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Ok, so continuing my little series of video processing tools, today I’ve got SPB Mobile DVD up on the testing block. Many of you have suggested that I check it out and Doug was kind enough to contact them for me and get me an evaluation copy.

SPB Mobile DVD is fast and it works, I converted Stargate to both AVI and WMV formats and it worked flawlessly both times. Audio was in sync with the video, the overall size was nice and small and the quality was pretty good, at least for the WMV version…

So continue on to learn more about SPB Mobile DVD…

Here’s a brief description from the SPB website, and you can read all of it if you visit them HERE:

Spb Mobile DVD is a desktop application providing you with a quick and easy way to convert DVDs and video files to the mobile format with the highest possible speed and true real-time preview.

SPB Mobile uses a Wizard style interface which makes it easy for those that are new to this, but the wizard interface is a bit annoying, at least to me, as I know what I want to do and would be happier with just everything on one page and not having to keep hitting ‘Next’ to finally get to the conversion options. As I said though, it’s great for people who are fairly new to this sort of thing, it walks you through with baby-steps really and there’s not much of a chance to mess it up when done this way.

After clicking ‘Next’ on the welcome screen the next screen will allow you to choose what video you want to convert, you can choose DVD or a video file located on your hard drive.

Since I’m converting my Stargate DVD I choose DVD obviously, after clicking ‘next’ we are greeted with another screen with more instructions for you to start the movie and click Next again…

After clicking Next you will advance to the next choice of what portions of the movie you wish to convert, you can choose chapters or the whole movie, for my purposes I choose to convert the whole movie. Then click Next…

The next set of options allows you to choose the output format, screen size or resolution, aspect ratio and zooming mode.

You’ve got limited choices of Output formats, AVI and WMV basically with WMV giving you two choices of 20FPS or 25FPS. With the screen resolution you’ve got seven choices:

PocketPC qVGA (320×24)

PocketPC VGA (640×480)

PocketPC WVGA (800×480)

PocketPC (240×240)

PocketPC (480×480)

Smartphone (220×176)

Smartphone (320×240)

For Aspect Ratio we’ve got three choices: 4:3, 16:9, and 2.35:1

For Zooming mode there are three choices as well:

Small (Fit to Screen)

Medium (Best Fit)

Big (Fit to Full Screen)

after we click Next again we’ve got another choice to make, the Video Quality that you prefer:

Poor, Normal, Best or Custom.

Choosing ‘Custom’ makes a slider bar appear so you can adjust the quality.

After you choose the Video Quality click Next again and you can choose where you want the finished file to go: Hard Drive, Memory Card or directly to you Pocket PC. Once you’ve selected where you want your file to go you can hit ‘Start’ and the conversion will begin.

On the Conversion screen you’ve got a couple other options as well, you can choose to make the preview of the movie you are converting look better while you are converting it, you can choose ‘Background Conversion’ where the conversion process will run in the background using less CPU cycles but taking more time, and the final choice is to Shutdown the Computer after the conversion.

Once it’s completed you’ll get a Congratulatory screen letting you know it’s all done, it also tells you the Time it took and the final output size of your movie.

Ok, so I used SPB Mobile DVD to convert Stargate to both AVI/Divx and WMV formats to see if there was any differences in time, quality etc. I used the same setting for both, resolution size PocketPC qVGA (240×320) and video quality of ‘Normal’

AVI Conversion:

Time: 25.27

Size: 298MB

CPU Usage:

Average: 40%

Peak: 50%

The audio was perfectly synced to the video but the video wasn’t that clear, it was very pixellated in some parts to the point that it was very hard to see what was going on. Had I went back and changed the Video Quality I may have had a better result, but that would have most likely increased the output size, and well, it just should have worked on the ‘Normal’ setting.

WMV Conversion:

Time: 23.49

Size: 294MB

CPU Usage:

Average: 50%

Peak: 64%

The WMV version came out pretty much perfect, audio and video were synced and the video was clear with very little pixellation.

With a price of $24.95 I’d say it’s well worth it for what it does, it does exactly what it is supposed to do, convert your movie to mobile format so you can take it with you.

I understand that this software is specifically for mobile devices, but I could complain that the output choices are very limited with only two real choices, other software out there for a similar price will allow you to convert to many formats and give you many other options as well.

The whole ‘Next,Next,Next,Next’ thing is annoying to me personally, I’d rather have it all on one screen or two, but as I mentioned the system works well for those that are new to this sort of thing, so users that are not that computer savvy will be able to use this program with confidence and easily and quickly convert their movies to a mobile format.

I can Recommend this software to anyone looking for a program to easily and quickly convert their movies to mobile format, it works and works well.

If I had to give SPB Mobile DVD a score it would be a 4.5 out of 5.

Pros:

-User friendly interface

-Very quick conversion

-Small output file size

-Inexpensive

Cons:

-Limited format choices

-AVI output file isn’t that clear

I would like to thank SPB for the chance to review SPB Mobile DVD and for their support of our site.

Kristofer (33 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook