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Playing DVDs on your PDA (continued)
The only problems I've found is that sometimes the appropriate subtitle track can be difficult to locate with Pocket DVD Studio, like I mentioned above, and the bookmark glitch with MMPlayer.
Rapid movement, like action sequences, has a tendency to pixelate. I don't think that can be helped at any resolution considering the amount of dynamic memory, processor speed, and screen resolution of the devices they're being played on.
Bear in mind that running a full-length movie on your handheld is going to be a pretty good power drain. I played one movie on my T2, starting with a fully charged battery. When the movie was finished, the battery had been run down to 41%. [I tried something similar on an old Jornada Pocket PC I took on a plane, and I only made it about 2/3 through the movie before I ran out of juice. -- DG]
I'm going to rate each of these applications separately, because they each truly deserve it. They work so well together though, that it was kind of a given they had to be combined into one article.
Rating Pocket DVD Studio
Pocket DVD Studio earns a 3 out of 5 for being able to cram a full length DVD movie onto a 128 MB file, and still have it be viewable. Although it's great that the file size always comes out smaller than the estimate, sometimes it came out so much smaller that I encoded the file again to get closer to the size my card could accommodate.
This product could have gotten a 4 out of 5, but after several different support inquiries over a period of three weeks, the only response I've ever received was in response to my initial contact for a review copy. Pocket DVD Studio definitely does what it's supposed to, just don't expect to get much help from the developers if you have a problem.
OUR RATING: 3 of 5
Rating MMPlayer
MMPlayer I also give a 4 out of 5, primarily for being able to handle native media files, but also for the excellent support. As I mentioned above, the caching of the file, I think, causes the little bookmark glitch. One improvement I'd really like to see in a future version, and it may already be planned, is a time counter. That way, you could edit your bookmark to ensure the time stamp actually matches where you want to mark the file.
OUR RATING: 4 of 5
With Pocket DVD Studio and MMPlayer, your media files can be as mobile as you are.
James Booth is Editor-at-Large at ZATZ Publishing. In addition to writing for Computing Unplugged and Connected Photographer, he's the author of Do-It-Yourself Wedding Photography. A self-taught photographer, James also dabbles in digital graphics and has learned to be a PC and handheld specialist through personal trial and error. James can be reached at jbooth@zatz.com.
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