Reviews
Moviemaker
Moviemaker
Video lovers whose taste in handhelds run to the Symbian side
of town should check out Moviemaker for Sony Ericsson P800/P900
($14.99). This simple but effective converter accepts a range
of video media files types comparable to DVD to Pocket PC, which
is not surprising since they hail from the same developer, Amsterdam-based
Makayama Software.
Moviemaker
couldn't be much simpler. The application, which comes in both
Mac and Windows flavors, opens up a graphic image of a P800 and
presents a single button on the Windows version and two buttons
on the Mac version. Press it to select a media file of any length,
then press again to render down the file into 192x144 pixel dimensions
compatible with the built-in video player in both Sony Ericsson
devices. When the file is done, it is left on your desktop for
you to manually copy to your communicator.
The 60-second
Apple 1984 commercial rendered down to a 1.4MB file which looked
pretty good, all things considered. A 30-minute TV show can fit
on a 32MB Memory Stick Duo card.
The additional
Expert button on the Mac version lets you try different video
and audio settings to maximize playback quality: frames per second,
kilobits per second, number of audio channels and audio data rate.
Best results, however, seems to come from using the stock settings,
so you may be disappointed if you expect too much ÷ particularly
from the less powerful P800. If you have a P900, try upping the
stock settings a bit and observe the results.
As we observed
in the DVD to Pocket PC review, watching movies on a four-inch
PDA screen involves a serious tradeoff between quality and portability.
Watching them on a communicator's display is even more so.
-Edison Carter
www.makayama.com
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