Put a Movie in Your Pocket with the Pocket DVD Wizard

[Steve Sharp]

<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/16781/sharp-512005-pocketdvd-header.jpg" /> <br /><b>Product Category:</b> Entertainment<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> <a href="http://www.codingworkshop.com/"><span style="color:blue">Coding Workshop Limited</span></a><br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> <a href="http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=13688&associateid=204"><span style="color:blue">PocketGear</span></a> [Affiliate]<br /><b>Price:</b> $28.95 USD (Check with Coding Workshop on upgrade options).<br /><b>System Requirements:</b> The Pocket DVD Wizard is designed for Microsoft Windows based PCs (Windows XP, 98, ME, NT, and 2000 are supported in the latest version) that are equipped with a DVD drive, 512 megabytes of storage space on the desktop computer, and all Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile™ 2003 or later with Windows Media Player installed, and an expansion storage card with at least 128 megabytes free, for 90-minute of playback at "normal" compression and resolution.<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><li>Does not require installation of any compression or encoding software to the Pocket PC;<br /><li>Does not require the installation of any special viewing software to the Pocket PC;<br /><li>Encoding options support 640 x 480 resolution;<br /><li>The user may choose the level of compression and, therefore, the size of the file output file.<b>Cons:</b><li>It takes a long time to encode a movie;<br /><li>Encoded movies are not divided into chapters.<br /><b>Summary:</b><br />Pocket DVD Wizard 2005, by Coding Workshop Limited, brings the big screen to the pocket-sized screen. With the flexibility to choose the image quality (usually dictated by the size of your expansion memory card), 640 x 480 resolution support, stereo sound, DivX support, a full-screen playback option, an no demand for that precious main memory on your Pocket PC, the program has a lot going for it. Although it is priced in the same $30 range as its competitors, Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 has a lot to offer. If you're a movie buff on the go, Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 may be just what you've been looking for.<br /><br />Read on for the full review!<!><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/16781/S_sharp-PocketDVDWiz-052905-1.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 1: Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 allows the user to determine the file format that will be output.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Bringing the Big Screen to a Small Package</b></span><br />When I signed up for this review, I was a little skeptical about how my trusty but slow O2 XDA2's processor would hold up to the demands of playing full-motion video for an extended period of time. There was no problem. <br /><br />Those who have ever messed with DVD-encoded video files know that the video and sound data on a DVD disc occupy several gigabytes of space. The very idea of squeezing all that data down to 250 megabytes, and retaining any semblance of picture quality seemed unlikely, at best, to me. I could envision trying to decipher garbled audio that was unsynchronized from the on-screen events, and grainy, muddled images of tiny unrecognizable people playing out scenes on my small screen. Do I sound like a skeptic? Yes, I was. But, not anymore. For the compression level and screen resolution of my Pocket PC, the picture was much clearer than I had expected. The sound quality was very good, and my concerns about the feasibility of trying to watch a motion picture on a screen the size of my Pocket PC's were quickly put to rest. <li>Supports "landscape" or "portrait" viewing;<br /><li>Supports either "letterbox" or full-screen viewing;<br /><li>Supports compression of video other than DVD-encoded files.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/16781/S_sharp-PocketDVDWiz-052905-2.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 2: The wizard allows the user to choose the compressed files settings.</i><br /><br /><span><b>What Does it Take to Do This?</b></span><br />Pocket DVD Wizard is a bit different than most Pocket PC-related applications, and I'll tell you how. The application doesn't reside on your Pocket PC, and no part of the program resides on your Pocket PC. This program makes demands of your desktop and virtually no demands of your Pocket PC. Obviously, if you're going to compress a DVD, then your desktop PC must have a DVD drive, right? Also, the completed, compressed file must reside on your desktop until it is transferred to you Pocket PC, and the output file can be as large as 512 megabytes. It goes without saying that the more processing power that can be devoted to the compression process, the faster the task will be completed. I have a 512 Megabyte SD card for my Pocket PC, but I have about 100 Megabytes of stuff on there, so I decided to that I'd opt for the 256 Megabyte output, at "normal" resolution (not VGA) and started it up. As the estimated time for completion grew, I realized that this wasn't going to be something that I should wait around for, I left it running. When it was finished, the next morning, it took a couple of minutes to transfer it over to the SD card. Once it was transferred, it's as simple as opening Windows Media Player and opening the file.<!><br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/16781/S_sharp-PocketDVDWiz-052905-4.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 3: Determine the file's output size.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Compressing Movies is Slow Good</b></span><br />Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 does suffer the same plight that similar products also encounter: it takes a <i>long</i> time to encode a movie. Obviously, the length, compression level, and the processing power of the desktop computer that is compressing the movie has a great deal do with the time it takes, but it's quite slow. I compressed <i>Pirates of the Caribbean</i> to a size of 250 megabytes using a Pentium 4, 2.66 Megahertz processor and with minimal overhead running in the background, and it took about ten hours to compress. Of course, the logical approach would be to start the encoding process before going to bed or before leaving for work, and having the file completed and ready to transfer to the Pocket PC, when you return. <br /><br />Otherwise, although possible, it isn't practical to try to continue using the desktop PC while the encoding is going on; the compression process saps a huge chunk of processing power, and I suspect that forcing the processor to divide time between other applications and compressing a movie, could lead to unfavorable consequences to your movie. Admittedly, the results are worth the wait, and there is not, to my knowledge, any other program of this type that is significantly faster, or any easier to use. Other than the occasional long flight, I seldom have a couple of hours to sit down and watch a movie on my Pocket PC, and for this reason, I wish that there was a way of stopping and resuming the movie at a later time, besides simply pausing it and hoping that I don't have to do a soft reset before I can finish watching the show. There is the option of using the Windows Media Player's slider to advance the movie to the area where you left off before, but it would be possible and feasible to have a sort of "bookmark" feature that would allow the viewer to resume where the viewer left off before. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/16781/S_sharp-PocketDVDWiz-052905-3.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 4: Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 works well, but it takes time.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />Coding Workshop Limited has built a new level of flexibility into Pocket DVD Wizard 2005, at a competitive price and user plenty of user options. Depending upon your model of Pocket PC, two hours of sound and animation maybe be taxing to the battery, and lighting conditions may prevent you from being able to easily see the images on the screen. However, the picture quality is more than adequate, the animation is not jerky, even on my relatively slow processor, and the sound is sharp and clear. <br /><br />As an added bonus, Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 will allow encoding of other video formats such as DivX and .avi. If you're in the market for a DVD compression program, Pocket DVD Wizard 2005 is a strong candidate in the field. Coding Workshop Limited offers a free trial program which will allow the user to compress 5 minutes of sound and video, just to give you a sampling of the image quality that you may expect from the program. The free download is available at Pocket Gear, Handango, or from Coding Workshop Limited.<br /><br /><i>Steven Sharp is a system analyst by day and a freelance writer by night. He is a 38-year-old native and lifelong resident of Huntsville, Alabama. His first book, The Art of Managing Everyday Conflict was published in May 2004.</i>

[foebea]

You mention as a con: Encoded movies are not divided into chapters.

I have actually never known of a program that does do that.

I just purchased the Kids in the Hall DVD set and would really find it convenient to split it up by chapter for viewing on the pocket pc.

Do you know of any programs which do have this functionality?

[Jon Westfall]

Good Review Steve. Now if we could just get over the time factor involved, DVD Ripping would be great.

Jon.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Good review, Steve.

I know I use the old fashion brute force method for ripping DVDs to DivX (DVD Decyrptor, DVD2AVI, AviSynth, VDub,...). And as you mentioned, I would typically just batch up the final rip to run during my sleep (takes 4-5 hours for 3 passes). It's all much faster than the 10 hours you found with this solution, but then again, my methods are highly disjointed and manual up to the actual rip. If anyone can find a solution that is quick and automated, it would become a killer app in my opinion.

[Jason Dunn]

Now if we could just get over the time factor involved, DVD Ripping would be great.

Truth is, brute force CPU power is the only thing that will "solve" this. You have to remember that you're taking 29.97 still images from the MPEG2 file, essentially JPEGs, and re-sizing and re-compressing them. That's basically 107,892 images every hour (I'm simplifying the numers a bit here) or 269,730 images in a 2.5 hour movie. And then you have to add in audio, and likely de-interlacing as well. That's what your CPU is doing, and it's damn hard work. ;-)

[foebea]

10 hours?
I thought we had left that in the past.

I currently use PocketDivxEncoder to rip my dvds to a pocketpc friendly size and compression.

It takes about the same amount of time as it takes to watch the movie, slightly more or less depending on settings.

[whydidnt]

I've always had great luck ripping with DVD Decrypter and encoding with the Free Pocket DivX encoder. It supports both 320 x 240 and 640 x 480 file sizes and has options related to file and sound quality. It never takes me anywhere near 10 Hours to encode a movie. I'm running a AMD64 3200+ processor with 1 GB of RAM, and I'm not sure how much that helps. I think P4 chips are supposed to be better than AMD at video encoding though. I usually don't have anything else running in the background either.

I would say the encoding process usually takes about 1/2 the run time of the movie. I can rip several DVDS in one setting and then batch encode them over night using Pocket DivX. The movies look pretty darn good when played back using Picard's BetaPlayer.

[foebea]

I cut out a step and rip direct from vob files on the dvd. The homepage of the program wont provide help on that 'feature' but it works for me.

1500 mhz amd 512 megs ram. so previous poster has twice the cpu and half the ripping time. sounds good to me.

CPU Brute Force definately seems to play a role in this, but if the reviewed program takes all night to run, then the developers should check how other software does it to improve that speed. I haven't had to spend that long on a conversion since i used software called 'fairplay' half a decade ago.

[caubeck]

I've been using this software for a few months and have had no problems with it. In general I use the "set stop/start points" feature to record in 30 minute segments. This works fine as I rarely have much time to watch the DVDs I rip anyway, and it takes the drag out of the long conversion process. I always convert at the highest possible quality, so a movie might take about 9 hours in all to convert, spread over three sessions.

[Steve Sharp]

foebea,
No, I'm not aware of any encoding software that will compress movies and divide them into chapters. I, therefore, consider this a "con" for all of the DVD compression software that I know of. If I run across a product that will do this, I'll let you know.

Jon and Ekkie,
thanks for the positive feedback. It seems that we often only hear from reader who disagree with a reviewer's opinioin (and there's nothing wrong with that; I enjoy hearing other people's opinions and their perspectives on various products) but it's nice to hear that someone enjoyed a review, also, so thank you very much for your comments.

As Jason mentioned, it seems to work my processor fairly hard when I'm compressing a movie. I generally use my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop with a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz processor with very few background apps, and it still takes a long time.


caubeck,
That's a good idea to break up the process of compressing the movie, I may try that.

I must say that I'm constantly impressed with the knowledge and ingenuity of so many Pocket PC Thoughts readers. I feel that I often learn more from the posts in response to a review than I learned during the course of doing the review itself. I always enjoy seeing the tips and tricks that our resourceful members share with others. Thanks to each of you who took the time to read the review and responding.

Steve

[Mitchybums]

PocketDVD, ($12.50) supports chapters and episode dvds as well.
It can also rip a DVD to divx format in about half of the actual movie playtime on a "standard" p4 2ghz system.

I've been using it for quite some time now and works like a charm for me.

can be found at www.pocketdvd.ca

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

As Jason mentioned, it seems to work my processor fairly hard when I'm compressing a movie. I generally use my Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop with a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz processor with very few background apps, and it still takes a long time.
Yeah, the CPU factor is typically the bottleneck, though there I'd also say that disk I/O is not too far behind, especially if you're ripping from DVD VOB files sitting on your hard drive. They typically take several GBs of space.

[sqesy]

Good Review Steve. Now if we could just get over the time factor involved, DVD Ripping would be great.

Jon.

It shouldn't be that slow. Pocket-DVD Studio can do the same job 2 or 3 times faster and with even better video quality. You can find it at http://www.pqdvd.com/

The time factor is no longer an issue. It was because some old software are not optimized and waste lots of processing power of your computer.

[James Felder]

I agree with the other posters that PocketDVD is the better application for converting DVD content to play on the PocketPC. However, I don't do many movies. Instead I have a number of TV series on DVD and I have converted those. I am a big Star Gate fan and my daughter is a Buffy fan. We have all the seasons for both of those shows. We have all episodes on the PC's HD and download a few episodes at a time to CF for viewing on our PPCs. My daughter especially enjoys this since she has a 40-45 minute bus ride in the morning and afternoon during the school year. She can usually watch an episode or two a day. The big plus is that most TV shows are already in 4:3 /30 fps format , and so fit the PPC perfectly. And without commercials are only ~45 minutes long, so fit better into the narrow gaps in our crowded schedule than a full movie would.

[grantlairdjr]

I am new PocketPC user.

I wonder if this product can turn subtitle (caption) on for hearing impaired like myself.

Thanks!

gwlj
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com

[Steve Sharp]

I wonder if this product can turn subtitle (caption) on for hearing impaired like myself.

Grant,
Welcome to Pocket PC Thoughts. I revisited Coding Workshop Limited's site, and I did not see whether this software supports captions for the hearing impaired. However, if you're interested in the product, just follow the link to Coding Workshop's site (at the top of the product review page) and I'm sure that they'd be happy to let you know about this feature. Sorry that I couldn't answer the questions myself.

Steve

[Nurhisham Hussein]

I believe that Fairuse can do chapters, although only for *.ogm and *.mkv:

http://www.fairusewizard.com/lang_en/index.html

@grantlairdjr

The same program, as well as PocketDivxEncoder, can also encode subtitles, assuming you have the subtitle file on hand.

[caubeck]

I am new PocketPC user.

I wonder if this product can turn subtitle (caption) on for hearing impaired like myself.

Thanks!

gwlj
http://blog.grantlairdjr.com

Hi,

Wizard allows you to see the subtitles. Depending on the film, they will either fit very well on the screen, or get slightly chopped at the ends.

[caubeck]

I have now left DVD Wizard for Pocket DVD Studio. Studio wins hands down - quality, speed, interface.

A DVD that took all night to convert with Wizard takes less than an hour with Studio. Motion is smoother on the screen. Some DVDs the Wizard would not convert are accepted by Pocket DVD Studio.

Nuff said.

[jlp]

Where have all the images from the review gone?

By the way, Pocket DVD is now called DVD Catalyst costs twice as much as previous version but seems to be highly improved and include more than twice the features.

While it still costs less than the competition: DVD Catalyst is $25 vs $30 (Pocket DVD Wizard) up to $40 (Pocket DVD Studio; even with their 15% Off Coupon it's still $34).

Unlike some with which you need to buy one program for every multimedia playing device you may own, this DVD Catalyst does every device in one single program.

All in all much less expensive and you don't have to mess with multiple installs.

Plus it can do conversions to many devices at once (e.g. PPC &amp; Smartphone), handles DVD placed in more than one drive and does batch conversion.

No wonder it's a winner of last year's PPC Mag award and is nominated for this year's awards.