Many people often wonder what to do in long and boring trips. This, however, is not a question anymore if you have a PDA or smartphone. Reading books or listening to the music with such devices is quite common for a long time now, but sometimes even this is not enough. Not everyone knows that it is actually possible to watch movies with these handy devices. Of course, PDA and smartphones won’t be able to use full-size DVD or CD, but if you have large flash-card and notebook, it is actually quite easy to get one or several movies inside your PDA. By using special utilities, the desired movie could be adjusted to the screen resolution of your device and shrinked to fit in appropriate flash card. Of course, watching movies on small screen and with lousy sound is not exactly the same as with home-theatre experience, but in this case the loss of quality is assumed, and good movies are interesting in any quality anyway.

Whole range of utilities aimed at portable video creation was released by Makayama Software: DVD to Pocket PC for handheld computers and five versions of Mobile Media Maker utility for different platforms, including Motorola, Sony Eriksson, Nokia (smartphones Nokia & Siemens SX1), Smartphone (Windows Mobile 2003-based smartphones) and PSP (Sony PlayStation Portable).
All these versions do not differ much in anything other than platform. The only differences are the different layout of controls in DVD to Pocket PC along with ability to shrink DVD on flash-card and the ability to write directly to device in PSP version of Mobile Media Maker.

Interface
Right after start of any Mobile Media Maker version the window with default device picture is displayed. (1) Other device model can be selected by using the “Phone” item in drop-down menu, located on top of the screen (2). The device picture will change accordingly to the selection made. If the selected model has any particular differences from others, the warning screen will appear, pointing to the items of attention (4). For example, on Nokia 6230 video can be played only by using built-in Real player. Below menu there is an instruction on next steps.
In first case the program will ask to select source for video files, which can be CD, hard drive or DVD. To select desired source the appropriate checkbox below the window have to be activated, after which the selection have to be confirmed by pressing “Open” button.
If CD or hard-drive was selected, the browsing menu will appear, allowing selection of desired source file (*.avi, *.mpg, *.asf, *.dv). If DVD box was checked, the window will appear, in which the desired disk chapter can be selected (04-1). After some time the screen on phone image will turn into window, which will show preview for processed video. At this stage the program will ask you to select the type of video to be processed (Select content type below) (05).
This is done to determine the compression level. There are three options here: TV\Other, Home Video or Feature Film, all these names pretty much speak for themselves. Also, in case of DVD, it is possible to set up additional options in “DVD” item (or DVD Options” for Smartphone Edition) of the drop-down menu (06). Desired audio track (Audio Dub) can be selected in “DVD\Extra Features” (07) menu item, the subtitles and few other options can also be selected here along with an option to enable forced synchronization between video and sound. .

At the next stage, after selecting video to be processed, the program with offer to choose between quality of picture and quality of sound (Select better picture or better sound) (8).
As file size is limited, some certain level of sacrifice is necessary here.

When, at last, everything is selected, the only thing left to do is to press “Action” (09) button; and the process will begin. First the program will adjust video resolution and then it will convert it to appropriate format (depending on the platform: divx, wma or 3gp).
After 2-3 hours (in case of full-length movie) the resulting file can be copied to the memory card and mobile video will be ready. In case if the device hasn’t any built-in video players (some Nokia smartphones, for example), the program has Media Player bundled with it, which has to be to be installed on the smartphone.

DVD to Pocket PC utility is not much different from Mobile Media Maker. The main difference is that the program window has horizontal layout instead of vertical (10). Also there is an option of choosing program’s skin (Options/Special/Change Skin menu item). Another difference lies in the program settings (Options/Settings) (11), where it is possible to select a place to store temporary files, choose PDA screen resolution and select increased speed of video processing (which might lead to rather improbable compatibility problems). Also, the order of selection for some initial settings might differ slightly.

Summary
If you have a great desire to watch movies on your PDA or smartphone, then one of Makayama Software’s programs will suit you well. They are truly easy to master and the only thing their user needs to know is the appearance or the model of his or her smartphone. Of course, the quality of video and sound will drop after processing, but this will be hard to notice on tiny screen anyway, especially if the movie is good.
But if you are an advanced user and prefer to fine tune your tools, you probably will be better off with some other, more professional packages.

Features – 4. No fine-tuning provided.
Interface – 5.