Ideal Video Format?

[JTAC]

Brian, go to the following link...halfway down.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-audio-video/7084-dvd-catalyst-3-issue-3.html

 

[dvdcatalyst]

I just purchased on line Tools4Movies it was only $10.00 and I just did a complete conversion to a MP4 format of Master & Commander a 2.7 hour long movie. I have a old slow XP laptop and it took 2:45 to go from a copy protected DVD. The Tools 4Movie software has a setting for the Droid and it is easy to do and the quality is better than the Handbrake I was using. I am getting a new computer in a few weeks and I'm hoping it will be faster. The movie is taking up almost a gig of space but as I'll be copying all of my MP4's to a DVD for storage then shuffling a handful to the Driod it wont be a problem. I was really surprised by the improvement in quality over the all the other conversion software I've tried and again for 10 bucks you can't beat the price

I do have a question for you how do you put a name on the video, in the Droid I currently made a directory on the 16 gig card for movies and all I see when I open the directory in Gallery is a snapshot of the first frame (I Think?) of each movie. Do I need to put each MP4 in its own directory?

Thank you for your purchase.
As for your new computer, the more cores it has, the happier DVD Catalyst (and you ) will be. On average, a Dual Core will get you a Droid-optimized video made from a DVD in about half the playtime of the movie, a quad-core will rip a 2 hour DVD in about half an hour.

 

[Brian10956]

Video Player

Thanks
I download video player it's ugly but now I know what my MP4 is going to play

 

[KOUSAKA-SAN]

I just wanted to make a note that if you play a bad video that the Droid cant play, every video after that will be choppy. You will have to turn the phone completely off and restart it to fix the problem.

 

[KOUSAKA-SAN]

Also, I spent all day yesterday converting Ace Ventura into all different kind of formats using Handbrake and Super. The only H264 format that worked every time was the one using Super. Every H264 format I tried in Handbrake would not work. (I tried both the old and new Handbrake.) But if you use FF-mpeg format in Handbrake it works great (and the file is still small.) My Duo Quad computer converts the movie in Handbrake in 19 minutes on Win7, 18 minutes in XP. Super took 39 minutes, but I must say, the Super conversion was much better. The video was about the same, but the sound matched the video perfectly, not so with Handbrake which lagged behind rather annoyingly.

 

[JhankG]

I just wanted to make a note that if you play a bad video that the Droid cant play, every video after that will be choppy. You will have to turn the phone completely off and restart it to fix the problem.

I haven't noticed this at all. Anyone else?

 

[RW-1]

. On average, a Dual Core will get you a Droid-optimized video made from a DVD in about half the playtime of the movie, a quad-core will rip a 2 hour DVD in about half an hour.

Geez, my Core I7 rig ripps thru encodes in 15-20 minutes ... hehehe.

 

[KOUSAKA-SAN]

Im trying something else right now. The Ace Ventura disc has 4:3 video on one side and the other side is 16:9 widescreen. But both are 720x480. I am converting both formats in Handbrake right now to MP4 720x480 to see if there is a difference when played on the droid. (Im doing the FF-Mpeg format.) After I might try just switching the format to H264 without changing anything else to see if it will work)

 

[dvdcatalyst]

. On average, a Dual Core will get you a Droid-optimized video made from a DVD in about half the playtime of the movie, a quad-core will rip a 2 hour DVD in about half an hour.

Geez, my Core I7 rig ripps thru encodes in 15-20 minutes ... hehehe.

I was being safe

I'm jealous though. I'm stuck with a Dell E1705 laptop with a (upgraded) Core 2 Duo chip in it. I get decent speeds, but especially for "testing purposes" I would love to have a bigger rig.

Check this out,

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfkjK_sMzsw[/ame]

A clip of dvdcat on a dual quad xeon. The version is one without the boosterpack, so not super-threaded over all the cores, but still it was the first time he actually heard all his fans kick in.
The profile used is similar to the Droid HQ one, same format/bitrates, only 800x480 resolution.

 

[KOUSAKA-SAN]

Well I finished the two conversions. (then went to an anniversary lunch) But the only difference between converting the 720x480 widescreen DVD to 720x480 MP4, and the 720x480 full screen DVD to 720x480 MP4 is that the image is the same size on the droid, but the widescreen has everything looking tall and skinny. So if you are converting widescreen video you need to change the with to 848x480, but if your converting full screen just leave it 720x480 or everything looks fat. (strange thing though, on one conversion the audio was out of sync, but on the Wide screen it was ok)

 

[dvdcatalyst]

Well I finished the two conversions. (then went to an anniversary lunch) But the only difference between converting the 720x480 widescreen DVD to 720x480 MP4, and the 720x480 full screen DVD to 720x480 MP4 is that the image is the same size on the droid, but the widescreen has everything looking tall and skinny. So if you are converting widescreen video you need to change the with to 848x480, but if your converting full screen just leave it 720x480 or everything looks fat. (strange thing though, on one conversion the audio was out of sync, but on the Wide screen it was ok)

Turn off the Anamorphic setting.

Handbrake uses a method called "anamorphic", which stretches the video to make it the resolution you selected.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

For some reason I missed these. Probably because I found these forums after they were posted. I didn't want to bring an old thread back to life, but I'd figured I'd comment on these, just to complete the posts.

I have run into one roadblock with Catalyst. How do I get the movie to appear in full screen mode. I have the Verizon Droid preset at 848x480 and have tried to remove bars from file, device, even crop them out.....each and every single time I get the horizontal black bars or part of the movie missing.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZTFNRMVL

Trying to find a way to use the full Droid screen in Catalyst 3....without cutting parts of the picture out.

1. Handbrake defaults to stretch the video to make it full-screen without loss of actual video (Anamorphic). While this works, it does this by changing the aspect ratio. Movies that normally would not fill the screen, will be stretched in one way, resulting in tall & skinny people, or short and stubby people. To get this behavior in DVD Catalyst, in Global Settings > Conversion, change the crop setting to “Fullscreen Stretch” It will remove black borders from the actual video, and then stretch the video to fill the screen completely.


2. DVD Catalyst defaults to black bar removal from the file. Many DVDs have black padding added to top and bottom to play properly on older (non-wide) TV sets. DVD Catalyst removes the padding, and then scales the video to fit within the selected screen size. It keeps the aspect ratio (people look normal) in tact, however, in most cases you still end up with black borders when viewing the video. You can use the Zoom function in the video player application to make the video full-screen though.


3. DVD Catalyst Full-screen. In Global Settings > Conversion, change the “remove black bars from file” to “remove black bars from device” This will result in DVD Catalyst removing the black padding, and then cut off parts of the sides of the movie to make it full-screen. This is the same as what was used in the past to make full-screen movies on TV.

Personally I prefer the default in DVD Catalyst (which is basically why it is the default, since I'm the developer ) because it lets you switch back and forth, and people dont look slightly "off"

For an idea on what it looks like, please have a look here

http://www.tools4movies.com/2009/07/device-screen-size-video-resolution/

 

[valnar]

1. Handbrake defaults to stretch the video to make it full-screen without loss of actual video (Anamorphic). While this works, it does this by changing the aspect ratio. Movies that normally would not fill the screen, will be stretched in one way, resulting in tall & skinny people, or short and stubby people. To get this behavior in DVD Catalyst, in Global Settings > Conversion, change the crop setting to “Fullscreen Stretch” It will remove black borders from the actual video, and then stretch the video to fill the screen completely.

Huh? Not in my experience.

 

[JTAC]

I experienced stretched characters with HandBrake. I had uploaded a sample chapter of a movie and everyone said the characters looked skinny and stretched.

 

[dvdcatalyst]

1. Handbrake defaults to stretch the video to make it full-screen without loss of actual video (Anamorphic). While this works, it does this by changing the aspect ratio. Movies that normally would not fill the screen, will be stretched in one way, resulting in tall & skinny people, or short and stubby people. To get this behavior in DVD Catalyst, in Global Settings > Conversion, change the crop setting to “Fullscreen Stretch” It will remove black borders from the actual video, and then stretch the video to fill the screen completely.

Huh? Not in my experience.

PictureSettings ? HandBrake

Anamorphic (PAR) ¶

When this is enabled, HandBrake will encode anamorphically. giving you a bigger picture.
There are three different ways of doing anamorphic in HandBrake: strictly, loosely, and custom. In strict mode, the full resolution of the DVD is preserved exactly. As a result, the picture dimensions will be locked and the "Keep aspect ratio" box will be dimmed out. Loose mode will tweak the dimensions slightly so they divide evenly by 16, and allows scaling the width of the stored video. Custom mode is just that -- all settings are configurable by the user. When it is enabled, extra controls appear in the inspector.