Because DVDs were invented when Wide screen was not commonplace, the official DVD standard did not account for the different screen size of the video content in this format. To produce wide-screen content that conforms to the official square-screen DVD standard, black padding is added to top and bottom of the video, which effectively makes the movie screen size the proper size. Recent DVD players are capable to detect these black borders, and if they are set up to display content on a wide-screen TV, they can remove these borders to fill the screen.

When you convert a movie, these black borders are, because they are part of the video, actually converted as well. When we remove these black borders, the video section itself ends up smaller, and thus the quality is improved throughout the section that is left. What many people do not realize is that if you have a file that does not have black borders, but you play it on a device that uses a different screen kind (wide screen movie on a square screen device for example) the video player itself actually adds black borders to the video to fill the screen. Because of this, DVD Catalyst offers a couple of different kinds of black bar removal options.

*No cropping. This leaves the video section unmodified. If there are black borders as actual part of the video, they will also end up in the created video file.

*Remove black bars from file. This removes the video padding from the original file during conversion, but leaves the actual video section of the video unmodified. When watched on a device with a different screen kind, it will still have black borders (unless you use the Zoom function on the player itself)

*Remove black bars from device. This removes the video padding from the original file during conversion, but will also cut of parts of the sides of the actual video part based on the selected screen size. This setting makes any kind of movie full screen on the selected screen size in the device profile, regardless of the screen kind. A wide-screen movie on a square-screen device, or a square-screen movie on a wide-screen device, it will always end up full screen.

*Fullscreen stretch. This removes the black borders from the original file during conversion, and then stretches the video to make it full screen on the selected device profile. You will not loose anything from the actual video content, but the video will look different, and depending on the selected device even distorted. A widescreen movie on a square screen device will have people appear longer and thinner, and a square screen movie on a wide screen device will have people look short and stubby. This setting is only recommended if you are converting video content of the same kind as the device screen.

*Add black bars to fit resolution. Required for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable HQ profiles. This setting adds black padding the the video to make it fit the exact selected resolution. Some devices (PS3, PSP) can only play content of a very specific screen size, and will not play it otherwise. The normal PSP profiles work fine with every crop-setting, however the HQ profile can only be played if it is exactly 720×480. anything bigger than 480×272 and different from 720×480 will not play.

More info, including screenshots, can be found in the User Guide of DVD Catalyst 3

*Conversion priority. This setting determines how much power of your computer is used for conversions. While not really noticable on multi-core systems, on older computers, this can greatly affect the conversion speed. Setting it higher will enable DVD Catalyst to use more power for the conversion, however, less is available for other computer tasks. If you use your computer for other tasks while a conversion is running, it’s recommended to leave it set to Normal.

*Allow upscaling. By default, DVD Catalyst does not “upscale” video. This means that if you selected a device with a resolution that is bigger than the screen size of the movie you are converting, the resulting movie screen size will not be made bigger (example: converting a DVD to a HD screen resolution). The reason for this is that up -scaling during conversion greatly reduces quality, and it also increases the time it takes to create the video file. Most video player applications automatically scale the video bigger, and do this more efficient and at better quality. By enabling this option, DVD Catalyst will increase the video screen size to the selected resolution.

*Convert only X minutes of each file. If you want to compare quality of a couple of settings, or perform a benchmark of some sorts, you can enable this to have DVD Catalyst create short conversions. All the other functionality (including monitor folders, remember files etc) are still used, so if you set DVD Catalyst up to run fully automatic, you can verify the functionality completely. Remember to disable this option when you are finished with testing though.

*Enable boosterpack. (only visible when the booster pack is is installed). If the DVD Catalyst booster pack is installed, and you run into issues of some kind, you can turn it off with this setting. With this setting disabled, DVD Catalyst will run with it’s original (slightly slower, but more compatible) conversion engine.

*Thread count. (only visible when the booster pack is is installed). The DVD Catalyst Booster pack can run a couple of conversion formats with multiple threads at once. A thread is basically a portion of the conversion, and by adjusting the thread count the conversion engine can make better use of additional cores or processors. The default 8 works fine on even older or limited computers.

*Save conversion status on close. If you use DVD Catalyst’ Auto shutdown feature (General tab) you can enable this option to have DVD Catalyst show you the last conversion status when you run it the next day. The “conversion status”, which is shown when a conversion is running, contains information about start time/stop time and conversion speed information for each individual converted item.

Cropping. Commonly known as black-bar removal. Cropping is used to remove black borders from DVD video content. Because DVDs were invented when Wide screen was not commonplace, the official DVD standard did not account for the different screen size of the video content in this format. To produce wide-screen content that conforms to the official square-screen DVD standard, black padding is added to top and bottom of the video, which effectively makes the movie screen size the proper size. Recent DVD players are capable to detect these black borders, and if they are set up to display content on a wide-screen TV, they can remove these borders to fill the screen.

When you convert a movie, these black borders are, because they are part of the video, actually converted as well. When we remove these black borders, the video section itself ends up smaller, and thus the quality is improved throughout the section that is left. What many people do not realize is that if you have a file that does not have black borders, but you play it on a device that uses a different screen kind (wide screen movie on a square screen device for example) the video player itself actually adds black borders to the video to fill the screen. Because of this, DVD Catalyst offers a couple of different kinds of black bar removal options.

*No cropping. This leaves the video section unmodified. If there are black borders as actual part of the video, they will also end up in the created video file.

*Remove black bars from file. This removes the video padding from the original file during conversion, but leaves the actual video section of the video unmodified. When watched on a device with a different screen kind, it will still have black borders (unless you use the Zoom function on the player itself)

*Remove black bars from device. This removes the video padding from the original file during conversion, but will also cut of parts of the sides of the actual video part based on the selected screen size. This setting makes any kind of movie full screen on the selected screen size in the device profile, regardless of the screen kind. A wide-screen movie on a square-screen device, or a square-screen movie on a wide-screen device, it will always end up full screen.

*Fullscreen stretch. This removes the black borders from the original file during conversion, and then stretches the video to make it full screen on the selected device profile. You will not loose anything from the actual video content, but the video will look different, and depending on the selected device even distorted. A widescreen movie on a square screen device will have people appear longer and thinner, and a square screen movie on a wide screen device will have people look short and stubby. This setting is only recommended if you are converting video content of the same kind as the device screen.

*Add black bars to fit resolution. Required for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable HQ profiles. This setting adds black padding the the video to make it fit the exact selected resolution. Some devices (PS3, PSP) can only play content of a very specific screen size, and will not play it otherwise. The normal PSP profiles work fine with every crop-setting, however the HQ profile can only be played if it is exactly 720×480. anything bigger than 480×272 and different from 720×480 will not play.

Omnia users

by Carlos   from Dublin
on Apr 18, 2009

After testing all different software?s out there for converting movies to be played in Samsung Omnia device I have come to the conclusion that DVD Catalyst 3 is the only one which gives you the Omnia full video screen size 400×240. All the other software even though they are advertised for Omnia device, you never get a full video screen, you always get black stripes on top and on the bottom of the device screen, not matter whether you set screen size to 400×240 or not This is everything you get with Catalyst 3 for a very reasonable price. Give it a try and you won?t regret it

But free toolkits DVD conversion toolkits can have a daunting learning curve for novices, and files dragged and dropped directly into the Treo often leave much to be desired in their formatting. Commercial solutions have streamlined and automated the conversion and formatting process to virtually eliminate manual intervention.

I recently reviewed one such tool, Pocket DVD Wizard, and will now take a look at DVD Catalyst 3, just released in a new 3.2 revision.

Where Pocket DVD Wizard uses a wizard-style interface, stepping the user through a sequence of configuration options each time a conversion is made, DVD Catalyst aims to reduce, and even eliminate, the number of configuration steps by saving frequently used settings. Once the proper conditions are set, conversion may consist of nothing but inserting a DVD into the drive, and waiting for the finished output file.

Installation

Like Pocket DVD Wizard, DVD Catalyst 3 is Windows desktop software, not native to a specific device. Unlike Pocket DVD Wizard, whose trial version allows the user to convert up to five minutes of video before registration, DVD Catalyst’s trial runs unrestricted for seven days: “No watermarks in the video files,” boasts the product description, “and most definitely no 5 minute video clips of a 2 hour movie.” Ouch!

Operation

In addition to Palm OS and Windows Mobile Treos, DC3 (the company’s shorthand for the app) has a large menu of conversion profiles for many target devices: the iPod Touch, Sony PSP, Xbox 360, Nokia N70 and others. Each device setting allows user customizations to be saved as a modified profile.

The Palm profile I used was a 7XXp (TCPMP) setting, with most defaults reasonable enough to leave untouched.

• Player Screensize: 320 x 320
• Video quality (Kbps): 300
• Video mode: 1 Pass
• Sound quality (Kbps): 64
• Audio mode: Stereo
• Conversion format: divx5_mp3_palm
• Volume: 15
• Framerate: 25
• Do not resize to player screensize: Unchecked

The one parameter in the above list that’s changed from its default is the Volume, which was originally set to 5—far too weak on my tests; above 15 introduced distortion.

The framerate’s default of 25 fps looks very good, but I constantly had problems adjusting the video to synch with the audio track. With Minority Report, the actors’ lips continually outpaced their dialog, even when lowering the framerate to 18. Pocket DVD Wizard offered much better (though still imperfect) audio/video synchronization. The latter app features a couple of controls lacking in DC3: a Re-Sync AV switch and an Auto detect DVD frame rate option in its DVD Frame rate menu.

Despite the faster video track playback, the audio tracks often sounded slightly sped-up and higher pitched than the voices on the source, which occurred even on the lowest acceptable framerates. The results weren’t exactly Alvin and the Chipmunks, but the speed discrepancy was noticeable.

Further configuration options beyond device profiles are available in the Global settings and Edit video settings panes.

Global settings

Global settings consists of panels for Media options for activation defaults like “Scan for DVDs on startup” and “Eject DVD when done”; Language options for subtitle and audio language settings; and Conversion options which, among other settings, features important Auto-crop options for dealing with black bars.

Three Auto-crop options are available: “No cropping”; “Remove black bars from file,” which crops the top and bottom bars from file, but maintains the full image (i.e. not fullscreen, but improved image quality); and “Remove black bars from device,” which crops the top and bottom bars from the file, and also cuts the sides of the image for fullscreen effect. Of the three, I preferred the “Remove black bars from file” option, since I generally dislike cropping, and the resulting picture was still large enough to be very watchable. Options for manual cropping are available in Preview Mode, which I’ll discuss shortly

Edit video settings

Edit video settings displays the DVD’s tracks as a queue for batch conversion. By default, DC3 flags the largest track for conversion, designated by “Yes” in the Convert column, but a minimum playtime can be set back in Media options for the queue to flag smaller tracks for conversion automatically. Other unique options in the Edit pane include “Modify resulting filename” and “Start scene”/“Stop” for beginning/ending scene numbers to convert. I’d prefer that DC3 allow user-definable start and end conversion points by specifying time delimiters, not just whole scenes. (Tools4Movies note: Preview the track to have those options, including brightness and such) This would be helpful when creating test clips by skipping past credits and other non-representative sections of features. It is possible to preview the output at any start point, but apparently conversions themselves must start from the beginning of a scene. Only the length of a conversion can be specified—you can, for example, make a 3-minute test clip. Most users will be converting whole feature tracks most of the time, not test clips, so the start/end point issue isn’t a make-or-break feature.

Preview mode

The Preview mode referenced above displays the DVDs tentative output in its autodetected aspect ratio by default. On the Treo setting, the original 320 x 320 preview matte (window) disappears, replaced by a matte of 320 in width and a height depending on the final aspect ratio and manual crop settings. I wish the matte would remain square, since it’s hard to remember what a centered height of 192 looks like on the Treo compared to 240 or 288. Manual cropping is adjusted by top, bottom, left and right sliders; or by one of four crop buttons.

• The first button eliminates the top and bottom black bars from the scanning, resulting in lower image quality from magnifying the remaining area. Black bars at the sides can still appear, since only the top and bottom bars are cropped.
• The second button crops all black bars and fits the image to screen. This is basically pan-and-scan fullscreen.
• The third button resets the cropping, which is necessary if the crop detection crops off too much. Crop detection keys on large black areas, which can lead to inaccuracy if activated during a dark scene.
• The fourth button removes black bars and makes the image fullscreen using half values—like the second option, but cutting off less of the image at the edges for less pronounced black bars on the sides.

Conclusion

Since many conversion tools like DC3 heavily tout black bar removal, I have to assume that most users, unlike myself, prefer fullscreen video. If that’s the case, you can pretty much use the defaults in Global settings after selecting your device, hop on over to Edit video settings and hit the big “Go” button to start your conversion. Subsequent conversions really are the “zero-click” procedures” hyped by the authors.

If you’re any pickier, you may need to do a lot more trial and error before the cropping and aspect ratio are configured to your liking. Most of the target device listed are not square-format like the Treo, but rectangular.

I need to qualify my “3” rating for the “Playback quality,” which amalgamates video and audio—especially their synchronization. I’m still groping for audio synch settings that keep the soundtrack in fidelity with the original DVDs’. Most mobile video viewers are used to lower-than-DVD framerates, and realize that some mismatch is bound to happen. But while DC3’s video quality is noticeably better using default settings than Pocket DVD Wizard’s, the poorer AV synch definitely impacted the overall playback experience.

Source link

Tools4Movies addition:

The sync issue has since been resolved.

Just as the idea of using your PDA to carry around your music library instead of taking a Discman has played its part in the wide spread adoption of portable mp3 players, the PDA, and most significantly Windows CE has had a tremendous role to play since the late 1990s’ in the idea of portable video.
When Microsoft issued Video Codec’ for the Pocket PC 2000 platform it was as something of a frivolity, but now in 2005 these features have played a key role in the hardware evolution and adoption of Windows Mobile. With the ever more powerful processors of the Pocket PC video playback quality is something of a no-brainer; but for a lot of us it begs the question…

Just how do I do that?

Many inexperienced users who just wanted to convert a video file for a specific purpose will have found the process difficult, drawn out and possibly even tiring. The fact of the matter is that unless you know what ‘bit rates’, ‘frame rates’, ‘colour spaces’, ‘aspect ratios’ and a further dictionaries worth of jargon are for – and then understand the consequences of changing those settings. Video may be something you have avoided or something you have disregarded altogether.

Functional video on any device

PocketDVD 1.1 is a host side application bundle designed specifically to allow you to very easily do two things.

• PocketDVD – Convert your DVD collection to a digital video file
• PocketVideo – Convert most existing video file formats into a compatible format

Both aim to make the process simple and deliver a video file that will play on any device with a supported player. PC or Handheld PC, Pocket PC or SmartPhone

The PocketDVD interface is well laid out and visually attractive. DVD drive information is at the top, video settings information is in the middle and useful links to the Manual, PocketDVD.ca website and Support section along the bottom.

Getting started is very simple. Just insert your DVD into the drive tray, wait a few seconds for Windows to recognise the disk has been inserted and click on the ‘Gather DVD Information’ button at the top of the interface.

PocketDVD now analyses your DVD disc, looking for the numbers of tracks and chapters, play lengths of each chapter and of the overall disc itself. For the technically minded this is where statistics on DVD region, TV broadcast standard, codec compression, colour space and more are gathered along with system specifications forming the bulk of the background maths required to convert the DVD.
The information gathering process itself takes approximately three to five seconds per track and upon completion returns you back to the main interface, adjusted to reflect your disc.

At this stage your computer is now ready to convert, or ‘rip’ the DVD on the default settings. Most people will want to tweak a few settings though, and if you are a new user or are unfamiliar with video you shouldn’t be put of doing this as wile the settings may seem complex, they are really very simple to use.

‘Select DVD Track’ simply allows you to select the entire DVD disc for conversion or a specific track (Tracks are what separate the movie from special features, rather than Chapter or Scenes which break up a movie into segments) on that disc.

Output Type is important if you are a Handheld PC user. As Microsoft Windows Media Player 1.2 for the Handheld PC lacks video support, the options for PPC 2000, 2002 and 2003 – representing Windows Media Video 7, 8 and 9 are of little use. The ‘MediaEXT’ or Media Extender option is specifically for use with high definition PC Media Centre devices, leaving PPC DIVX as the output of choice for any H/PC user.
DivX is a open source video codec designed to rival the Windows Media Video standard. Players are available both commercially and from the open source community for most platforms, including Handheld PC Pro and above H/PCs.
Your Windows desktop PC doesn’t natively support DivX files but if you wish to use DivX for PC playback this can be added through the installation of a free DivX codec pack.
It is not a requirement with PocketDVD that you have this installed, PocketDVD will still operate correctly, you will just lack the ability to watch them on the host PC.
Next in the Output Type settings is the Frame rate (Frames Per Second) and the number of compressor passes. Running a two-pass DVD conversion will make the video perform better but at the price of up to double the conversion time required for single pass.

The screen size is simply the resolution of your PDA’ screen. For most Handheld PC users this is HVGA at 640×240 pixels. By changing the resolution the proportions listed for the output video size (the second set of numbers) will change to match the input. So if you encode for a SmartPhone device, Pocket PC or Handheld PC the output video will be adjusted accordingly.

Video Quality may phase some at first, but it is actually quite simple. There are two methods to set the video quality. Firstly by clicking the blue box to reveal a slider, and specifying the bit rate.
Alternately if you know the size of your memory card, or know you only have a certain number of Megabytes free on the card. Clicking on the ‘Video Quality’ label changes the settings value from bit rate to file size. Now you are able to specify in MB the maximum size the output video can be. This is especially useful if you only have a small memory card, or have the need to carry a lot of movies with you say on a business trip or long-haul flight.

The last settings are for the Audio quality which, for most users. Accepting the default value will be adequate; although those seeking ultra high quality may wish to encode with a Stereo soundtrack rather than a down mixed mono score.

Once you have entered the settings for your device you can conveniently preview the DVD directly on the PC providing an approximation of what the video output will actually look like on your mobile device.

You may be surprised to hear that unlike most DVD software, your PC does not need to have any form of DVD decoder installed for it to be able to convert or preview the DVD disk. With Pocket DVD the applications functionality does not limit you to working with a single of the 6 hardware defined global DVD regions. You can insert any region-encoded disc into your PCs drive and PocketDVD will be able to work with it just as it can with your native disc format.

The final step in converting your first DVD is simply to click the ‘Convert DVD’ button to begin writing the DVD to the hard drive.

The conversion process is isolated from PocketDVD itself and displays a progressive readout in a Console window.
As the decoder runs the status information is displayed with an update being achieved once every tenth of a second until completion – at which time the session terminates. The conversion process is separate from the PocketDVD configuration window affording you the option to close it down or minimise to the system tray while the conversion happens in the background.

Figure 3: Elapsed time, Current Frame #, % of job, Input frame rate, Estimated Time Remaining, Estimated Output size and quantiziser field

Naturally the conversion time depends on the length of the DVD movie you are converting, the capabilities of your computer and on the settings you choose. Selecting lower frame rates, lower bit rates and running a single pass will greatly improve the conversion time but holds potentially adverse effects on the quality.

Tests with PocketDVD with a Pentium III 733MHz CPU give a DivX conversion time at around the length of the original movie. Moving up to a Pentium III 1100MHz (1.1GHz) the conversion time is almost down to ¾ of the play length. Windows Media conversions will take on average three to four times longer than DivX as the conversion is a two tier process; first to high quality DIVX and then down into WMV. These conversion times are intrinsically linked to the input settings that you specify, and for most people the ability to minimise the application into the background and forget about it will feature predominantly over any urgency for the completion of the process.

Figure 4: Standard format DVD playback

Once you are comfortable with the basics of PocketDVD it is well worth taking the video conversion to another level by exploring PocketDVDs advanced options.
The advanced settings have been built predominantly around improving functionality for widescreen devices, and with that PocketDVD truly excels, especially for HVGA Windows CE users.

Having used the ‘Gather DVD Information’ button on a disc, an ‘Advanced’ button will appear beneath it, pulling out an expanded settings area.
It is not required that you use preset the options in the advanced area, however spending a little time to familiarise yourself with them and how they work can really make the difference between a good looking movie and a great one. This is even more apparent on the Handheld PC for which much of the configuration enhancements in the 1.1 release were written.

Figure 5: PocketDVDs Advanced Settings

Firstly, two mainstays of the DVD phenomenon. The ability to select the soundtrack language and whether or not to use subtitles. PocketDVD supports both.
If you wish to watch video on your device in a very noisy environment, or your H/PC lacks a headphone socket then subtitles are a great way to compensate.
To enable the use of these or the other options on the advanced screen simply configure your desired setting and click on ‘Ignore’. The label will change to display ‘Use’, indicating that the setting has been flagged for inclusion on your DVD rip.

The next two groups allow you to specify which chapter to start and end at, as well as whether you want PocketDVD to break the DVD rip into smaller file chunks at the chapter (scene) markers.

Offset is a setting which Widescreen Handheld PC users will find incredibly useful, and a feature that makes PocketDVD stand out.
When you go to the cinema and view a widescreen picture, the image you are seeing is not the same as the widescreen you might find on your television set at home. Some motion pictures are filmed slightly wider than is normal, and often this will be passed on to the user in the DVD release.

Figure 6: Cinematic Widescreen example

It is obvious to see that this is exceedingly wasteful use of your screens precious real estate. What the Offset system allows you to accomplish is to completely eliminate the horizontal widescreen bars and maximise your screen size.
Using the sliders and the PocketDVD Preview facility you can configure the desired level of cropping on the PC before conversion, the offset value is distributed equally between cuts on each edge. For example in general on a HVGA PC by setting an offset of 74 pixels top/bottom you can eliminate the bars altogether removing the top 37 and bottom 37 pixels completly. This makes viewing DVD’s on the Handheld PC a true delight and something most Pocket PC users would be insanely jealous of.

Figure 7: The DVD offset feature removes the widescreen bars

Indeed if you really wanted to show off you could go the whole hog and clip the top and bottom slightly with a 90 top/bottom offset which will fill a HVGA screen entirely.

Figure 8: Ultra Full screen, widescreen video

In the 1.1 release a very useful profiles system has been added. This provides you with the freedom to use PocketDVD with multiple devices, or predefined configurations saving you from having to remember a multitude of settings and tweaks. The configurations are stored as settings files under the installation directory allowing you to back them up or redistribute them to peers. The benefits of which are obvious in the mobile device community where one person can calculate all the optimal values and publish the settings saving you time when getting to grips with a new device.

Screen Ratings – Optimisation for the Handheld PC

Lastly a very significant optimisation feature, exclusive to PocketDVD.ca software makes its debut in PocketDVD 1.1.
The PocketDVD Screen Rating system was developed during the beta process to allow for video frame rate optimisation specifically on the Handheld PC and older PDA devices.

A video is nothing more than a fast moving sequence of still pictures (frames). Depending on where you live you will either view 25 frames every second, or 29. The Screen Ratings system has been created for devices which are unable to output the full 25/29 frames which make up standard video.

As many PDA devices make use of older screen technologies, with slower draw rates and smaller CPUs, sending the full video stream to the device display causes an overload which can significantly depreciating the quality.
In the same light different PDA devices will have different sized screens – in the Handheld PC specification there are 5 standard screen resolutions. PocketDVD Screen Ratings are a numeric calculation of the optimal frame rate and screen size for any specific device. The optimal values for Screen Rating, along with discovering the optimal bit-rate for getting the highest quality out of your device can calculated using some free tools and sample videos. More information is available from the PocketDVD website.
Once you have the Screen Rating number. The integer is then input into the ‘Maximum Rating’ settings box on the bottom right of the advanced window.

When previewing back the output files on the Jornada 720 test device the stark improvement achieved from using the Screen Rating system (the rating is 1228800 or 640×240x8) is immediately apparent when striving to maximise the use of the 640×240 screen. Using video benchmarking tools on the 720 before optimisation can demonstrate only a 70% performance rating. By using the Screen Rating optimal for your device the value will be over 100%, matching your devices hardware capabilities precisely.
Screen Ratings are not designed for use by all users, users planning to play back on, for example a modern PC or Pocket PC (due to its much reduced screen size) will as a matter of course have the capability of displaying unconstrained videos.

If your Handheld PC is capable of supporting video and the idea of expanding the scope of your devices use appeals to you then PocketDVD is the way to go. Not only are you getting a multimedia software program with optimisations for the Handheld PC, but a set of tools one could easily equate to a video arsenal.

I do have one piece of advice to share when converting DVDs, gleaned from several red faced experience. Always preview before pushing the convert button!
Through no fault of PocketDVD, the DVD industry can occasionally be seen to have a little fun when compiling discs. Not all movies are to be found on the first track, and not every English language DVD has English defined as the first audio track. Trust me, the first time you insert the likes of Tom Cruise’s ‘Collateral’ hit go and find out half way on through a flight that you have the German soundtrack version – you’ll remember too.

PocketVideo 1.1

Anyone with an existing video library of ripped DVD’ or content saved from a Media Centre system will not need to invest in extra time or money over and above point and click to make use of their existing collection in a portable format. Through the PocketVideo application bundled free with PocketDVD and using similar the same configuration and settings files. PocketVideo allows for the conversion of video file formats including Microsoft AVI, DivX and Windows Media Video for use on your target device.

Figure 9: PocketVideo 1.1

When you look at PocketDVD and PocketVideo together as a suite, it is worth remembering that the application is not limited to just a Windows CE device, specific PDA or single file format. It has the ability to provide high-resolution desktop standard video support, including up scaling abilities along side the down scaling features for formatting video to a mobile device.

Having been closely involved in the development of PocketDVD, it is clear they have a clear understanding of the needs of their market, as a result their customer service and support has proven to be exemplary.
Support forums are provided to users, and community support is actively encouraged with facilities for users to share optimised settings information and PocketDVD profiles. E-Mail support is also available should you be really stuck.
A PDF manual for both PocketDVD and PocketVideo is provided with the package which is a little basic in some areas – forming more of a getting started guide, with much more in-depth information on specific aspects of the program currently being placed onto the website.

One well known draw back of commercial video editing and video conversion packages is that they often prove to be very unstable. Using PocketDVD I haven’t yet experienced a crash which has caused the application to fail, and aside from the occasional unprompted Windows Error Report; appearing when there is no sign of an application failure it has a flawless track record – provided you read the manual.
Failing to look through the software configuration section of the manual could catch a lot of people out, as the conversion process to Windows Media Video is such that some third party tools need to be sourced from Microsoft and DivX, these are free applications but users are faced with the extra download overhead before they will be able to produced video optimised for a portable device.

The aim of PocketDVD has been to simplify for the end user a sequence of processes, which have remained in the realm of the technically savvy computer user and video expert for far too long. The program is straightforward and logical for new users and contains features that will appeal to experienced video users. No matter you’re your level of expertise, once you have your optimal settings established PocketDVD is an excellent time saver, and for me that is what counts.

PocketDVD 1.1 including PocketVideo 1.1 costs $11.95 (£6.30, €9.00, ¥1260 est.) and is available as a web download with lifetime upgrades. With a fully functional, unrestricted 5 day trial avaialble from the PocketDVD.ca website for you to try out on the H/PC yourself.

The copyright of the DVD screen captures used in this review are of Avex Inc. (2003), Paramount Pictures (2002) and Disney Pixar (2003). No ownership is implied or inferred.

System Requirements:

Windows 98, 98SE, Millennium, 2000, XP, 2003
DVD-ROM Drive
24MB Hard disk space for installation 650MB for temping
Windows Media Encoder 9 / Windows Media Video Encoder 8 for WMV conversion
DivX 5 is recommended for performance and optimisation
Windows CE DivX video player

Handheld PC Professional or higher

Rating
Cost:
Usability:
Built-In helps:
Customer Service:
Overall:

DVD video has a fixed resolution.  To ensure DVDs play on even the first generation of DVD players, a DVD movie has to be created using the official standard. If it is not created in such a way that it is compliant with the standard, not all DVD players can play the DVD.

Because the DVD standard was initially created when wide-screen at home was still in its early stage, the DVD standard was based on 4:3 video content. An original movie or TV show would fill the screen completely on a classic, standard-definition TV. However, wide-screen became more mainstream, and to stay compliant with the DVD standard, wide-screen movies received black padding to fit within the DVD specifications.

Unlike most conversion utilities, DVD Catalyst automatically removes the embedded borders from the video, which improves the video quality. The black borders are actually part of the video, and when these are not removed, they will take up valuable space.

With the black bars removed, the video portion that is left does not have a common screen resolution anymore, and the actual size depends on the actual movie as well. There are a few different aspect ratios (the width of the actual widescreen movie) which greatly affect this. In addition. the video player screen also affect the amount of video that fills the screen.

This all sounds complicated, but lets use some pictures to see what this looks like.

This shows an example of Apple’s iPod Video (5G) with a widescreen video. The iPod uses a 4:3 screen aspect ratio, which is the same for many other devices, such as the most Zen and Zune devices. The black borders of the actual video have been removed, but when you play the video on your device, it will stillshow black borders.

The reason for this is that the video is scaled to fit within the device screen size, without changing the look of the video.

The next example shows a Sony PSP with a widscreen video. The PSP has an actual widescreen screen, which is similar to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the newer Blackberry models and many more devices. The video fills the screen a lot more, but it still shows a bit of borders on top and bottom.

OK, so how do we make movies full-screen?

There are a few ways of doing this. The thing to keep in mind is that there will be a loss of something, either quality or part of the video itself.

1. Both video player devices in the screen shots have a “zoom” function (many other players have this as well). This will remove the black borders, by zooming in, and hiding the sides.

This is the recommended option, because you can decide if you want to watch the movie in it’s full glory (and accept the black borders) or watch the movie full screen. You can even switch back and forth.

2. DVD Catalyst 3 has a “remove black bars from device” option in Global Settings. This will remove black bars from the video, and if needed cut off parts of the sides of the video to make it full screen. Using this will make any movie or show full screen on any device, regardless the screen size or the video size. If you convert a widescreen movie for a non-widescreen device, it will cut off the sides, and if you convert a non-wide screen video for a wide-screen device, it will cut off the top and bottom a bit. Depending on the movie you can loose quite a bit of the video. For example using this option with a very wide Star Wars movie on a 4:3 device, you can loose more than half of the actual video. While movies and TV shows almost always keep the main plot in the center of the video, you will loose things that happen on the sides. If you convert for a Square-screen device, you will loose even more video.

3. DVD Catalyst 3 has a”Full screen stretch” option in Global Settings, which will remove the black bars, and stretch the video to make it full screen. The problem with this is that depending on the video size, people might appear to be taller and skinnier than usual.

So, if you are wondering why DVD Catalyst 3 shows it’s converting at a different screensize than the one you selected, the above should give you some insight on this.