Sony Ericsson Media Studio 3.1 - Manual

This software allows you to put home movies, DVDs, downloaded content and TV on your Sony Ericsson 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

- Memorycard of at least 128 Mb for DVD support. If your phone has no memorycard slot, you will not be able to fit a DVD on it.

- One of the following 28 Sony Ericsson models:

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, if you want to convert DVD content. 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

[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 a optical DVD disc, or if you're DVD is stored on the harddisk. Choose Video Content if the content is a regular video file (AVI, MPEG, DV, etc.) stored on the hard drive.

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 Sony Ericsson 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 Sony Ericsson 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 Sony Ericsson.

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 Sony Ericsson. The reason is that film sizes (so called aspect ratio's) and the size of your Sony Ericsson 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 sound. This is recommended for most (home) movies. 'Better Sound' will result in more blockiness in the video. However, the sound will be 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 possible 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 Sony Ericsson 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 Sony Ericsson in 45 minutes.

[9] Transfer

Question: Why does the software always convert 20-minute chapters? Answer: By default, the software will chop DVDs in parts of 20 minutes. This will ensure optimised performance on the phone and prevents jerky playback, because most Sony Ericsson models can not play a 3GP file smoothly if they are 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. To manually set the chopping, see Options Menu.

When conversion is finished, a My Movies folder containg one or more 3gp-video files will be on your desktop. You can copy the folder to your phone (make sure you have enough storage space on the memorycard). On most models, the video can go anywhere on the memorycard or phone memory, the player will automatically find it. On the Symbian-based models (P800, P900, P910, P990, M600, W950) the video needs to be copied to the MSSEMC\P-Series\Media files\Video directory on the memorycard.

There are 3 ways to copy the video file from you desktop PC to the mobile phone:

• The fastest way is by using an attached or built-in USB memorycard reader. Put the memorycard in the drive and use copy/paste. 100-minute s of video should copy over in 2 minutes. Memorycard readers are very affordable nowadays, so we highly recommend this. It's the fastest and most reliable way to do it.
• You can also use your Bluetooth to transfer the file. This is slow and unreliable, but for small video clips it's an option. When the video arrives on your phone, it will be automatically recognised as a video file and can be opened to play.
• You can also use your phone sync software (such as Sony Ericsson PC Suite, when your connected, copy to the storage card (not to the internal memory of the mobile phone)

[10] Play the video with the built-in Media/Video/Walkman Player.

	On most Sony Ericsson models, from the Main Menu, choose the Media Player. The icons may look different on your model. On some models, you need to create a Playlist (Media Player / New Playlist) and then add your video to it ( Media Player \ Open \ More \ Add Media) . To play it, choose Media Player \ Open \ Play. On Walkman models, the player is called Walkman-player.		You may open and play the video that you converted. Some models have an option to play in fullscreen landscape mode: during playback, you press the centre More key, then choose Fullscreen from the options list. The sound volume can be adjusted with the volume up/down (hardware) buttons on the phone.
	If you have Symbian based Sony Ericsson phone (P800, P900, P910, P990, M600, W950), you should select the Video player from the Launcher Menu		You may open and play the video that you converted. To get fullscreen landscape mode, you press the touchscreen, and it will play in fullscreen. Or you choose Edit \ Fullscreen from the top menu. The sound volume can be adjusted by clicking the volume up/down icons on the screen.

Options Menu

[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 DVD Content in parts of approx. 20 minutes and leave Video Content in one piece. You may manually alter this setting. So you can chop large files in smaller pieces, or alternatively, glue parts of a DVD together in one file.

[4] Download \ Video This menu item allows you to download free video content from Youtube and Altavista

If you encounter problems with the software, please consult the Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.makayama.com/sonyericsson310engfaq.html for common issues and solutions.

updated: 6-Jan-2007