The Motionbox Blog

We often have users asking us how to upload videos they have on a DVD onto Motionbox. And of course, we're talking about family videos, not copyright-protected videos (film, television, etc), which obviously aren't allowed on Motionbox.

With a little bit of effort though, you can have home videos from your DVDs up online and ready to share with your friends and family. Here's what you need to know:

First, you'll need to convert the video on the DVD into an actual video file that you can upload to Motionbox. You can see all the video formats we accept here.

There are some free programs out there that enable you to copy a DVD to your computer (sometimes called "ripping" a DVD). This is legal, free, and easy, despite the hard-sound word "rip" :). If you have a PC, check out this tutorial, which walks you through the process and advises you on what software you'll need.

The tutorial recommends a program called DVDx, but we prefer one called HandBrake, which does the same thing, and works on both PC and Mac. You can specify the size you want the final movie to be. Just make you sure you select the proper "chapter" of the DVD - presumably it will be the longest one, but you can always preview it using the "Picture Settings..." button. You can download HandBrake here.

Also, you might wanna check out this Help article on the best compression settings to use for your videos before uploading to Motionbox.

Once you have the video files on your computer, all you have to do is upload!