Quite the week this time. After somewhat of a drought regarding new releases, this week made up for it. With “The Hangover 2″, “Cowboys vs Aliens”, “The Help” and “Mr Popper’s Penguins” all being released on Tuesday, movie lovers like me had a hay-day.

Aside from the new releases, Google reached a milestone in app-downloads through its Android market and is celebrating it with $0.10 sales of popular apps. Nintendo finally released an update for the Nintendo 3DS and of course Microsoft released its update for the XBOX360. Other than that, nothing really noteworthy.

Tech News:

The XBOX360 update this year adds some major enhancements. With a look similar to that of Windows Phone and Windows 8, the interface looks a lot more intuitive, and of course with an integration of some (limited amount now but expanding) channels like ESPN, the 360 is ging quite beyond just a gaming console.

Google reached the 10 Billion downloads mark (congratulations) for the Android Market, and is celebrating. I haven’t had the time to actually play with the apps yet, but I did pick up a few deals. Minecraft, Scetchbook Mobile, SoundHound, Fruit Ninja, and a bunch of others, all for $0.10 a piece. Major shopping spree for less than a buck total

The Nintendo 3DS update. I had to get it back out of the box and charge it up again after having it put back in a few months ago. I have been looking at the new Mario games, and of course Zelda, but with a 360 that hasn’t seen action for most of this year, I just don’t have the time to get into the games. The update finally adds video support. I did play for a couple of minutes to see if I can do something with it, but I need a bit of time to get the proper settings figured out.

DVD Catalyst News:

Not that much this week. I spent the entire week mainly on an update for MovieGallery. Currently in the final testing stages, so it shouldn’t be long before I update it in the market.

Tools4Movies.com Articles:

This week I only had time to add some articles to the DVD section:

The Smurfs (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/smurfs-dvd/

Faster (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/faster-dvd/

Friends with Benefits (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/friends-benefits-dvd/

Friends with Benefits (2011) Bluray

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/friends-benefits-bluray/

The Hangover 2 (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/hangover-dvd/

The Hangover 2 (2011) Bluray

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/hangover-bluray/

The Help (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/help-dvd/

Cowboys and Aliens (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/cowboys-aliens-dvd/

Mr Poppers Penguins (2011) DVD

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/mr-poppers-penguins-dvd/

Thoughts:

NOOKtablet:

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been using the NOOKtablet as my main device. I’ll try and write a full review next week (if time permits), but I will share some of my thoughts on it.

I miss my Kindle Fire. It was hard to resist, but I didn’t grab it at nights. I did use it a few times to test MovieGallery with.

I’m still fighting with the headphone port on the NOOKtablet. Because my cat likes to climb on everything, I always unplug and disconnect the stuff I have on my nightstand. It happened quite a few times in the past that I am working and then hear a lot of ruckus from the bedroom, and its the cat whom knocked over everything. To make sure he can’t damage anything, I disconnect everything.

So the same goes for the headphones I use for my “off-time” at nights. And, every evening when I want to watch something, I end up having to spend 5 minutes of fiddling with the headphone jack to get proper audio out of the thing. I really have to get to the B&N store to see if it is an issue that is just on mine or on more of them.

During the week (well, a couple of days more) I have been using the NOOKtablet mainly for videos. I did use the web a few times as well as the email client.

For video in general, it works great. No issues with video files, and of course the SD card (I’m using the 16GB one that came with my Droid X) gives me plenty of space. Unfortunately, Netflix is a bit weak. I had a few crashes of it, and it doesn’t seem to like to be rotated on the NOOKtablet. When you switch it from portrait to landscape, it doesn’t seem to update the view, and only shows half. At this point, the button-functionality doesn’t work, so you are forced to get out of it completely and go back in.

While that is only a minor gripe, I did have the actual user interface of the NOOKtablet crash a couple of times on me when switching/starting apps. It looks like the device reboots, but it is actually just the NOOK interface that B&N added on top of Android.

The email app on the NOOKtablet takes some time to get used to. It is not as intuitive as one would expect. Since I use gmail, I found it easier to use the browser rather than the actual email app.

This week I’ve been putting most of my time into the update of MovieGallery for the NOOKcolor and NOOKtablet, and while the NOOKtablet is a bit faster (noticeable with the new thumbnail generation feature) the NOOKcolor seems to be a lot more stable. With both looking nearly the same (my office is a bit gloomy, so the color difference of the casing is not as clear), I found myself using the NOOKcolor a lot more for testing than the NOOKtablet.

TV:

In last week’s newsletter I wrote about how my wife and I keep fighting with the TiVo and one of our TV shows. I received a lot of responses on that (thank you), and it turned out the blame was due to sports running into overtime. So last week, we set up the recording to run an hour longer, and of course, this time it was on-time.

The sports thing brings up something else for me to gripe about though. With the due date for Digital TV, my cable company “promised” it wouldn’t drop analog, but of course, back in march of this year, they came back on their words, and dropped it, forcing me to replace our 2 beloved TiVo Series 2′s for a TiVo Premiere. I have wrote my fair share of comments on that experience, but the reason why my cable company dropped analog was so it could add more (premium) sports channels. So all the issues we have been dealing with this year regarding TV are caused by sports. Broken promises from the cable company, forced upgrade, missing/half recorded TV shows, all because of sports. If they added more sports channels, you would expect that they would make sure that the non-sport TV doesn’t get affected, which would of course result into more sales for the premium sports channels. Sad, very sad.

Tip: Online DVD/Bluray Cataloging:

A few weeks ago, I finally started cataloging my DVD collection. I tried a few different websites, and found one that would actually connect to a barcode scanner app on Android devices, making it quick and easy to do. I didn’t get back to it for a week or so and unfortunately, , I forgot the website I used. Because I tried so many of them, I forgot the name, and because I deal with a lot of emails on a daily basis, I couldn’t find the email confirmation. Last night, I got a newsletter from the one I used, so now I have it bookmarked. If you are looking for an easy way of cataloging your DVDs, Blurays, Games, Books etc, visit http://www.itrackmine.com/ It works really well, and with the barcode scanner, its (for most) simply swiping the barcode past your phone, and it will pull up the DVD ready to add it to your collection. In a matter for a couple of hours, I added worked myself through about 250 DVDs, way faster than if I would do it by hand.

Handy Links:

Multi-device conversions:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2010/11/dvd-catalyst-4-video-multi-device/

If you have more than one phone/tablet you want to convert your movies for, this article will show you how to add additional devices to your conversion, so that with 1 click, you can create video files for all of them.

TV Show episodes:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2010/11/dvd-catalyst-4-video-tv-show-dvds-part-1/

If you ever used other conversion tools to convert multiple episodes from DVD, you probably realized that things can get a bit complicated and time-consuming. You either have to convert one episode at a time, or create a batch by adding individual conversions to a list before you start the conversion process. This article shows how to convert all the episodes on a DVD with just one click.

Batch conversion for video files:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2010/11/dvd-catalyst-4-video-quickly-convert-a-folder-of-video-files/

Similar to converting a TV show DVD, this article shows how to drag a folder with multiple video files onto DVD Catalyst and start a conversion of all of them with just one click.

Batch Rename:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2010/11/dvd-catalyst-4-video-tv-show-dvds-part-2-batch-rename/

This article explains how to use the batch-rename feature in DVD Catalyst. If you convert a lot of TV shows, you probably have your own naming system in place to organize them according to season and episode number.

Closings:

And that is it for this week. Next week, I’ll try and write a full review on the NOOKtablet, and I might be able to get an article written up on how to use the iTrackmine online cataloging website. Thanks again for reading the DVD Catalyst Newsletter, and I hope you have a safe and warm weekend.

Sincerely,

Mitch

Here is what I did:

Of course, I used DVD Catalyst 4 (4.1.2) for the conversion, but since I was converting directly from Bluray, I used AnyDVD HD (6.8.6.0) as well. For DVDs or video files (MKV, AVI etc) this isn’t needed though.

If you never converted a Bluray with DVD Catalyst 4 before (keep in mind that a DVD drive doesn’t read Bluray movies), aside from installing AnyDVD HD/DVDfab Passkey or running the Bluray through MakeMKV,  you have to enable the “Bluray” checkmark.

For full details on this, have a look at the Bluray Guide:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/08/dvd-catalyst-4-1-bluray-guide/

*Enable Power User (bottom right)

*Go into Global Settings (top left)

*Select the Bluray Tab (top right)

*Enable the checkmark for it.

While I was there, I also set the cropping-mode (black bar removal) to make the video full-screen to maximize the playback experience on the NOOKtablet:

*still in Global Settings, select the Borders Tab.

*in there look for “remove from device” and select it.

Because I am converting a Bluray here, I choose the NOOKtablet HQXT profile. This profile is optimized for producing high-quality video files of HD resolution, while maintaining a reasonable small file-size.

With that all selected, close (hide) Global Settings, and insert the “Hangover 2″ bluray disc in your bluray drive.

AnyDVD HD (or DVDfab Passkey) will scan the disc,

and afterwards, DVD Catalyst will start scanning the bluray for video content on it. If any other apps start doing something with the Bluray, such as a media/bluray player application, close it to make sure it doesn’t interfere.

Because of the high quality NOOKtablet profile that I selected, the video file that DVD Catalyst 4 will be larger than the 1GB of available space on the NOOKtablet, so you will need to use a memorycard in order to be able to play the file, or use the streaming instructions explained in this guide:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/11/kindle-fire-video-streaming-guide-part-2/

and now just start a conversion.

after the conversion is complete, just copy the file to the memorycard for your NOOKtablet as explained in the NOOKtablet Guide:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/11/dvd-nooktablet-quick-easy-affordable/

Using the NOOKtablet HQXT profile, the conversion of The Hangover 2 Bluray took about 40 minutes. The resulting filesize of the created MP4 file ended up as 1.3GB:

To get an idea of how DVD Catalyst 4 worked with the DVD version of The Hangover 2, have a look here:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/12/hangover-dvd/

No reports on this one either, but I find it better to try the DVDs beforehand rather than getting emailed to death about one, so I ran it through DVD Catalyst 4 as well:

Scanning the DVD:

DVD Catalyst 4 conversion of the DVD:

Using the Apple > iPad2 profile in DVD Catalyst 4, the conversion ran at 6.1x realtime using my core i7 laptop, so the conversion of the 1 1/2 hour movie only took 15 minutes. The resulting iPad2 optimized video file ended up being 1.07GB in size.

No reports of complications with Cowboys and Aliens, but I figured I’d give it a run regardless. Its the 3rd one I did today (The Hangover 2, The Help) and all 3 worked without any complications or needed any settings-changes

With DVD Catalyst 4, the Cowboys and Aliens DVD scans just as it should:

and the conversion runs without any hiccups as well:

Using the standard Amazon > Kindle Fire profile in DVD Catalyst 4 (v4.1.2), the conversion ran at 7.2x realtime using my core i7 laptop, so it only took about 16 minutes to convert the 2 hour long movie. The resulting size for the Kindle Fire-optimized video file ended up as 950MB

Make sure you are using the latest version (4.1.2.0 at the moment) of DVD Catalyst 4 for this movie. The movie is somewhat picky, but DVD Catalyst 4 4.1.2 has received some modifications for these types of DVDs in the last update, which makes them work without any complications:

Scanning:

conversion:

Using the Barnes & Noble > NOOKcolor profile in DVD Catalyst 4, the conversion ran at 6.5x realtime, so the full 2 1/2 hour long movie converted in less than 22 minutes using my core i7 laptop.

The resulting video file for the NOOKcolor ended up as 1.15GB

Scanning:

conversion:

Using the standard Android > Xoom profile, the conversion ran at 7.2x realtime on my core i7 laptop, so it took less than 15 minutes to rip “The Hangover 2″. The resulting file size ended up as 1.15GB total

To have DVD Catalyst 4 convert Bluray, make sure you have looked at the Bluray guide first. Aside from some requirements, also a setting in DVD Catalyst needs to be enabled.

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/08/dvd-catalyst-4-1-bluray-guide/

So start DVD Catalyst before you insert the Bluray, and enable the Bluray checkmark:

*enable Power User, then go into Global Settings and look for the Bluray tab:

If you would like your movies to end up full-screen, switch to the Border tab and change the border setting to “remove from device:

While not required, I close DVD Catalyst 4 here, so when I insert the Bluray, ANyDVD HD will scan it first.

and after that is completed, I start DVD Catalyst, and it will find the Bluray disk.

The Kindle Fire (the standard one) igreat for DVDs, but for higher-resolution videos such as Bluray or HD MKV, it doesn’t provide the best quality. It still looks better than what you get from most conversion tools, but DVD Catalyst 4 is capable of doing much better than that. So, I switch to the Kindle Fire HQXT profile:

and start a conversion:

Because Blurays are in a different format and use a screen resolution that is a lot higher, conversions aren’t as quick as if you would convert a DVD or a video file, and of course, a higher quality video takes a bit longer to create than a low quality one.

Using the Kindle Fire HQXT profile, the conversion ran at a little over 2x realtime, so the full movie conversion took about 45 minutes to complete. The resulting filesize for the high quality video file was slightly larger than 1GB:

We picked up the Bluray + DVD combo pack (with a free, useless Ultra Violet Digital Copy, whoohoo), so I’ll try the Bluray as well, but here is the DVD.

After starting DVD Catalyst 4, I selected the Amazon > Kindle Fire profile (the standard one) and inserted the DVD.

no issues with scanning, and only the movie track is displayed.

then I started the conversion,

and it starts humming along quite nicely. Using my core i7 laptop, the conversion is running at a cool 7 1/4x realtime, so it only took about 15 minutes for the full movie.

Using the Kindle Fire profile, the video file created by DVD Catalyst 4 ended up at 881MB in size.

For full details on how to watch DVDs on your NOOKtablet, have a look at this guide:

http://www.tools4movies.com/2011/11/dvd-nooktablet-quick-easy-affordable/

scanning:

conversion:

I used the “plain” Barnes and Noble NOOKtablet profile for the conversion of Faster, and the resulting file ended up being a little over 800MB, so it still fits on the internal memory of the NOOKtablet.

Insert the DVD and start DVD Catalyst 4 as usual so it will scan the DVD:

There are multiple tracks listed, so to save time, its easier to find the track to use.

This time I used VLC (www.videolan.org) but if you play it in a real DVD player, it will display the track number to use in its lcd display.

Either way, get to the DVD menu:

and play the actual movie. To make sure the track doesn’t change, skip to the middle of the movie, or at least 1-2 chapters/scenes from the beginning:

then look for what track is currently playing by going to (in vlc) playback > title. In my case, easy enough, it was the first one.

close VLC, and in DVD Catalyst, select the tracks you don’t want, and below, remove the checkmark for “enable for conversion”. This will have DVD Catalyst ignore the ones you don’t need/want.

then, you need to make a few changes to the settings in order for this movie to convert properly. By default, DVD Catalyst runs in a fast conversion mode, but for some reason, “The Smurfs” doesn’t like this.

Enable “Power User” down on the bottom right,

then tap on “Global Settings” on the left side near the top

then look for the “DVD” tab on the right, and near the bottom, turn off “faster conversions” and turn the “standard access” checkmark on:

then click on Global Settings again, and start a conversion by tapping “Go”

For the conversion, I used the standard “NOOKtablet” profile in DVD Catalyst, and left all the other settings as they were.

The MP4 file created from “The Smurfs” for the NOOKtablet ended up being slightly less than 900MB, so you don’t need an SD card for your NOOKtablet to actually watch the movie on it.