Mobility Digest Review: Wondershare DVD Converter Ultimate

Hello, Hello! It’s been quite a while since I’ve had the chance to take a look at any DVD Ripper/Convertor software here on MobilityDigest hasn’t it? So for Valentine’s Day I’ve got a review for you of Wondershare DVD Converter Ultimate that is a fully, feature packed solution for your DVD ripping, Converting, Burning and Editing needs. It’s a very small program, but yet it can do a lot of stuff for you and make your life easier in the process hopefully. We live in a mobile society, and while I’m not one who particularly like watching movies on the tiny screens of phones and media players, other people out there are more than happy with it. I mean I do it, but it’s something that I do often, I may have a movie or two on my phone or Zune and just watch a few minutes to waste some time, but that’s about it, I can’t fathom watching an entire two hour movie on a screen just inches wide. The software I have for review today though can help you get your DVD movies to a portable format, be it your phone or MP3 player, quickly and easily. It’s not just for that though, it’s an entire suite of tools in one product. So read on to learn more…

We’ll start with the basic specs from the site, you can find the full list of info abut Wondershare DVD Converter Ultimate HERE on their site.

Wondershare DVD Converter Ultimate

-Rip DVDs (including CSS protected DVDs) to various video and audio formats
-Convert videos (including HD video formats) for playing on popular portable media players
-Burn any videos to DVD for playback on home DVD player
-Support for adding the .srt, .ssa and .ass subtitle file into videos
-Edit a video such as trim, crop, adjust effect, add watermark and subtitle
-Allowed to select the sound track of video files
-Support the Multi-Core CPU, take full advantage of PC power
-Support for Andriod phone (Such as Nexus One, Motorola milestone)

Universal DVD Converter
Rip DVDs to all kinds of video and audio formats such as MP4, MP4 AVC, M4V, AVI, WMV, MOV, RM, 3GP, 3G2, MPG, MPEG, FLV, WMA, M4A, MP3, AAC, AC3, WMA, ASF, etc to enjoy them on the go.

Professional video/audio Converter
Convert video/audio including HD videos to popular video/audio format for every need for video/audio portable devices – right at your fingertips.

Amazing Video to DVD Burner
Burn any videos to DVD for playing on your home DVD player.

Total playback freedom on almost all video/audio portable devices
Support all popular video and audio players including iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, Zune, PSP, Pocket PC, Walkman, BlackBerry, different mobile phones, Creative Zen, Archos, etc.

Amazing video/DVD editor
Edit video with unique video/DVD tools to crop, adjust effect, add watermark/ subtitle, clip, merge, etc.

Crop, adjust video effect, and add watermark/subtitle with two real-time preview windows
You can always get tailor-made video for your player with two real-time preview windows allowing you to crop video, adjust video effect and add watermark/subtitle.

Clip video file/DVD chapter
You can split a file into multiple segments for your every need.

Merge multiple files
You can merge multiple files into a single one.

Customize DVD menu
You can select DVD menu from built-in Menu Template or you can customize background image and music to create your own unique DVD menu.

Capture picture
You can capture any picture from video/DVD and save it as jpeg or bmp format with snapshot function.

Price:$65.95

Yes you read that right, the price for this software is $65.96, a bit expensive you might say, but not really considering everything it can do. You’d most likely spend a lot more than that buying individual software programs to do everything that Wondershare DVD Converter Ultimate does.

The other options of course is to go searching for free tools to do the same thing, but that can take time and depending where you get it from you’re at risk from malware, viruses etc..

So let’s get into this review here.

When you load up the program you’re greeted with the main interface with basic instructions to get you started right away.

There are four drop down menus at the top for File, Edit, Tools and Help.

There’s also another toolbar beneath the Getting Started section for Create Profile, Merge, Clip and Edit.

Under the Tools section you’ll also find Preferences where you can change the temporary directory, language, auto updates and the amount of cores you want the program to utilize if you’ve got a multi-core system.

The help section is what you might expect it to be, here you can find detailed instructions on how to do everything in the program.

On the bottom of the interface is a pull up menu that is nicely down with all of the formats you can convert to.

Since I’m using my Tilt I’m be choosing the General Pocket PC Video option.

I put my DVD in, Stargate of course, and then it loaded the files for me.

Once it’s loaded you can pick what part you want, and we only want the main movie.

Once it’s loaded in you can go and change or customize the settings if you wish.

Before you convert the video you can edit it with Crop, Effects, Watermark or Plug-in Subtitle. You’ll have the original view and the Output preview right there for you so you can see exactly how thins will look before you commit to it.

The effects section is just really so you can adjust brightness, Contrast and Saturation but you can added Effects as well like Gray, Emboss, Negative or Old Film style.

Watermarking is self-explanatory..

and the Plug-In Subtitle section is so you can add your own subtitles if you want to.

The Clip options is rather useful really, let’s say you only want the movie and not the opening and ending credits, you can go in and just clip it out and only have the movie. This is useful for dropping the final output size down as well, every pay attention to the credits? Sometimes they go for 10 minutes themselves!

The merge option is for if you’re using just regular video files and not a DVD, you can, as expected, merge files together to create one large movie or file.

There’s also the options to Copy To USB device and Burn To DVD..

Once you’ve got things how you want them hit the Convert button and wait..

I’m running a Corei5 750 quad core CPU with a P55 chipset motherboard, and I’ve got an LG Super Multi-Blue Blu-Ray Drive as well, it’s new only a couple months old, so it’s nice and fast.

Once thing I noticed was that the program didn’t actually utilize my CPU, even though I could select the core the program will use. I did pick four cores, but it doesn’t seem like it used them, at least not fully.

The conversion process for Stargate, which is 2 hours and 10 minutes ling took only 22 minutes and 31 seconds to complete, not bad at all I think. Of course depending on your computer setup times will be different…

The output file was 876MB in size, which is a bit big but not bad since I’ve got a 16gig card in my Tilt.. if you’ve got a smaller card you won’t be able to fit many of these movies though. You’ve got to remember though that the Stargate I have is the Ultimate Edition and it’s longer than the average of 1 1/2 hours for most movies. I didn’t got an edit it either, you can, as I mentioned already, shorten the movie of bit by clipping the credit at the front and back if you want.

I transferred it to my Tilt and it played perfectly.

(..and yes I know I’ve got a dead green pixel on my screen….)

You have to remember the pictures above are pictures of the movie and it’s in motion, so they’re not exactly perfectly clear.

The audio and video were synced perfectly, so no issues there either.

It sounded fine and it looked good, playback was as smooth as can be expected on the Tilt.

I also tossed it on my Zune to see how it played there, no problem there either.

So is it worth the price? Maybe it might be really if you have a need for all of those functions. I think it’s worth it to have everything right there for you in one program truly.

I’ve got Nero installed as well, it has many of the same functions and a lot of extras, but it costs quite a bit more.

Sure you’ve got free options out there, but you’ll have to find them and they’re separate programs that you’ll have to load independently. Doing the same thing with separate programs will take much longer than just using an all-in-one solution like Wondershare DVD Converter Ultimate.

Pros:

+Everything in one really for one price

+Easy to use

+Converts to pretty much every format out there

Cons:

-High price