Any DVD in a Storm
Ok, I finally found a working combination that lets me put *my* DVDs (meaning DVDs I paid good money for), YouTube videos (Ryan Gosling's Dead Man's Bones makes a dynamite hi-res MTV), etc. on the Blackberry Storm (9530).
1. If you need to unlock any of your sources including HD/BD, try/buy AnyDVD from SlySoft. It takes up residence on your PC (restarts after each reboot) and whenever you put a DVD in the drive it intercepts reads by other programs and viola!
2. Try/buy Any Video Converter Professional from
www.any-video-converter.com and get it running. For the Storm, go to Profile: in the upper right and select Apple iPhone/iPod Touch MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4). Now left click on each of the fields to the right of the following key words and select (click on the down-arrow) as indicated:
Video Codec mpeg4
Video Size 480x270
Video Bitrate 1500
Video Framerate 30
Audio Bitrate 128
Sample Rate 44100
Audio Channel 2
Disable Audio No
A/V Sync Basic
Now go to Options at the bottom left. Make the following changes under the indicated tabs
General Tab
* Process priority Below Normal (gives priority to your regular work)
* Number of threads I picked 8 (Vista on Q6600), didn't hurt (does it help?)
Video Tab
* Video driver: if you don't know, pick DirectX
* Encode filters: Checking both boxes works fine, haven't tried without.
* Video resize: Checking "Fit to width" and "Round to 16 pixels" works fine. (I didn't check "Expand to video size" because my sources were all wider than 480, but I'd expect if you wanted it, the result would look reasonable. This is because the Storm's pixels are .14 mm or 180 dpi, about 11% smaller than the iPhone's pixels even though both screens are 50 mm along the short side. Pixels that small make the artifacts from expansion less objectionable than on say a 120 dpi display.)
* Audio/Video Sync: 0 no good (1 sec sync errors), 30 works fine
Now you're ready to roll. Add Video, use the previewer at upper right to determine which tracks to Remove (right click on them), ^A to select what's left, right click and select Merge Output (assuming you want the tracks as one video). Click on Encode, wait for Completed, click on Output Folder, plug your Storm into the USB, then Copy and Paste (or Cut and Paste if you don't want the backup for some weird reason).
Trial versions of both these programs are available, which lets you make sure they produce videos to your satisfaction before you blow your wad on them. AnyDVD trial is good for 21 days, which is ideal for testing (but wait until you have an upcoming free few hours to play around before downloading or the 21 days might run out on you before you get a chance to try it out). The trial version of Any Video Converter Professional only lets you record 3 minute chunks, which is close to useless for testing purposes because your device might be fine with a 3-minute chunk and choke to death on something bigger. So you'll have to believe me that this program with the above settings works like a charm on *much* longer videos than 3 minutes. On my Storm anyway (YMMV of course), OS v4.7.0.75, even for 90-minute videos (longest I've tried so far, produces slightly under 1GB with the above settings---if you find more efficient settings that work on the Storm please post).
Hint for operating the slider when watching (to jump to any point in the video): click the slider button to get its attention, *then* slide it (without clicking), watching the minutes indicator. When you've got it where you want it, click it again to commit (otherwise Play will reset it). The rest of the Storm's player interface is reasonably intuitive (as is the slider once you're used to it).