To update a previous version of DVD Catalyst 3, just click on the cat-eyes to download the update.

One of the fixes applied in 3.85 in regards of detection of looping DVDs caused some issues with conversion of some of the trickier DVDs. This has been fixed.

Whats New in 3.85 :

For our soon to be released MP4 Streaming Server application for iPhone/iPod Touch/Android/Blackberry and select Windows Mobile devices new profiles have been added, designed to produce watchable video for internet streaming. Information in regards of the Streaming Server application will be made available soon. Until then, please visit  http://mp4ss.tools4movies.com on your iPhone, Droid, Storm, Bold or Touch Pro (or any other MP4 capable player with internet connectivity) for a sample.

*Updated manual. The original manual had not received any major updates since DVD Catalyst 3.0. A few things were changed after the original website domain name was stolen, however, most of the features that were added to DVD Catalyst after release were not mentioned in the manual. We have now updated the manuall to reflect 3.85 and all of its features. We addressed everything we could think of, however if there are parts missing, or information you would like to see expanded, please let us know.

*The Boosterpack is now included in the full trial and retail installers. Because it offers a great benefit for just about everyone who uses DVD Catalyst, we decided that it is easier to include it in the installer rather than to have everyone download it separate. The “Preview Fix: is not included in the installers, mainly because it would make the download even bigger.
*Global Settings > Thumbnail tab added. This offers a multitude of options to have DVDCat automatically generate thumbnails from video files after conversion is finished.

*Merge / Join option added. You can now join multiple avi files into a single video file. Option to enable for other types/dvdtracks added in Global Settings > Advanced, however, it is more reliable for AVI files.

*Duplicate / Move up / Move down options added. You can re-order the files/tracks before conversion. With duplicate you can convert a track into a single file as well as split in parts for example.

*Split option added. You can now split a video file or DVD track in the middle to create to smaller files of the same playlength.

*Screenshot Sequence. In the preview, an option to generate a sequence of screenshots of the selected video/dvd track has been added. Files will be saved in the selected output folder, and are created using the same resolution as the source video.

*”Experimental” conversion profiles added to copy specific file formats. File Copy AVI, File Copy MP4, File Copy MPEG/VOB. Works only with specified file formats, and can be used to copy a DVD to an unmodified MPEG file (Handy for MediaCenter PC’s),  merge video files without re-encoding etc. For AVI pick the AVI one and so forth. Cropping/resizing options will not result in any changes. File Copy MPEG/VOB can also be used for testing a DVD drive.

*Enable Streaming for MP4 files. (Global Settings > Advanced). Enable this to automatically modify the created MP4 files for streaming capabilities.

*Re-ordered CPU Indicator code to make DVDCat work on Linux (wine)

*Re-organized “Global Settings”

*Modified conversion speed display code for better accuracy.
Fixes:

Use sourcefolder for destination did not work for all video files, this has been fixed.

FLV/YouTube files did not convert properly or in sync. This has been fixed, but requires the boosterpack AND the previewfix to be completely enabled.
Fixed Load/Save State and Status

Fixed “Remove from Queue”
Fixed numerous “integer” errors.

Thanks to a few people who reported some issues with DVD Catalyst, and took the time to go through various less-used features to try and replicate them, we have fixed more issues in 3.85 than any other release. Even though it is only a 0.1 version increase, the amount of fixes, and the amount of new features added are more fitting for DVD Catalyst 3.9 rather than a 3.85, but because the big 4.0 is so close, we decided to just make it a small version increase.

For DVD Catalyst 4 we have no idea what to do. From as it stands now, 4.0 will just be DVD Catalyst 3.99 +1, which will also mean its a free upgrade for DVD Catalyst 3 users.

As always, we are out of ideas on what to add. If you have an idea for an interesting feature, let us know. We are always listening.

On top of that, these games came out before a time that wide-screens were as commonplace as they are now, so these games usually do not play full-screen, or their video appears stretched or with black borders, unless some fixes are available to make things look better.

Last night, I was googling for some info on the upcoming Command and Conquer game, and then I stumbled upon a website that mentioned Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun (C&C 2 basically) with it’s add-on pack Firestorm was released for free on valentines day. With the upcoming Command and Conquer 4 : Tiberian Twilight, it makes sense for Electronic Arts to release older games for free to raise more exposure, but with the growing Netbook market, that is not capable of running C&C3 or C&C4 properly anyway, this is awesome.

You can find Tiberian Sun + Firestorm here:

http://www.commandandconquer.com/classic

The website also has Command and Conquer 1 and Red Alert available for free as well (also well worth the download) but in my opinion, Tiberian Sun is the best of the bunch.

Installation:

After you download the 1.2GB large file, you will need to use WinRar or 7Zip to extract the file.

You end up with a folder named OfficialCnCTiberianSun or EA Games

If you have the Official name as a folder, go into it, so you see the EA Games one.

Rightclick on the EA Games folder, and select cut

then go to “My Computer” or Start > Computer, depending on your OS

then go to your C-drive, and rightclick on “Program Files” and select Paste. If you receive a warning (Vista/Win7), just click OK

then go into the Program Files folder, click on “Show Files” if you see nothing else, and then go into the “EA Games” folder, then into “Command & Conquer The First Decade”

You will see a shortcut named “Play Tiberian Sun” rightclick on that, select “Send to” and then “Desktop” you will now have a shortcut on your desktop for the game.

Close all the windows you have open, and doubleclick on the shortcut.

It will play the game.

Tweaks:

I recently picked up a Vaio P, which I now use for checking emails when away from my main computer setup, and it has the most uncommon screen resolution you can find, 1600×768. Tiberian Sun offers 800×600 as the highest resolution, so when you play the game on the Vaio P, it does not fill the screen completely.

Meet “changres”, a little tool that enables you to select a couple of additional resolutions.

You can download it from here: http://www.pixcom.dk/cheats/TiberianSun.htm

After extracting the zipfile, copy the “changres” file to “C:\Program Files\EA Games\Command & Conquer The First Decade\Command & Conquer(tm) Tiberian Sun(tm)\SUN”

When you run it, it shows a couple of extra resolutions to choose from. If yours is not listed (1600×768 was not) just pick the one slightly less, and save it.

The information for the screen resolution is saved in a file called SUN.ini

If you open this file by doubleclicking it. It should open in Notepad or something similar.

Look for
[Video]

ScreenWidth=800
ScreenHeight=600
StretchMovies=no

(screen width/height should have the values you selected in the res utility)

change it to the resolution of your netbook/laptop/pc screen, in my case for the vaio-p
[Video]
ScreenWidth=1600
ScreenHeight=768
StretchMovies=no

Stretch movies is cool to enable, however, it does not affect the size of the menu’s, so it looks a little weird.

Here a clip of what it looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SUOW84LwRo

As a user, I stopped using Norton Antivirus (Corporate) back in 2001. Before that, I used my computer for years without any virus protection, and when I became more active on the web, I decided it was time for a virus scanner. Through my work as a network administrator, I was allowed to make use of a coprorate license through my employer, and used it for a year or so when I realized my computer was getting slower and slower. I ran a few scans with Norton, and everything was reported clean. Not sure what to do, I did an online virus scan, and came to find out that my computer was loaded with crap.

So, after a wipe of the computer, with loss of data because the infection was spread quite deep, I installed a different virus scanner, AVG, and have been using this ever since.

Due to some false-positives I have gotten throughout the last year in regards of DVD Catalyst and the trial-wrap app I used to make the trial expire after 7 days, I’ve been using www.virustotal.com to check my software before releasing them. Today, when scanning a beta for a user to test, it nicely showed that 40 virus scanners see my beta as clean, but Symantec shows a lovely Suspicious.Insight message.

Doing a search for this particular message led me to Symantecs discussion  forum, and an article on its website

http://www.symantec.com/norton/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2010-021223-0550-99

Suspicious.Insight is meant to inform the user that a given application is unproven and indicates that the file has not yet developed a strong reputation among Symantec’s community of users. Detections of this type are based on Symantec’s Reputation-based security technology.

This detection indicates that the file has not yet developed a strong reputation among Symantec’s community of users. Detections of this type are based on Symantec’s Reputation-based security technology. This system uses “the wisdom of crowds” (Symantec’s tens of millions of end users) connected to cloud-based intelligence to compute a reputation score for an application, and in the process identify malicious software in an entirely new way beyond traditional signatures and behavior-based detection techniques.

When detections of this type are triggered in Norton products the user may be warned that the application is new, allowing the user to make the final decision. Future versions of Symantec’s Endpoint Protection products will include this functionality. When used in these products, administrators will be able to configure blocking policy based on their specific tolerance for risk.

Today, the vast majority of malware is being generated in real-time on a per-victim basis, meaning that each such malware program will appear entirely new and low-prevalence to a reputation system. In contrast, most legitimate software has vastly different characteristics – it often comes from known publishers, has high adoption rates, shares much in common with earlier versions of the software, etc.

The Suspicious.Insight detection, therefore, is meant to inform the user that a given application is unproven and not yet well known to Symantec’s tens of millions of users.

Looking at the top10 infections found on Virus Total in the last 24 hours

http://www.virustotal.com/estadisticas.html

it nicely shows 30.000 suspicious insights, and in second place,  3000 counts of some malware.

I can understand the reasoning for mentioning to a user that the program they are using is new, and that the virus scanner is not capable of ensuring the file is clean, but with a nice little name of “Suspicious Insight” and the popular topics of stolen identity and troyans harvesting your data, what are users going to think when they see this message?

The DVD standard specifies a fixed screen resolution for movies. This still comes from the time that wide-screen TVs were not common, so when widescreen movies became more popular, black padding was added to widescreen movies to make them still compliant with the DVD specifications. Most DVD players (devices as well as programs) are designed to ignore the black padding added to the video, but for video files this is not the case.

Example:

If we convert this movie without removing the black borders, the conversion, as well as the video player will treat the black borders as part of the actual video part, so when we play this on a device, the video will appear similar to this:

If we remove the black borders from the video (DVD Catalyst’s defaults) the video will look like this:

When we view this on the device, it will look like this:

No difference, right? It still shows black borders., even though the video itself does not have them. This is because the player adds them by itself when the video does not fill the screen.

So, how do you get rid of these borders completely?

Method 1: Crop/Cut. “Remove Black Bars from Device. This will remove the black borders as shown above AND remove parts of the sides to make it fit.

Full screen video, looks great. But what did we lose?

Original

Cropped

About half the movie is gone because we made it full-screen. Of course this differs per device, resolution and movie width, but still, it’s a considerable difference.

Second method, Stretch or as some people like to call it, Anamorphic.

This basically removes the black borders as in our first example, but then it stretches the video to make it full screen.

Original

Stretched

We still have the full movie, but everything looks a bit stretched.

So, the reason why DVD Catalyst uses “Remove black bars from file” as a default setting is because most video players have a Zoom function. With this, you actually have a choice during playback to select how you want the video to appear on screen. With the cropping/stretch methods, you make this choice during conversion, so there is no way to revert back to the original view of the video.

Just tap the zoom option in your player, and you can switch from

To

And back again while watching the video.

I made a few different merger programs in the past for previous versions of DVD Catalyst, but those don’t work properly anymore, unless you have an older version of DVD Catalyst installed, so I made a new one a few days ago. The merger was something I made in a few hours, and while its fully functional, I can;t guarantee it works with every file you have. The people that used it have successfully merged 100’s of files, so it does work, but I haven’t tested it all the way myself.

It uses a few files from DVD Catalyst 3, so DVD Catalyst 3 (retail or trial, both work just fine. While the trial version of DVD Catalyst 3 is limited to 20% of the conversion, this does not apply to the merger, The merger will do the full 100%)  needs to be installed and at least ran once (to put the required files in the proper location)

What is it for?

If you have a movie or video (divx, xvid etc) that is split in multiple parts (usually to be able to fit the parts onto a sincle 700MB CD for example) you can use the merger program to stitch the files together so that it ends up being one big, continuous video file. Especially when you convert thevideo to a different format, having just one file per video is a lot nicer to work with.

How does it work?

Make sure you have at least ran DVD Catalyst 3 once to make sure the required files for the merger are in place. Uninstalling DVD Catalyst 3 will remove these files.

Unzip the merger file from the downloaded zip file and run it.

Drag the avi files you want to merge onto the program, use the arrow buttons on the right to make sure the proper order is set. Part 1 at the top, part 2 below it etc.

Click the Right-arrow button, and it will ask where to save the merged file and lets you change the name as well.

Wait a little while, and its done.

Limitations:

Files that work: avi files with divx or xvid video, mp3 or ac3 audio. Other formats should work, but these have not been tested.

The merger does not convert the files or modifies them, it just copies the information from one file to another.

The merger does not have any failsafe code to check for overwriting files, however, it does default to append _merged behind the saved filename.

You can download the merger by using the following link:

www.tools4movies.com/merger.zip

To transfer video files to the Droid, please visit this website for details

10 Steps:Transfer music files between Verizon Motorola Droid and PC | Verizon Cell Phones blog | Reviews,specs and tips & tricks.

While it is written in regards of transferring music files, the same principle applies to movie files as well.

Playback of video files is a bit different.

The build-in Media Gallery application can play video just fine, but unfortunately, it does not display movie titles or filenames.

If you have only one or two movies on your Droid, it isnt really a big issue, but if you filled it up with 2 seasons of Two and a Half Men, things are a bit different.

To be able to see titles/filenames of the files on your device, you will need to install a more featured video player application.

For the bare minimum, Video Player, by Jeff Hamilton, can be downloaded for free from the Droid Marketplace. Rather than just thumbnails, it actually shows the filename and the filesize of the video.

(note, the limitation on the screen resolution does not apply for the Motorola Droid, the Droid is perfectly capable of playback of the full-resolution video files created by DVD Catalyst)

If you want something more fancy, the (non-free) Act One video player provides a bit more control.

More info can be found here as well.

How Do You Sync Movies to Moto Droid?

Only a very small percentage of DVDs have these issues.

The specifications for video files are the same, H264 video at 800×480 resolution.

For the source, I picked a 720p version of the trailer of the recently released  2012 movie, and I converted this using the 2 Droid presets. Because of the many scene-changes, I did both on 1-pass as well as 2-pass

It is also the first time I used Rapidshare for links, so I am not sure how that works out. While RapidShare might ask you to pay, just use the free option to download.

Here are the links:

Default Droid profile, 1-pass here

Default Droid profile, 2-pass here

HQ Droid profile, 1-pass here

HQ Droid profile, 2-pass here