Digital Home Thoughts: Pinnacle's Mobile Media Converter

DVD Ripping and File Importing
I had AnyDVD [affiliate] installed (of course!) and I was able to easily start a rip of a commercial DVD. A heads up to all the Americans reading this: it's important to point out that because this product is sold in the United States, due to the DCMA law that your government representatives voted for, it cannot rip commercial DVDs. That means that you'll need to use a product like AnyDVD to crack the encryption, or extract the DVD files some other way. This isn't Pinnacle's fault, it's the fault of your government officials for letting the DMCA come into existence.

Back to ripping: I used the iPod h.264 768 kbps profile, which transferred and played on my Zune 80 without the need for any transcoding - which is exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately Pinnacle Mobile Media Converter doesn't any zoom/crop functions for the video, so you'll always end up with black bars above and below your video - unless your device happens to be wide-screen (which most are not).

In addition to DVD importing, there's a file import option. There's no easy way to know what file types are supported, however, because unlike most programs I've seen, the file import drop-down menu doesn't list the file types that are allowed. Instead, when I tried to import an MPEG4 file, it rejected the import and informed me that MPEG1, MPEG2, DivX AVI, Xvid AVI, DV-AVI, MJPEG AVI, WMV, and DVR-MS file types were supported. Ambiguity aside, I was able to convert a DVR-MS file to an MPEG4 file without any problems.

This Product Is...Average
So, all in all, I'd say that Pinnacle's Mobile Media Converter is a decent solution that fulfils the basic goal of converting DVDs and files to supported formats for several popular devices out today. If you have an iPod or a PSP, this software should work nicely. If you have any other device, I think spending $10 more and getting CloneDVD Mobile [affiliate] makes much more sense - you lose the ability to encode files (CloneDVD Mobile only works with DVDs), but you gain many more device profiles and several great generic profiles that will work with practically any device. CloneDVD Mobile also has zoom/crop functions so it will actually fill the screen of your portable device.

Make sure you visit the Pinnacle Web site to update the software: the version on the CD I was sent was v.1.00.050 and the latest version is v.1.60.125. If you want to take it for a spin yourself, there's a free trial.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He wishes companies would support the Zune more!