This guide will provide you with all the info you need in order to experience the best movie and TV show watching experience on your brand-new HTC Android phone.
Since both phones are similar in video specifications (except for the 3D capability of the EVO 3D) I figured I might as well write a guide that works for the both of them.
Here’s how to do it:
What you need:
* Obviously your HTC EVO 3D or Sensation phone. DVD Catalyst 4 includes over 600 different device profiles, covering pretty much every video-capable device on the planet, the current version (4.0.2.7) doesn’t have profiles for them just yet (next update), but because DVD Catalyst is designed to work with current devices as well as future ones, it is perfectly capable of creating video files for new, unlisted devices.
* 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)
* A USB cable that fits your phone so you can connect it to your computer.
* DVD Catalyst 4. The software program that makes the process of putting DVDs and movies on just about any Android device on the planet 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. Becuase DVD Catalyst does not yet include profiles for the EVO 3D and the Sensation, select the Android > Xoom profile.
While not really needed if you convert DVDs or non-HD video files, you can change the screen resolution in the profile by tapping on “Modify”
Thats it for setting things up. Now you can insert your DVD, or simply drag video files onto the program.
Note: Non-protected video files, such as MKV, AVI, MPEG etc can be converted with DVD Catalyst 4, however so-called “Digital Copies” found on DVDs and Bluray discs, iTunes purchased/Rented video files, as well as Amazon.com’s video service also do not work with DVD Catalyst. The files provided using these services are protected with a form of so-called DRM, which requires activation using a capable video player such as an iPod/iPhone or Zune. Because conventional conversion tools such as DVD Catalyst access the files directly during conversion, these protected files can not be converted. While there are some (overly-expensive) programs that claim to be able to handle these files, the results are less than adequate in both performance and quality.
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 phone, 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 EVO 3D or Sensation, 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 Android-optimized 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 Xoom 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 bring up the folder where DVD Catalyst 4 stored the created video files. It defaults to your “My Videos” folder.
Connect your Tablet, and simply drag your video files over to it to transfer them.
You might receive a message from Windows about that it might not be able to play the file, but just click yes here.
When the file(s) is/are transfered over to your EVO 3D or Sensation, you can play them using the build-in Gallery app.
Tips:
3D movies: While there are programs out there that can “3d-ify” a movie, unless a movie is actually created in 3D, the playback experience will be disappointing. In order to make use of the 3D capabilities of the Evo 3D, we recommend converting 3D versions of the movie you want to watch. Unfortunately, there are a lot of different 3D methods, so the experience will vary.
Video output folder: Do not point the video output folder location directly to your tablet. It will cause complications, or conversions will run really slow. Use a folder on your computer, and copy the file after the conversion is complete.
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 tablet, 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 phone, have a look in the DVD Catalyst 4 User Guide, chapter 10.
Filenames on Android. A flaw in the Gallery app from the first releases of Android is that it only displays thumbnail images of the videos you have on it. While for movies, this might not be much of an issue, for TV shows, its impossible to tell which episode is which. Using a file-browser application to find and select your video files is one way of selecting the video you want to watch, but you can also use a unique feature of DVD Catalyst 4 to make Gallery display filenames for the videos you create. Enable “Power User”, and in the Conversion tab in Global Settings enable the “overlay video name at beginning of video” (not recommended to use when you use subtitles though) This setting will tell DVD Catalyst to put the filename of the created video as a large subtitle in the middle of the screen for the first 15 secoconds of the video. Because Gallery creates its image randomly from in this time frame, it will display the image with the movie title embedded in it as a thumbnail.
(New: have a look at our MovieGallery Android app in the Android Market. more info: http://www.tools4movies.com/category/applications/movie-gallery/)
