Review: Popcorn is tastier with version 3

Posted by Dennis Sellers Oct 9, 2007 at 5:40am

If you don’t need all the bells and whistles of Roxio’s excellent Toast product (see our Feb. 28 review, you can try chomping down on their Popcorn offering. Software for transferring personal video entertainment to DVDs and portable devices, it’s less filling but costs less ($49.95 compared to $79.95). And the recently released version 3 has some nifty new features and support for the iPhone and Apple TV.

Popcorn is designed to let you make copies of your DVD movies without a lot of fuss. With it, you can copy non-encrypted (in other words, non-commercial) DVD-Video discs, disc image files, and valid VIDEO_TS folders from hard disk. It’s compatible with DVD-Video content from popular ripping utilities. Popcorn lets you compress an entire 9GB dual-layer DVD-Video to a standard 4.7 GB DVD disc while maintaining relatively good video and audio quality.

It’s easy to use, thanks to its drag and drop support and Media Browser. The latter is a window that lets you browse video files, EyeTV recordings, DVDs, etc.. Popcorn 3 also has good Spotlight integration.

However, there are some inconsistencies to the app. If you drag several chapters, or even whole titles, from the Media Browser you get separate files for each chapter, whether you want to or not. In other words, you can’t simply convert select chapters. However, you can drag in a VIDEO_TS folder to keep whole titles as single files.

To reduce time spent on multiple conversions and to make sure that the end-results meet your expectations, Popcorn 3 comes with a Video Quality Preview that lets you review a snippet of converted video to check video quality before you initiate the full encoding process. This is a welcome enhancement, which means you don’t end up with any “surprises” in the finished transfer. What’s more, Popcorn 3 also supports Elgato’s Turbo.264 (see our June 27 review) for faster video encoding.

Popcorn shows you the video, audio formats and languages to be copied. Popcorn lets you copy an entire disc or extract just the main movie, audio and language. It supports multi-channel audio, such as Dolby Digital 5.1, multi-language content, NTSC and PAL video, and widescreen or pan/scan aspect ratios. Plus, you can personalize your finished DVD with a label and jewel case cover.

With Popcorn 3 you can now create DVDs up to four hours long, another nice enhancement. This means you’ll need fewer discs and spend less time on video-project transfer. The update also includes a disc labeling application that lets you create personalized disc labels or print directly onto discs using LightScribe enabled burners and media.

Version three also offers universal video conversion and encoding technology optimized for devices such as the iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, BlackBerry, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, all of which simplifies and streamlines the process of transferring your video for on-the-go viewing. It works well, other than the above-mentioned inconsistencies, on an iPod and Apple TV. I haven’t tried Popcorn 3 on the other devices.

The software is equipped with a variety of features designed to simplify and accelerate the video conversion process, including Automatic TiVoToGo Conversion that starts encoding as soon as the TV show is transferred to the Mac, Batch DVD-Video Conversion that enables consumers to queue up multiple DVDs for use with Roxio’s Fit-to-DVD technology, and Pause and Resume buttons that enable users to suspend a disc copy or video conversion project, work on a different task, then resume when convenient.

Another sweet touch: encoding can be paused at any time to free up the CPU for other tasks and then resumed later. When encoding is paused, you can run other applications or even switch to another user account as long as Popcorn remains open. If you close the Popcorn application, even when video encoding is paused, you have to restart the process from the beginning

If you frequently make DVDs of your videos or transfer videos from your Mac to one (or a variety of handheld devices) Popcorn 3 will facilitate these processes, though there are some issues that Roxio will, hopefully, address in an update. If you need these capabilities, plus even more goodies, give Toast a taste.

Popcorn 3 is Universal Binary so runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.

Macsimum rating: 7 out of 10

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