Spb Mobile DVD converts DVD disks and video files for watching on Smartphone devices. The program is implemented as an easy step-by-step wizard that allows users to visually set conversion settings like zooming and video quality.
Selecting DVD Settings.
You can choose what movie to convert (if there are several), audio language and subtitles.
You can use DVD menu for choosing these options. The very same DVD menu you use on your standard DVD player to select settings and start a movie. So you will find Spb Mobile DVD interface familiar and very handy.
A Part to Convert.
One can either convert an entire movie or select either a predefined chapter or a custom part to convert.
In case of a custom part you can visually select the part of the movie you want to convert for a mobile device by marking its begin and end points.
File Format and Resolution.
Most movies nowadays are available in wide screen (2.35:1) format. However the Smartphone screens on most devices have the 4:3 ratio. So users can choose between watching video in the original format and have black stripes at the top and the bottom of the screen and cropping left and right parts to see only the central part that fills the entire Smartphone screen. In fact the same dilemma exists when watching wide screen movies on a standard 4:3 TV set.
Some people want to see the entire movie without cropping. While others say that the Smartphone screen is not big and they want to use 100% of its area. Finally, there are people who want something in between. Spb Mobile DVD provides solutions for all of them.
You can always see a true real-time preview of the output video when you change the options.
Quality and Size.
Video files must be converted and compressed to a smaller size, but the smaller the file size, the poorer the video quality
There is always a tradeoff between output video quality and output file size. In Spb Mobile DVD you can either set the quality and the program will automatically calculate the result file size or you can specify the file size and the program will choose the best quality to fit the output file in that size.
Quality and Size. Preview.
With Spb Mobile DVD you can use preset configurations or experiment with settings to create your Smartphone file, and find by trial-and-error the results you want. Often it is impossible to know if you picked the right settings until after the very lengthy conversion process! Spb Mobile DVD solves this problem easily with a unique real-time preview feature, unavailable in any other software. This allows you to see the result before the conversion starts!
Converting.
Spb Mobile DVD is optimized for the fastest possible video converting on one core, hyper-threading and dual core processors. For example you can convert a 2h 20 min "Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones" movie in about 40 minutes on a Pentium 4, 3GHz computer. The same conversion takes about 22 minutes on a Pentium D, 3GHz computer. Please note that conversion speed depends on many factors including your CPU, installed DVD player, output video resolution, output video format, video quality, zooming mode, etc.
Watching Movies on a Smartphone.
You can watch the produced videos in Windows Media Player (WMV format) or in some of the third-party Smartphone video players (XVID format).
For those who has VGA Smartphone devices and wants to convert DVD into VGA qualitym the XVID format is recommended because TCPMP software for playing XVID gives much better quality than Windows Media Player. And on most devices it is the only option to play VGA video without loosing frames.
Nevertheless many VGA Smartphone users say that difference in quality between 320x240 and 640x480 is not so big but the file size is much (about 3 times) smaller for 320x240 video.
A lot of Smartphone devices are equipped with 200 MHz TI/OMAP CPU. For such devices it is recommended to reduce the FPS value for WMV output video format to 20FPS (25FPS is a default value). It allows playing the converted videos in Windows Media Player without any lost frames. XVID can be played without any problems even with 25FPS.
«When I received a review copy of Spb Mobile DVD, all I thought was, "Oh! Yet another DVD conversion software for mobile devices". But I didn't expect something that is far more user friendly and faster than the rest of the bunch.» ... «Spb Mobile DVD is definitely the easiest and fastest video conversion software around.»