DVD to Pocket PC 4.0 Manual
|
|
This software allows you to put home movies, DVD's, downloaded content and TV on your Pocket PC in two clicks.
You can watch them in fullscreen landscape mode. 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
- Any Pocket PC or phone with Windows Mobile 2003, 2005 or Pocket PC Phone Edition)
- Memorycard of at least 32 Mb (or 128 Mb for DVD support).
Installation
- 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.
Quick Guide (version 3.5 -Pocket PC Edition)
[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 for any content that comes from a normal, factory produced DVD disc. Choose Harddisk if the content is a video file stored on the hard drive. Choose Other if your content is a Video-CD, S-VCD or DVD recordable/rewritable that can not be converted as a regular DVD.
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 Pocket PC 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 Pocket PC 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 Pocket PC.
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 Pocket PC. The reason is that film sizes (so called aspect ratio's) and the size of your Pocket PC 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 or target size. Then press Next.
If you prefer a better video quality, drag the video quality slider to the right. This will give improved video quality, but bigger filesize. You will see the filesize change in the textbox above. This is the size of the final movie after conversion. If you drag the video slider to the left, you will able to fit more minutes on a memorycard, but this will result in more blockiness in the video. The sound, if set to maximum, will be CD quality, on average it will be FM-radio like.
[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 possible languages on the disc. Important: subtitles need to be rendered in the videofile, this will slow down conversion. Generally, choosing subtitles will mean the DVD conversion will be 3 times slower then normal.
[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 Pocket PC 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 Pocket PC in 45 minutes.
[9] Transfer
When conversion is finished, a video file will be on your desktop. You can copy the file to your Pocket PC (make sure you have enough storage space on the memorycard). The video can go anywhere on the memorycard or Pocket PC memory, the player will automatically find it.
There are 2 ways to copy the video file from you desktop PC to the Pocket PC:
[10] Play the video with the built-in Windows Media Player on the Pocket PC.
On your Pocket PC , press the Start button, then choose the Windows Media Player.
[A] Once you launched the player , click on Select Playlist, then on Local Content , and you will see all video files on your device and memorycard
[B] Double click on the file you want to play, then press the triangular Play button at the bottom right of the screen. The movie will start playing.
[C] To render fullscreen landscape playback, you choose the Arrow-icon in the upper right corner of the Windows Media Player screen.
[D} The volume can be adjusted with the slider..
Menu Options
[1] DVD Settings \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] DVD Settings \Special\Cyberspeed Leave this option ON by default. If you turn this OFF, your DVD conversions may take 5 times longer. Only if you experience problems opening or converting DVD's, you can try turning this option off.
[3] Download \Video This option allows you to download video from Youtube or Altavista. The downloaded content may then be converted to your Pocket PC
If you encounter problems with the software, please consult the Tech Database : http://www.makayama.com/ppc400engfaq.html for common questions and solutions.
updated: 16-nov-2006