DVD Catalyst

[rebel43]

My conversions are now taking however long the DVD is! I just installed the latest DVD Catalyst and it will not convert the Beverly Hillbillies DVD or the War Of the Worlds (original version). My laptop is NEW and blazes on everything else but this is getting frustrating.

[dvdcatalyst]

it helps if you mention the settings you are using. In addition, it depends on what other programs are running on your computer as well. Since you mentioned it being a new laptop, my guess is that it has Norton Internet Security or McAffee as a "security suite" Both of which take up MORE THAN HALF of your computers speed.

DVD Catalyst Conversion Speed Tips | Tools4Movies, the official home of DVD Catalyst

CONVERSION SPEED

*Install the Boosterpack. The boosterpack installs an additional conversion engine, which is basically a newer version than the one DVD Catalyst has. It’s a free download, and will speed things up considerably, even with the same settings.

*Turn off the CPU indicators. In Global Settings > Advanced, remove the checkmark for them, restart DVD Catalyst, and you will gain some extra performance. The CPU indicators (blue bar(s) at the bottom right) look nice, but they don’t really serve any purpose, other than to show you how busy your computer is.

*If you are converting from a DVD, a tool that removes the protection on the fly, such as ANyDVD or DVD43 will reduce the work needed to be done by the conversion, and thus speed it up a little. In some cases, when the protection is too strong, DVD Catalyst switches to a slower conversion mode, (”restarted conversion” message) to be able to convert the movie, so if there is no protection, it will always use the faster method.

*If you are converting video files, if possible, put the output location on a different harddrive than the one you have the original files on.

*NEVER convert directly to a device or a storage card. The transfer rate of flash memory is not the greatest, so conversions will be terribly slow.

*Don’t convert from and to a USB device at the same time. The USB bus can only handle so much data, and having the data go back and forth at the same time will slow things down.

The above mentioned speed tips do not affect quality in any way

So what are the differences between the different profiles in DVD Catalyst 3

For the Apple-devices, such as the iPhone, there are 3 different profiles, Fast, standard and HQ

The Fast profile uses generic mpeg4 for the video format, which is an older form of mpeg4 video that is easier and faster to convert, even on older computers. The compression quality is not the greatest, so to achieve a good looking video file, you end up with a fairly big file size.

The Standard profile uses the H264 video format, but has been tweaked to produce a good quality at a reasonable fast speed.

The HQ profile uses H264 video as well, but it has been tweaked to produce the best possible quality, without any regard of conversion speed.

The HQ2 profile (Motorola Droid) is similar to the HQ profile, but just has a higher bitrate.

BITRATE

This determines the file-size and the quality.

As mentioned earlier, a lot of people just look at the specifications of the device, and use those as settings for the video files. The Droid is capable of a maximum bitrate setting of 1500kbps, but many people don’t notice the difference between video encoded at 1000kbps or 1500kbps. Now if you watch the same video files on a bigger screen, you might notice the difference, but even then, it really is not as much oif a difference as you would think.

As a bonus, a lower bitrate will also result in (slightly) faster conversions.

[rebel43]

I am using your default Droid Settings and I am not running either Norton or McAfee, I am using Microsoft Security Essentials. I am also not running anything else during the conversion. CPU usage is around the 2% mark before DVD Catalyst begins. I purchased this about 2 weeks ago and just upgraded tonight to your latest. Either version was not converting the two videos I mentioned. I was under the impression that the boosterpack was an automatic installation when I downloaded and installed Catalyst. If not, how do I install it? Thank you for your help.

[dvdcatalyst]

I am using your default Droid Settings and I am not running either Norton or McAfee, I am using Microsoft Security Essentials. I am also not running anything else during the conversion. CPU usage is around the 2% mark before DVD Catalyst begins. I purchased this about 2 weeks ago and just upgraded tonight to your latest. Either version was not converting the two videos I mentioned. I was under the impression that the boosterpack was an automatic installation when I downloaded and installed Catalyst. If not, how do I install it? Thank you for your help.

As of 3.85.2 the boosterpack is included with the install. It should show in the title as DVD Catalyst3+, or look in Global Settings > Boosterpack to see if it is installed.
Your conversions should be considerably faster. The HQ and HQ2 profiles are not really fast, but on a recent dual-core system they should run at around 1.5-2x realtime. The standard Droid profile should run at around 3x realtime, but it depends on the processor speed as well as the amount of other programs running.

Your issue seems specific to your system. Rather than flooding this forum, I rather continue this by email. Please use the "Email Us" link in DVD Catalyst to send me an email. It provides me (in the header of the memail) about your version and the selected profile. As for the videos you mentioned before, please provide the full names in the email as well.

Lastly, look in the FAQ (click the button underneath the cat-eyes) and follow the reset settings procedure described, to see if that makes a difference.

[cyber3d]

DVDCatalyst, are you planning to develop a program (PC or MAC) to trim, join, split movies from within DVD Catalyst? Some program that would be an add-on to DVD Catalyst so it could be edited and saved immediately?

I ask because I have many time encountered a capture that I want to get rid of commercials, or join "special features" into one movie, things like that.

[dvdcatalyst]

DVDCatalyst, are you planning to develop a program (PC or MAC) to trim, join, split movies from within DVD Catalyst? Some program that would be an add-on to DVD Catalyst so it could be edited and saved immediately?

I ask because I have many time encountered a capture that I want to get rid of commercials, or join "special features" into one movie, things like that.

Join was added in one of the most recent versions. By default it only works with AVI source files, but if you enable the checkmark in "global settings > advanced" you can enable all other files as well. The reason why AVI is enabled and the others not is that I ran into mixed results when trying different things. With the common 2x700 divx files found on the internet, it works fine, but with other files it sometimes works, it sometimes does not.
The joining happens during conversion, so if you have a 2-part divx movie, you want to convert to droid, just leave your droid profile selected, add the 2 files, select both, and click the Join button. Simple as that.

I did manage to join all the episodes of a Roseanne DVD into 1 big file during testing, but when I did the same with Stargate Atlantis, it failed. No idea why.

As for the trimming, start and stop position can be done in the preview, and also recently added is a "duplicate selection" and "split" option. Unfortunately I never managed to get the conversion to work by selecting a section in the middle (like a commercial) to be taken out during conversion, but if you create the individual pieces with the trim and duplicate track options, and after it is complete, merge the pieces together, it should work. Not the best solution, I know, but DVD Catalyst was never designed to compete with video editting apps like Premiere/Pinnacle. Its just me running DVD Catalyst, and the way it is already I have more than my hands full

Someone did bring a commandline application called comskip to my attention recently, which I might be able to incorporate. ComSkip is a tool that scans the video for commercials and cut them out. Problem is, with any of these kinds of applications, to have it done automatically can (and usually does) cause wrong parts to be removed.

edit: the Join function only works with video files that have the same specs. same screensize, video/audio format and quality. I have looked into generating MKV files, which basically allows you to have a DVD (with menu) structure in a single file, allowing you to store a full DVD with features, subs and such into it, but there are no portable devices that I am aware of that are capable of playing mkv files with these features, so its not really a priority at the moment.

[cyber3d]

Thanks for the reply. You know, I think many would pay for plug ins to DVD Catalyst ( I know I would ) to get such abilities to work well with more formats.

So far none of the programs I've found do an acceptable job (on either the MAC or PC) at least nothing free or shareware.

[rancid1]

Just use a torrent downloader found in apps, and then find the toorents in fuze or isohunt.

[cyber3dx]

Need some tech support with DVD Catalyst. It's running really slow on my PC

I have 3.86.2 with booster pack installed on my PC

WinXP Media Center Edition
Version 2002
SrvPak 3
Intel 1.83GHz Dual Core
2GB RAM

2 hour movie DVD
856x480
So, about a 1GB file (224 audio and 1000 video)

The problem is that the conversion is running at 0.66x - it used to run at at least 1.00x or better. It all changed at some point with one of the later releases of DVD Cat. I have multi-core enabled.

Can you help me diagnose?

[dvdcatalyst]

Need some tech support with DVD Catalyst. It's running really slow on my PC

I have 3.86.2 with booster pack installed on my PC

WinXP Media Center Edition
Version 2002
SrvPak 3
Intel 1.83GHz Dual Core
2GB RAM

2 hour movie DVD
856x480
So, about a 1GB file (224 audio and 1000 video)

The problem is that the conversion is running at 0.66x - it used to run at at least 1.00x or better. It all changed at some point with one of the later releases of DVD Cat. I have multi-core enabled.

Can you help me diagnose?

Sure.

If you are converting a DVD, it's possible that its just the one DVD. There are a couple of different ways DVDCat accesses a DVD (global settings > DVD tab). by default it tries the fastest method available, but some DVDs don't like this, so when it appears the conversion is frozen, DVD Catalyst switches to a slower but safer mode (DVD Catalyst Free uses this mode). If the conversion mentions something about "restarted" thats what happened.

If the conversion did not restart, something else on your system is causing the conversion to be slower. A TV recording at the same time for example, or something else (DIVX codec in some cases) is interfering with the conversion. The easiest way to find that out is to restart your computer in safe-mode, and try a conversion there. If that fails, rightclick somewhere in DVD Catalyst, and reset it to its defaults.

It could be that the conversion format is set to h264_ipod_hq, which is considerably slower (but about 10% better quality at the same bitrate)

A test using your settings on a DVD (Memoirs of a Geisha was in my drive) results in a 2.36x realtime conversion estimate (1hr for a 2 1/2hr movie) (using h264_ipod as a conversion format in "modify")