While Apple’s iTunes Store provides quick and easy access to new movies and TV shows, unfortunately, they have not created an easy way of transfering your own DVDs and video files onto it. With an extensive collection of DVDs, why would you purchase the same movies again, just to put them on your iPad2?
This is where DVD Catalyst 4 comes into play. It provides a quick and easy way of turning your DVDs, as well as video files you might already have, into Apple iPad-optimized files.
With a simple click of a button it converts your DVDs, avi, mkv, mpg, divx with quickly and with great quality.
Here’s how to do it:
What you need:
* Obviously your iPad or iPad2. DVD Catalyst 4 includes over 600 different device profiles, covering pretty much every video-capable device on the planet, but this guide specifically addresses the Apple iPad.
* Windows-based PC. DVD Catalyst 4 runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, 32bit as well as 64bit. There is currently no MAC or Linux version available (sorry)
* iPad USB cable (the one from the Droid X is identical) so you can connect the Xoom to your computer.
* Apple iTunes 10 installed on your computer. To transfer video files to the iPad, iTunes is needed.
* DVD Catalyst 4. The software program that makes the process of putting DVDs and movies on your iPad as easy as possible. You can purchase DVD Catalyst 4 by clicking here (link), or download the free trial version by clicking here (link) Note: the trial version converts 25% of each item.
Starting the process:
Download DVD Catalyst 4 on your computer using the links above. If you purchased DVD Catalyst 4 you should have received a download link by email pretty much within minutes. If not, check your spam/junk mail filter and see if it ended up in there. If you used the eCheck payment method, unfortunately due to the communication that is performed between PayPal and your bank, it can take a few days before the payment is cleared. As soon as the transaction is cleared, you will automatically receive the download link.
After downloading either the trial or the retail version of DVD Catalyst 4, look for the downloaded file on your computer. Usually your computer downloads files to your Documents folder or your Downloads folder, but some people store their downloads on their Desktop.
After you find the downloaded file, right-click on it, and select Extract All:
This will bring up a file-extraction utility. Just follow the steps by clicking next next finish. After this is finished, the folder where the files are extracted to will be opened:
Now Double-(left)click on the dc4.0.x file displayed in the folder to install the program.
If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, it might ask you if you are sure you want to install the software. In order to install DVD Catalyst 4, you need to click yes of course.
Just follow the steps to install the program. After the installation is complete, DVD Catalyst 4 will have put a cat-eye icon on your desktop, and of course the program will also be listed in your Start-menu.
Double-click it to start the program:
On the left side of the program, you will see a Video Player Device selection area, which you can use to select the iPad2 profile.(there are quite a few different profiles for the iPad2, such as HD, HQ, but just select the standard “iPad2″ profile)
Thats it for setting things up. Now you can insert your DVD, or simply drag video files onto the program.
DVD Catalyst 4 will scan the content you added to obtain the information required to convert your videos.
After the scanning is complete, you can make changes to the filename as well as select the audio/subtitle language (and if you enable “Power User” a bit more).
DVD Catalyst 4 scans for all the content on a DVD in order to make it easy to convert TV DVDs (individual episodes) for movies, you might end up seeing more than one track. Even though DVD Catalyst 4 filters out trailers, sometimes special features are long enough to pass through. To remove them from conversion, simply select the DVD track you don’t want (the longest one is usually the movie) and uncheck the “enable for conversion” checkmark.
Now all that is left is the conversion process, which you start by clicking the Go button.
Conversion:
Video conversion is quite a demanding process for your computer. Especially on older computers, it can take some time for a movie to be converted. During conversion, the video and audio format of your DVD or video is changed to a format that can be handled by your iPad2, and if needed, the screen resolution is changed and black borders are removed.
When the conversion starts, DVD Catalyst 4 scans the movie at 5 different spots to determine if the video contains black borders. Most newer movies don’t have them anymore, but there are a lot of older wide-screen movies that do, and if these borders are not removed during conversion, they will reduce the quality as well as make the viewing experience less pleasant.
- movie with black borders
- tablet movie playback with black borders in file
(The white area represents the area of the width you would be missing. The video player app makes the white black though)
Now if we remove the black borders from the conversion, things turn out a lot better:
- black borders removed from the conversion
- tablet widescreen movie with minimal borders
The movie now fills the entire width of the screen. This is the default behavior of DVD Catalyst 4.
So when you start the conversion, DVD Catalyst 4 detects these borders, and if it finds them, it will automatically remove them. You can find more information on this subject in the User Guide, chapter 10, where the numerous options for black border removal are explained in full detail, including screenshots for both full-screen and wide-screen movies. If you want full-screen movies on your iPad2, its a worthy read.
And after the scanning part, it will start the conversion. This can take a while.
DVD Catalyst uses H264for the video format of iPad files. This format produces the highest possible quality for your conversions at a reasonable filesize. For most recent computers, conversion to this format runs at about 2x real-time, but on quad (or more)-core systems, it can run quite a bit faster. If you are using an older computer, you can select the iPad2 (fast) profile in DVD Catalyst, which uses a different format (often called mpeg4sp or ffmpeg) that is less taxing on your system (but also lower quality).
Transfering your videos over:
After the conversion is complete, DVD Catalyst 4 will ask you to connect your iPad. Personally I always prefer to transfer the files over by hand, so click Cancel here, which will bring up the folder where DVD Catalyst 4 stored the created video files. It defaults to your “My Videos” folder.
Connect your iPad2, and wait until iTunes is started (or start iTunes yourself) and on the left side, select the “Movies” folder on your iPad.
Now leftclick on the video file you want to transfer from your “My Videos” folder, and move it over to the right-side of the iTunes window, and let go of the mouse button.
iTunes will scan the file and then copy it over to your iPad.
And thats it. Now just tap on the “Videos” icon on your iPad and you can watch the movie.
Tips:
Audio Sync: When you preview the created videofile(s) on your computer, do NOT use Windows Media Player, it will have audio sync issues. If you play the created files on your iPad, or use a different media player, such as VLC or Quicktime, the file will be in sync.
Volume. A lot of people are in the habit of increasing the volume for their conversions. With DVD Catalyst 4, there is no need for that. It uses a technology we call “Volume Maximizer” which automatically boosts the volume level of all your conversions to a safe but louder volume. More information can be found here: http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/01/dvd-catalyst-4-tip-audio-volume-levels/
Full-Screen Video. While briefly explained above, in order to make all your movies appear full-screen on your iPad/iPad2, have a look in the DVD Catalyst 4 User Guide, chapter 10.
