DVD Catalyst

[cyber3dx]

Thanks for the prompt reply. Awesome support.

I'm beginning to think my DVD drive is beginning to fail and that is the cause of my longer conversions.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

try windows safe-mode, or pick something like Apple > iPod Nano as a profile (same format, but lower quality and a lot lower resolution, and see if that goes a bit faster. If it runs on the same speed it would point towards the drive, if it runs considerably faster, it could be conflicting software or something.

(4 minutes response time )

 

[cyber3dx]

Yup. My extraordinarily long processing times were due to a faulty DVD drive. I replaced it et voila - it's fast again.

If anyone has slow times - try it on a machine with a fast DVD drive.

 

[cyber3dx]

Has anyone tried to rip the Tudors DVD? I was hoping to watch the series on my trip. But, although the rip seemed to go well. The resulting video has blocky green artifacts all over the lower half of the screen.

Is this some sort of protection system? has anyone had success with the Tudors disc?

 

[dvdcatalyst]

Blockyness and greenish noise usually indicates a region issue. If your DVD has a different region than the one your drive is set to (a US DVD on a European DVD drive for example), it would cause that, but usually it is on the entire video (and Windows would complain about the region as well).

You can try turning off the "boosterpack" and see if that makes a difference.

 

[Anomander]

Any chance that we can see an upgrade in the future where we can take other video formats and reformat them to our mobile resolution. Case in point downloaded the 720P version of Porn Star Dancing.flv video from My Darkest Days and while I can get it it to run on my Droid 1 it runs with problems (using a flv player from the market place). It did flash a message saying this video was not optimized for mobile devices.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

Any chance that we can see an upgrade in the future where we can take other video formats and reformat them to our mobile resolution.

It already supports most popular formats (DIVX, AVI, MKV etc), however, some flv files are a bit tricky.
In the upcoming update, FLV files have received more attention, meaning they will work better. The file you have might already work though. At the moment only some newer YouTube videos are problematic.

 

[Anomander]

Any chance that we can see an upgrade in the future where we can take other video formats and reformat them to our mobile resolution.

It already supports most popular formats (DIVX, AVI, MKV etc), however, some flv files are a bit tricky.
In the upcoming update, FLV files have received more attention, meaning they will work better. The file you have might already work though. At the moment only some newer YouTube videos are problematic.

Thanks, I'll look for the next update.

 

[Anomander]

Ok, I noticed I had not updated the program so I did so and tried to convert the flv file. It converted with no problems and plays just fine as a .mp4 on my Droid. Thanks for the help and I can not wait until I get a new computer where I can really do things much faster!

 

[Anomander]

Running DVD Catalyst 4 on my wifes laptop (Dual Core 2.Ghz) and it rips them quite nice at around 25 minutes. I am using the Zune 30 HQ setting and resolution looks good at 320x240 on the initial onset. After it does the pre scan it the converts its at 320x194. Any way to change the resolution back to 320x240 so I can have the full screen on the Zune? Ripping movies onto there for the kids for a 6 hour plain ride to Florida and they will be sharing it, so every pixel is going to count

 

[dvdcatalyst]

Running DVD Catalyst 4 on my wifes laptop (Dual Core 2.Ghz) and it rips them quite nice at around 25 minutes. I am using the Zune 30 HQ setting and resolution looks good at 320x240 on the initial onset. After it does the pre scan it the converts its at 320x194. Any way to change the resolution back to 320x240 so I can have the full screen on the Zune? Ripping movies onto there for the kids for a 6 hour plain ride to Florida and they will be sharing it, so every pixel is going to count

Hi Anomander,

Thank you for using DVD Catalyst.

More information in the "black bar" link in my signature, but basically all you need to do is to set cropping to "remove from device"
By default, DVD Catalyst 4 strips black borders from the video, but leaves the video portion unmodified. Because most movies do not have the same screen aspect, when you play the file on your device, you usually end up with black borders added by the player. By changing the black-bar removal option to "remove from device" it will remove the borders from the actual video, and then adjusts the sides of the video (cuts them off) to make it full-screen (320x240 in your case) for playback on the device.

.

 

[Anomander]

Running DVD Catalyst 4 on my wifes laptop (Dual Core 2.Ghz) and it rips them quite nice at around 25 minutes. I am using the Zune 30 HQ setting and resolution looks good at 320x240 on the initial onset. After it does the pre scan it the converts its at 320x194. Any way to change the resolution back to 320x240 so I can have the full screen on the Zune? Ripping movies onto there for the kids for a 6 hour plain ride to Florida and they will be sharing it, so every pixel is going to count

Hi Anomander,

Thank you for using DVD Catalyst.

More information in the "black bar" link in my signature, but basically all you need to do is to set cropping to "remove from device"
By default, DVD Catalyst 4 strips black borders from the video, but leaves the video portion unmodified. Because most movies do not have the same screen aspect, when you play the file on your device, you usually end up with black borders added by the player. By changing the black-bar removal option to "remove from device" it will remove the borders from the actual video, and then adjusts the sides of the video (cuts them off) to make it full-screen (320x240 in your case) for playback on the device.

.

Thanks for that information. I guess I will go rerip some movies now =)

 

[dvdcatalyst]

You are welcome,

It should be pretty quick. The Zune 30 HQ format runs at almost 6x realtime on my dual-core. The smaller screensize combined with the wmv video format makes it fly

.

 

[Anomander]

You are welcome,

It should be pretty quick. The Zune 30 HQ format runs at almost 6x realtime on my dual-core. The smaller screensize combined with the wmv video format makes it fly

.

Yea. I am not happy since my Desktop is an ancient P4 and my wifes Laptop does it considerable quicker. I want an upgrade, but still deciding on a laptop or new desktop. We like to take pictures and shoot in Raw with our Nikon D80 so I really need something that can power Lightoom 3 for picture editing. With a laptop I can edit while I am away from town which is nice.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

The Zune30 conversions shouldn't be too slow on your P4. H264/Droid ones probably will be though.

I prefer laptops myself. Asus has some good-priced ones that have great specs for things like Lightroom and Photoshop. With most laptops on the market, the specs are good enough for that, but the first 2 things to do is to remove the bloatware on the system (when I bought my Dell e1705 laptop 4 years ago, it came with 2GB and XP, but after first-boot, it was already using the swapfile) and for raw pics, of course max-out the memory. You probably want to go for 64bit so you can use more than 4GB.

edit: conversion to Zune30 HQ is running at 6.20x atm