possible stupid question

[jjanoch]

I am looking to take a few movies on a trip with my laptop and have learned that putting them on a USB memory card/stick will help improve the battery life of the laptop.

Can someone explain the process of getting a movie from a DVD to a USB memory card/stick for the trip?

I assume I am ripping to the HD and then transfering, but is there more to do for the laptop to recognize and play the files at a later date?

Also is it possible to put multiple movie files on the same memory card/stick assuming there is enough space?

 

[Webslinger]

a few movies on a trip with my laptop and have learned that putting them on a USB memory card/stick will help improve the battery life of the laptop.

That's interesting. I've never heard that before. click http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/88818
That guy is saying you should put them on your hard drive instead, but I'm not sure why he converted video formats.
That kinda makes the test inconclusive.

"The results were interesting. Playing back a DVD, I got battery life of 2 hours, 36 minutes. As expected, when playing back from the hard drive, battery life climbed to 3 hours, 5 minutes. I expected even higher numbers from the USB thumbdrive playback but was in for a surprise: Run time plummeted way down to 2 hours, 33 minutes, the worst of the bunch. Quite interesting."

I assume I am ripping to the HD and then transfering,

Yes, that's right.

but is there more to do for the laptop to recognize and play the files at a later date?

I don't understand your question.

Also is it possible to put multiple movie files on the same memory card/stick assuming there is enough space?

Yes, of course.

 

[BDMinus]

I'm guessing a laptop uses less electricity to access a usb flash drive than the hd which is mechanical.

You could use CloneDVD mobile with AnyDVD running to convert a dvd to a single-file format like dvix/xvid, save it to your flash drive then play them back with VLC media player or another compatible player. The transcoding will take a while depending on how fast your cpu is.

 

[andy o]

I'm guessing a laptop uses less electricity to access a usb flash drive than the hd which is mechanical.

You could use CloneDVD mobile with AnyDVD running to convert a dvd to a single-file format like dvix/xvid, save it to your flash drive then play them back with VLC media player or another compatible player. The transcoding will take a while depending on how fast your cpu is.

I'm pretty sure that if it's only a DVD, and you're not hurting too much for space (and it's a temporary thing anyway), the easiest way is just ripping the DVD directly to the USB drive, so either you can have a DVD folder, or an ISO that you can then mount, and play them with PowerDVD or some such.

 

[Fernando]

Power consumption of a generic 2.5" HDD drive is about 2-3W, of a usb flash drive about 0.5-2W (differs) and of a dvd drive about 8W.

The normal power drain on your notebook is about 60-80W.