Popcorn 2.0 Announced

[terryj]

Popcorn 2.0

[Frobozz]

I have it. It gives much more control of what to include or exclude from a ripped DVD than does the original Popcorn or Toast 7. It is easier to use than Toast 7 for the things that both will do. I'd say Roxio has resuscitated Popcorn and found a reason for it to exist even for Toast 7 users who want to copy DVDs or convert DVDs or other videos to different formats. If you haven't felt limited using Toast 7 or Popcorn 1 you may not care about Popcorn 2's differences. But it sure makes Popcorn 1 look lame by comparison and adds some tricks that Toast 7 can't do with video DVD copying.

A time-saving difference between Popcorn 2 and Toast 7: With Toast 7 you often have to use the Media Browser to extract an MPEG video from a VIDEO_TS folder before exporting that to another video format (and the VIDEO_TS must be on the desktop or mounted from an image file or disc). That extraction step isn't needed with Popcorn 2.

[broaddd]

It has great features, but it's weird how Toast 7 and Popcorn 2 encoding is so much slower than, say, Handbrake - even at the same settings.

It seems to be partially because they don't max out the processor(s)...

[live4ever]

Hey Frobozz - can you delete special features and warnings easily but still retain the menus with selection selection - to save space for better movie quality and sound?

[lawnman]

Once you delete special features and warnings you loose your menus.

[macuser25]

It has 3 video options:

All - all titles on the disc (includes menus and extras)
Main - main titles on the disc (longest running titles)
Custom - lets you choose specifically which titles

Main in Popcorn 1 would only take the single longest running title... in Popcorn 2 it now can handle episodic discs, where it will take all 4 titles of something like Sopranos.

It has 2 audio options:

All - all audio
Main - primary audio

Menus are preserved as long as you choose All video, regardless of what audio. This is new in Popcorn 2. In Popcorn 1, the only way to preserve menus was to do All video and All audio... so you had to keep audio you didn't need. Now you can drop out all but the main audio.

Dropping any video drops the menus. Personally I think this is smart. I wouldn't want a disc full of "broken" menus. I wouldn't want to go back and try this disc months from now and click on all these menu options and find they don't work.

Now onto the Custom mode.

This is pretty cool... you can see thumbnail previews of all the titles on the disc and play any of them. Then for each title, you can choose to include it or not, and then for each title you can choose the audio format, language and subtitle information to include.

Also on the Custom mode is where you can choose to include -ROM content with your copy.

That's all new in Popcorn 2.

[Frobozz]

Once you delete special features and warnings you loose your menus.

To add to macuser25's post about this, the following is from Popcorn 2 Help:
"By choosing Main or Custom, the copied disc will not have
a menu, but should play the first video on the disc automatically
when inserted into the DVD player. If the disc has more than one
video, each video should play automatically. You may be able to
use the Title menu in your DVD player to select a video."

[StoryDonut]

This is somewhat counterintuitive, because I can drop a trailer, an FBI warning, the company
logo, all of it's endless disclaimers, and the every option on the menu would STILL WORK.

Thank goodness for myDVDedit.

[macuser25]

This is somewhat counterintuitive, because I can drop a trailer, an FBI warning, the company
logo, all of it's endless disclaimers, and the every option on the menu would STILL WORK.

I was refering more to the extras and bonus material.... the primary reason why I drop extra stuff is that it fills up the disc with video that I don't want. Warning messages... well... that's about 10 seconds long... does not affect the compression for the main video.

Bonus materials, director's cut, making of film, etc. basically anything over 2 minutes... those do affect the compressed video quality. In almost all cases, these are linked to from the menus... dropping these will result in broken menus... and my guess is that Roxio didn't want to make a program that produced discs that users would think are broken.

Popcorn appeals to novices and Roxio designs it for them. For most people, it does the job they want to do most of the time.

[broaddd]

How does the compression quality compare to DVD2OneX? I remember thinking Popcorn 1 was worse.