iBook & DVD movies

[George Slusher]

>Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2003 20:16:10 -0600
>Subject: [P1] iBook and DVD movies
>From: Ken Anderson <kanderson at theglobal.net>
>Message-Id: <0B76A01D-FC5A-11D7-A87C-000A95761056 at theglobal.net>
>
>Hello fellow listers,
>
>I've a couple rather simple questions that I hope this list can help me 
>with.
>
>First my Book; 800/14/640/combo about 9 months old.
>
>Question #1 - I am taking a trip in the near future and want to use my 
>iBook for my own "in flight movie".  What are some things I can do to 
>make sure I get the longest battery life out of it in these conditions? 
>  I do have headphones so as not to disturb my neighbors and run at a 
>lower volume.  I've never use my Book for this before and am unsure 
>what to expect.

The one thing that will give you the most efficient use of the battery is 
to copy the DVD to the hard drive, then run it from there. That will use 
a LOT less power than using the optical drive. 

Doing this is quite simple. The following refers to OS 9/Classic, but the 
process should be the same in OS X.

To copy the DVD:

1. Put the DVD in the drive.
2. Stop Apple DVD Player if it starts to autoplay the DVD.
3. Use command-I to find out how big the DVD is and ensure that you have 
enough HD speace to store it. 
4. Open the folder where you want to store the DVD and drag & drop the 
DVD's icon onto that window. Once the DVD is copied, you will get a 
folder containing two more folders, AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS.

Warning: it can easily take 20-40 minutes to copy the DVD, depending on 
how big it is, of course. 

To Set up Apple DVD Player:

1. Launch Apple DVD Player
2. In the preferences, choose the "Advanced Controls" panel. Check "Add 
'Open VIDEO_TS' menu item to File Menu" and click on OK.

To Play the DVD:

1. Launch Apple DVD Player. 
2. Choose "Open VIDEO_TS" from the File menu (or use command-O). 
3. Navigate to the folder where you dropped the DVD, then open the DVD 
folder. 
4. Click once on the VIDEO_TS *FOLDER* to select it, then click on 
"Choose." Don't OPEN the VIDEO_TS folder. (If you do, you probably won't 
see anything in the open dialog; you will, of course, in the Finder.)
5. That should start the DVD. You can use the controller window or the 
keyboard controls as you like. Play around with the Apple DVD Player 
before you leave so that you're familiar with the controls.

Battery operation notes:

1. If you have the Energy control panel set to reduce the processor 
speed, you should get a dialog box suggesting that you override that 
feature for better performance. I've found that the DVD player works 
pretty well at the reduced speed, and I'm using a slower (600 mHz 12") 
iBook, so I choose "no." 

2. Reducing the backlight brightness (the F1 key) will give a little 
improvement in battery life.



>Question #2 - Are the sizes of the movie able to be changed beyond what 
>is offered in the menus or are we limited to whatever the disk plays 
>and or the player decodes?

There are four size options:

command-0 = smallest size. This is REALLY tiny.

command-1 = half size (320 x 240)

command-2 = full size (640 x 480)

command-3 = fill screen. This is actually two different sizes. If you 
choose "Present Video on Screen," I get the the full 1024 x 768 pixels. 
(As I recall, the 14" iBook also has a 1024 x 768 screen.) If you choose 
"Present Video in Viewer," it will be slightly smaller. You can choose 
either "Present Video in Viewer" or "Present Video on Screen" for any 
size. The "Present Video on Screen" puts the image in the center and 
surrounds it with a black border. (You can easily get to the menus by 
moving the cursor to the top of the screen.)

The "full size" (640 x 480) will often be a bit sharper than the "fill 
screen" size. That is the actual size of the digital picture. When it is 
scaled up to 1024 x 768 (or slightly smaller), it may get a bit fuzzier, 
as the pixels must be interpolated. (1024 x 768 is not an integer 
multiple of 640 x 480.)

I don't know if the smaller size will save much on battery power. If you 
want to play around with this, you could probably figure it out. One 
caveat: the "power meter" in the control strip doesn't react instantly to 
changes--wait a minute or so before trying to judge whether or not the 
power drain is different.

George Slusher/Eugene, OR
gslusher at rio.com