Read Text (you can name it anything you like). By default a windows form named Form1 will be displayed on your screen. Now just to make it more presentable, change its text to “Read Text From File” from the properties section. Using the toolbox, drag and drop a textbox and two buttons on your form. Now, from the properties section, change the text of button1 to Get Text From File and also change its name from button1 to btngettext. Similarly change the text of button2 to Exit and change its name from button2 to btnexit. This is just to avoid confusion while coding. You can also change the back color of buttons or the text box from the properties section, only if you like to. Adjust the size of the form, text box and the buttons accordingly. Now, your form should look like this :

Now, double click the Get Text From File button to go to the code view. Add the following directive at the top.

using System.IO;

Now, paste the following code in the function for btngettext button click event.

StreamReader objstream = new StreamReader("C:\\Users\\Muhammad Ali\\Desktop\\Read Text.txt");

textBox1.Text = objstream.ReadLine();

Note that you will have to change the path accordingly as to which location the text file from which you are trying to read text, is saved. And if you want to read all the text and not just a single line in the text file just replace ReadLine with ReadToEnd in the above code.

Now go to the design view, and double click the Exit button and paste the following code in the function for btnexit click event.

Application.Exit();

And You’re done. Yes, its that simple. Run the project and you will be able to read a text file.

For example if i go to university in the morning, then go to my office and then comeback home in the evening. I use internet on all these domains with WiFi of my Notebook. The problem is that i need to change TCP/IP and proxy settings for each place every day. I thought of automating this process and came up with the solution. It might not be the perfect one but it works really nice for me.

There are two steps to do this task.

1. Automate Network TCP/IP settings.
2. Automate Internet Proxy/Lan Settings.

Required files are shown in figure.

Automate Network TCP/IP settings

We will create a batch file to automate this process. The basic command used in this method is ‘Netsh’.

basic template of the batch file is like this.

Netsh interface ip set address name="Wireless Network Connection" source=static addr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx mask=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Netsh interface ip set address name="Wireless Network Connection" gateway=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx gwmetric=0
Netsh interface ip set dns name="Wireless Network Connection" source=static addr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Netsh interface ip add dns name = "Wireless Network Connection" addr = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

To modify this template as you require, you need to change the name (wireless Network Connection)  with your connection name.  Supply desired IP addresses with the locations xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx .

Home Settings:

Picture below shows the required settings of home template which are automatic dhcp with no proxy settings.

You can get the batch file for this type of setting from Here.

Office Settings:

picture below shows the required settings of office template which are static IP address, gateway and DNS address.

You can get batch file of above settings from Here.

Remember to change name and addresses as your requirement.

University Settings:

this template uses static IP addresses, gateway =none, DNS=none with proxy server enabled.

You can get batch file of above settings from Here.

Remember to change name and addresses as your requirement. I hope these files work file for most of my friends.

Automate Internet Proxy/Lan Settings:

For internet explorer and Google chrome users regedit merge .reg file will do the work.

To enable proxy settings.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
"ProxyEnable"=dword:00000001
"ProxyServer"="172.16.56.56:80"

To disable Proxy settings.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
"ProxyEnable"=dword:00000000
"ProxyServer"="172.16.0.1:80"

Change proxy address as you require.

Get .reg files from Here.

Extract these files on the same folder where .bat files are located. Then modify each batch file and add this line at the end of each file.

regedit /s xxx.reg

replace xxx with office or home or university for respective batch files.

For firefox users there is an Add-on which will do the task . you can get the add-on from Here.

Thats it you are done. Just double click the required batch file and automated settings will be done.

For Windows XP, Download from Here.

For Windows Vista/ Windows 7, Download from Here.

The tutorial consist of the following simple steps:

1. Creation of a Ptach-Grid
2. Adding noise to the patch to make it more realistic
3. Creating a tree using sphere and cylinder
4. Merging sphere and cylinder into one object
5. Assigning matrials to tree
6. Scattering copies of tree onto the grid using Scatter function
7. Adding background to the scene i-e clouds in this case
8. Rendering the output.

Download .MAX file here

Download .max file here.

Download Source Code

Download Output Movie [HD AVI (1.42 MB)]

Download AVI Video