Popcorn2 – Your movies on DVD, PSP and iPod
reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Sonic Solutions - Headquarters 101 Rowland Way Novato, CA 94945 (415) 893-8000 http://www.roxio.com/en/products/popcorn/index.jhtml Released: April 12, 2006 $50 USD, Upgrade from Popcorn 1, $30 USD Requirements: Macintosh computer with Intel or PowerPC processor; G4 or faster; Mac OS X v10.4 or later; QuickTime 7 or later; iTunes 6 or later; Up to 15 GB of temporary free hard disk space may be need during usage. Optional: DVD burner and recordable media; iPod with video capabilities, PSP, or other portable DivX, MPEG4 or H.264 video player. Strengths: Compression, expanded format coverage, Universal Binary coding. Weaknesses: Does not copy encrypted or protected DVDs. |
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Well, we reviewed Roxio’s Titanium back in January and Popcorn was a part of that. Since than, Roxio has released a Ubinary version named Popcorn2 and not Popcorn, the Sequel.
Earlier purchasers can follow an upgrade path, even if it is only a $20 USD difference. And there are also French, German and Japanese versions available.
So what makes Popcorn2 so special? After all, CDs and DVDs can be imaged and burned under Mac OS X Tiger with no problems whatsoever.
For $50 USD, there has to be more, right? Well, yes, there is. And it all is about compression technology. You want to burn a 9 GB dual-layer DVD to a standard 4.7 GB DVD, you can. If you want to just copy audio, or a given language or just the movie, you can. And you aren’t limited by the DVD technology, whether Dolby, NTSC, PAL or widescreen or pan/scan aspect ratios.
But there is more. Transfers can also be moved from the Mac to either iPods, or Sony’s PSP or even to mobile vid-phones.
That almost makes this app not just a Ubinary app, but a universal app. There isn’t a whole lot left as far as formats go that this doesn’t cover, right? It goes beyond what QuickTime supports.
I’m guessing that Roxio listened to customers and met the challenge. There is a Mount It menu now that goes into the Finder menu for loading DVD disc images as virtual drives and screen shots can be captured during playback. And there are a bunch of options for copying, including capture of bonus information on DVDs and even subtitles.
Below is Roxio’s own comparison chart:
Curiously, not listed on this chart are other formats that Popcorn2 supports, such as Disk Image and VIDEO_TS folder for input, MPEG4, H.264 for output, single and multiple movies and extras, or DVD formats such as Multi-channel Dolby® Digital audio, Multi-language audio, NTSC and PAL video and 16:9 widescreen and 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratios.
And if you haven’t seen what Popcorn2 looks like, check these next diagrams out:
Interested? I thought you might be.
