DVD Catalyst 3 includes support for more devices than all similar products combined. 100′s of different devices have their own conversion profiles, and are easily selectable using the dropdowns. However, every day new phones and media players are released and it is impossible to include profiles for each one of them.
Unless your device is some vague unknown brand, DVD Catalyst 3 is capable of creating video content for it. Usually selecting a profile for a similar device will produce the desired results, but you can further tweak your settings by clicking on “Modify”.
In general, you can perform the following steps to figure out what works best.
Most devices these days support H264 MPEG4 files. Start with the Apple > iPod Nano profile (not fast or HQ), don’t make any changes, start a conversion, and hit the skip button after a couple of minutes in the conversion. Transfer the small clip over to your device, and see if it plays.
If it plays, click on Modify, and change the screen resolution to the same as your device, or something slightly less. Note that some phones list the width and height in a reverse order (320×480) in their specifications. For video, the larger number is always in front (480×320). STart a conversion again, and see if the file works. If it does, you can adjust the video quality settings in “Modify” and see what works best for you. As a general rule of thumb, select something close to the width of your device screen as the video quality and go from there. for 800×480, 800Kbps is a good start, for 480×320, 480Kbps is acceptable.
If the iPod formatted file does not play and your device supports MPEG4 files, select Apple > iPod Nano (Fast) this uses the socalled MPEG4 SP compression technique. If it works, follow the steps above to make changes
If the device supports MPEG4, but doesnt recognize MP4 video files (some stand-alone DVD players with video file support), select the iPod Nano profile again, but in “Modify” change the conversion format to “divx5_mp3″ or “xvid_mp3″
If you experience issues, just send us an email using the “Email Us” button at the top of DVD Catalyst 3, and provide us with the device specifications or, preferably, a website link to it.
