Media Studio for Blackberry® 1.1

 

 

This software allows you to put home movies, DVD's, downloaded content and TV on your Blackberry® in two clicks.

What you need is:

- PC with Windows XP. For DVD support you'll also need a built-in DVD-player.

- 4 Gigabyte of free space on a harddisk (for a 100 minute movie) to store temporary files

- Compatible Blackberry® video-enabled device (such as Pearl/8100/8800)

- Memorycard of at least 32 Mb (or 128 Mb for DVD support).

DVD Copy Protection

  • Legislation in your country may prevent the transfer of copy-protected DVDs, even for personal use. Therefore, this feature may have been been disabled. Unprotected DVDs, such as most DVD containing TV-series, or DVD recordables/rewritables may still be converted.
  • If you have used third-party tools to decrypt the DVD, such as 'DVD Shrink' or 'DVD Decrypter', you may open the DVD from the harddrive. Start Media Studio for Blackberry®, select DVD and then press Open and browse to the disk drive that contains the movie. For example C:\My Movie. Open that folder and the software will treat it as a normal DVD. Press Action to start converting.

Installation

- Make sure you have Windows Media Player 9 or later installed on your system.

- Make sure your system has a software DVD player (such as PowerDVD or WinDVD), if you want to convert DVD content.

- Make sure you have a harddisk with at least 4 Gigabytes of free space. By default the software will look for the C:\ drive as the temporary drive. You can change this in DVD Settings Menu \ Temp Drive.

- Install the PC software by launching the red installer, it will auto-install the software and place shortcuts on the desktop and Windows Start Menu.

- The Video Player doesn't have to be installed, it's already on your device in the Main Manu


Quick Guide

[1] Source Drive . Click the drive you want to open. This can be a hard disk, CD-Rom, DVD-R(w), DVD-Video, removable drive, flash drive or anything else. Press Open to start. Choose DVD Content for any content that comes from an optical DVD disc, or from the harddisk (when it has been stored there using third-part tools such as DV DShrink and DVD Decrypter). Choose Video Content if the content is a video file (AVI, MPEG, DV, etc. )

The content you picked will start playing in the Preview Window. You can right-click in the window for more preview options. Such as a fullscreen preview.

DVD's can contain multiple titles, such as (home) movies, trailers, etc. By default, the software will pick the largest title. Usually this is the main movie. You can change this in Advanced options.

[2] Action / Advanced You can start immediately by pressing the Action button. The file or dvd conversion will begin right away. If you need control over the picture quality, language settings etcetera, you click the Advanced button.

Click on Action and the PC will start converting. The preview video will stop playing to save processor cycles . Conversion takes one step with content coming from harddisk or CD. But coming from DVD, it takes two steps. DVD's are now captured using Cyberspeed technology. During Step1, the video and audio from the DVD will be saved to a temporary file, this may take between 10 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the speed of your PC and the speed of your DVD drive. If you have a relatively fast PC and DVD drive, you may see speeds of up to fifteen times realtime. In that case a 90 minute DVD will be captured in 6 minutes. After Step 1, Step 2 will start automatically. This step compresses the file further to the final Blackberry® movie file. This will take approximately 2 times realtime on a 2Ghz PC. So 45 minutes for a 90 minute movie. On average, you may expect to transfer a DVD to your Blackberry® in less then an hour.

[3] Source Size You need to tell the software what size the source content is, so that it can calculate the optimal playback size on your Blackberry®.

Most DVD's have a 16:9 aspect ratio (widescreen) and most TV shows have a 4:3 dimension. For feature films shot in Academy Standard 16:9, the widescreen-setting is automatically chosen. In case your DVD was shot in Cinemascope , you need to pick the Cinemascope (2.35:1 aspect ratio) setting. This will correct the 'egghead' effect that you may see. When finished press Next.

 

 

 

 

[5] Zoom Level . Choose the zoom level. Then press Next.

If you prefer to see the whole movie in widescreen, choose 'Show All'. This will give you the whole picture, but it will show black bars on the Blackberry®. The reason is that film sizes (so called aspect ratio's) and the size of your Blackberry® screen are different. You will notice that the shots are missing abit from the left and right side. If you choose 'Zoom In', the software will chop the black bars off and blow-up the picture.

 

[6] Encoding Quality. Choose the encoding quality. Then press Next.

If you prefer a better video quality, choose 'Better Picture'. This will give improved video quality, but you will hear lower quality, mono sound. This is recommended for most (home) movies. 'Better Sound' will result in more blockiness in the video. However, the sound will be stereo FM-radio like. It's recommended for music video's and home movies.

 

 

[7] Episodes, Language and Subtitles.

Next, you will see the episodes and language settings, the Episode , Audio Dub and Subtitle options appear.

A) Episode Menu. If your source material is a DVD, you have the option to select an alternative title from the disc. For example a 'behind the scenes'-documentary, or another episode from a DVD containing several tv-shows. The longest video on the disc will be shown by default, usually that's the main movie.

B) Audio Dub Menu. This allows you to set a foreign audiotrack. For example if you want to watch a movie in Spanish, you would pick that language and override the default English setting.

C) Subtitles Menu. If you choose subtitles, you will see a droplist of available languages on the disc.

[8] Action. You press Action and the PC will start converting. The preview video will stop playing to save processor cycles . Conversion takes one step with content coming from harddisk or CD. But coming from DVD, it takes two steps. DVD's are now captured using Cyberspeed technology. During Step1, the video and audio from the DVD will be saved to a temporary file, this may take between 10 minutes and 1 hour, depending on the speed of your PC and the speed of your DVD drive. If you have a relatively fast PC and DVD drive, you may see speeds of up to fifteen times realtime. In that case a 90 minute DVD will be captured in 6 minutes. After Step 1, Step 2 will start automatically. This step compresses the file further to the final Blackberry® movie file. This will take approximately 3 times realtime on a 3Ghz PC. So 30 minutes for a 90 minute movie. On average, you may expect to transfer a DVD to your Blackberry® in 45 minutes.

Question: Why does the software always convert 20-minute chapters?

Answer: By default, the software will chop your DVDs in parts of 20 minutes. This ensures flawless performance on the phone and prevents jerky playback, because the Blackberry can not play a long MPEG4/3GP video smoothly if it's in one piece. It also allows you to fit longer movies on a small memory card, or internal phone memory. You can watch a couple of parts, then delete them and then copy the remaining parts to your phone. You can override the chopping by turning it OFF in the Options Menu, but it is not recommended because your videos may not play on the Blackberry if you turn chopping off.

[9] Transfer When conversion is finished, the video must be transferred to the Blackberry.

Yyou can plug-in a USB cable and the software will be able to transfer the video directly to the mobile device. You will see the screen below. It has two playlists, one for converted video content on your PC and one for content on your phone. You can move content back and forth between your PC and phone. Every video has it's own folder. You can browse the playlists to see the content of each subfolder.

These are the steps you need to take:

1) Check if there is a memory card in your device, or insert one. Make sure it's formatted by the Blackberry.

2) Connect the device to your computer with the USB data cable

3) The Blackberry will ask you if it must be set to Mass Storage Mode. Answer with Yes.

4) In this mode, your phone acts as a mass storage device and you can see it as a removable hard drive in your computer.

5) Your phone will have a drive letter (for example F:\) in My Computer. If your phone is connected and a Blackberry formatted memorycard is inserted, the phone playlist should show automatically. If it doesn't you press the Search Device button

7) Then you press the Move to Blackberry button (in the transfer window) to
start the transfer

7) Press the Move to PC button to transfer content from the Blackberry back to the PC

8) Press the Save & Return button to return to the main screen. If you didn't transfer a video, it will be saved on the desktop then and you can transfer it manually to your
device. You can use a memorycard reader, or Blackberry Desktop Software to transfer manually

[10] Play the video with the Video Player on your Blackberry device

a) To play videos, disconnect the USB cable first from your device! Else the content on your memorycard
will not be shown by the Blackberry.

b) Press the Menu button, then open the Media player icon. Go to Video, then to Media Card.
Browse to the video that you would like to watch and click to play it.

Unfortunately, the Blackberry (firmware version 4.2) is not able to play video in full screen.
Possibly this will be solved by RIM in a future software update.

c) To fast forward, pause a video first. Then scroll up, the timeline color will become blue,
click on it, then scroll to the right to fast forward, or left to rewind.

d) To delete videos from your Blackberry, open the Media application, then go to 'Video',
then 'Media Card'. Scroll to a video, press the Menu key. Choose 'Delete' from the pop-up menu.

Menu Options

[1] Options \Temp Drive You set the disk drive that you would like to store temporary files on. Choose the biggest available harddrive that you have. Temporary files may take up to 4 Gigabytes space that need to be stored on this drive. They will be cleaned up after conversion.

[2] Options \Fit to Card Set it to the size of your Memorycard. It is used to calculate the video- and audiobitrate so that the video will fit on your Memorycard.

[3] Options \Chopping By default, the software will chop your DVDs in parts of 20 minutes. This ensures flawless performance on the phone and prevents jerky playback,
because the Blackberry can not play a long MPEG4/3GP video smoothly if it's in one piece.You can override the chopping by turning it OFF in this menu,
but it is not recommended because your videos may not play on the Blackberry if you turn chopping off.

[4] Blackberry \Video Transfer You will be taken to the Video Transfer screen, where you can move videos back and forth between your PC and phone.

[5] Blackberry \Model Number Set it to the your model. The background picture of the software will change and all the settings for your phone will be automatically made. It's very important to choose the correct model. The video will be optimised for your model. If you choose the wrong model videos may not play on your phone.

[6] Download \Video You will be taken to websites such as YouTube and Altavista where you can download video material for free, which can be converted to your phone.

[7] Download\Software Upgrade information for your existing software may be found via this menu. Also check out other Makayama software, such as Mobile TV Center, which allows you record and view tv-shows with your Blackberry®.

To watch content from Youtube on your Blackberry: choose the menu Download \ Video \ from Youtube. You will be connected to a third-party download service (such as Videoronk). Here you can search for your favourite Youtube content and download it. The downloaded video will be in the FLV (Flash) format. The video may then be converted using Media Studio for Blackberry.

Problems?

If you encounter problems with the software, please consult the Frequently Asked Questions at: http://www.makayama.com/blackberry110engfaq.html for common questions and solutions.

updated: 16-jan-2006