Cinematize 2 and Cinematize 2 Pro FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions)

A: Cinematize 2 Pro is a new addition to Cinematize 2 product family. Cinematize 2 Pro offers everything Cinematize 2 does and many more advanced and time-saving features. You don't necessarily have to be a "pro" to enjoy the benefits of Cinematize 2 Pro. If you use DVDs extensively, you may want to consider using Cinematize 2 Pro. To find out more, please see the complete list of Cinematize 2 Pro features as well as the comparison chart between Cinematize 2 and Cinematize Pro. You can also download and try the free trial version of Cinematize 2 Pro.

While using Cinematize 2, have you wondered about any of the following? If so, click each question to see how Cinematize 2 Pro can help you.

1. I want to extract each audio channel separately from a multi-channel audio track.
2. I want to reuse some elements from a menu.
3. I have settings in Cinematize 2 I use frequently. Is there any way to save these settings?
4. I use Cinematize 2 extensively. It would be so nice if I could select multiple segments and extract them all at once.
5. I want to create movie clips with subtitles so that I can watch them with QuickTime or iPod.
6. I have TV programs recorded in DVD-VR mode. Can I extract movie/audio clips from this?
7. Is it possible to see the total length of the clip I'm extracting?

A: Cinematize 2 offers a significant number of great new features, as well as many important improvements. To find out more, you can see the comprehensive list of Cinematize 2 new features and also download our free Cinematize 2 demo.

While using Cinematize 1, have you wondered about any of the following? If so, click each question to see why you might want to consider upgrading to Cinematize 2.

1. I'm extracting several songs from a music DVD, and each song is a chapter. I wish I didn't have to repeat the same extraction process again and again.
2. I'm seeing some audio/video sync problems and/or film distortion caused by Apple's QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback component. I know that there are workarounds, but when is Apple going to fix it, or will they ever fix it?
3. I'm tired of having to keep updating Apple's QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback component.
4. I want to get the aspect ratio (frame size) I want more easily.
5. I just want a very short segment within a chapter. It's cumbersome having to extract the entire chapter.
6. I wish I could see the exact timings of start and end of the segment I'm extracting.
7. I wish I could fine-tune the decoding mode, output codec and quality for my video.
8. I just bought a G4/G5 machine which claims to include this cool Velocity Engine vector acceleration. Is Cinematize taking advantage of this?

A: An "angle" on a DVD originally referred to a different camera "angle" and the use of multiple angles was originally confined to the adult film industry. Recently, however, it has become quite common on complex mainstream commercial discs to use angles as a means of localizing movies into different languages. Each angle will display credits, text, or other localized material according to the language soundtrack selected. Cinematize allows you to specify an angle and to extract video and audio associated with just that specific angle.

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A: Yes. Cinematize 2 Pro allows you to extract directly from DVD-VR format discs. Your machine must, however, be capable of mounting and accessing DVD discs that use the UDF 2.0 file system. A separate utility may be necessary to correctly mount these DVD discs.

A: Usually the best format to use is MPEG-4. Here is the recommended way to set things up:

1. In Preferences, select your preferred MPEG-4 frame size. Usually 320x240 is best for the web.
2. On the Video tab, choose Decode to QuickTime
3. On the Video tab, choose Output Codec as "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC" or "DV/DVCPRO - PAL" to match the video format listed under "Main Video Stream"
4. On the Audio tab, choose Decode to AIFF or WAV
5. On the Output tab, choose Output Format as MPEG-4 File, then extract

Cinematize 2 Pro advanced users can also custom configure the MPEG-4 file output settings by choosing MPEG-4 from the Custom portion of the Output Format menu.

A: For video iPod, you have two choices of file formats, MPEG-4 File or iPod Movie File. The MPEG-4 File choice extracts much faster, but the iPod Movie File choice results in better quality and smaller file sizes.

For MPEG-4 File output:

1. In Preferences, select your preferred MPEG-4 frame size. Use 320x240 for on-screen playback, or 480x480 for external TV playback.
2. On the Video tab, choose Decode to QuickTime
3. On the Video tab, choose Output Codec as "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC" or "DV/DVCPRO - PAL" to match the video format listed under "Main Video Stream"
4. On the Audio tab, choose Decode to AIFF or WAV
5. On the Output tab, choose Output Format as MPEG-4 File, then extract
6. Use iTunes to transfer the resulting MP4 file to your iPod.

Cinematize 2 Pro advanced users can also custom configure the MPEG-4 file output settings by choosing MPEG-4 from the Custom portion of the Output Format menu.

For iPod Movie File output:

1. On the Video tab, choose Decode to QuickTime
2. On the Video tab, choose Output Codec as "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC"* or "DV/DVCPRO - PAL" to match the video format listed under "Main Video Stream"
3. On the Audio tab, choose Decode to AIFF or WAV
4. On the Output tab, choose Output Format as iPod Movie File, then extract
5. Use iTunes to transfer the resulting M4V file to your iPod.

A: The MPEG-4 and H.264 codec options on the Video tab should only be used if you are planning to create a QuickTime movie containing video compressed in this format. In this case, you would choose either of these codecs on the Video tab and use QuickTime as the Output Format on the Output tab. The resulting file will have the extension MOV, as it will be a QuickTime movie, and the frame size will be the full frame size of the DVD.

Should you want to create movies with the smallest possible size in true MPEG-4 file format (extension MP4) or iPod movie file format (extension M4V), you should instead follow the instructions we describe above. These files will have a reduced frame size over the original DVD. The reason is that Cinematize follows a process of extracting to intermediate files followed by combining those files together into the final format. We do this to get the best possible compression for the final file.

When working with true MPEG-4 and iPod movie files, you want to allow the compressor to look ahead at frames coming later to optimize the encoding. For this reason, Cinematize extracts to an intermediate format using a low compression codec such as DV/DVCPRO, followed by the final compression to MPEG-4 or H.264.

A: The extraction speed will depend on a variety of factors, everything from the particular DVD you have to the configuration of your system. The most important factors include the settings you choose within Cinematize, your CPU speed, your hard drive speed, and your DVD drive read speed.

When Cinematize 2 is not doing any video decoding (e.g. Decoding on the video tab is set to Elementary Stream or MPEG-2 Program Stream) as in Cinematize 1, the extraction speed will be generally be limited by the speed of your hard drive or DVD drive. When reading from a good hard drive, you can expect to extract at about 10 times play speed. This is around 20% faster than Cinematize 1.

1. Using Cinematize, extract the portion of the movie containing the still you want. Select QuickTime as the Output Format.
2. Open the extracted movie in QuickTime Pro. Play the movie until you reach the scene you want and press pause (or simply slide the slider to the right spot).

• Choose Edit > Copy and then paste the picture wherever you like.
• Choose Export, then Movie to Picture. Press the Options button to select the picture format, then save.

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General questions

A: There are several reasons you might get an error like this.

1. If you have any non-Apple QuickTime components installed that conflict with your version of QuickTime, it will affect all applications that use QuickTime (including Cinematize). Remove any non-Apple QuickTime components to check for such problems. Many components have had compatbility troubles with QuickTime 7.
   
   
2. If you get this error while extracting to MPEG-4 File or iPod Movie File, most likely you are using the wrong settings. Please follow our instructions to create movies for web, or for iPod.
   
   
3. If you are using the combination of Full Quality 4:2:2 with AVI output, you may sometimes get this error. Either use DV/DVCPRO as the Output Codec, or use QuickTime as the Output Format instead.
   
   
4. If you are extracting to an external drive, your drive may be going to sleep. Make sure to set your system power settings to ensure that your drive does not sleep during extraction.
   
   
5. You may have be running out of hard drive space. Decompressed video takes up significantly more space than the compressed MPEG-2 video on the DVD, so you will need to have a enough free space available. Cinematize will usually need to have free approximately twice the space taken by the final movie in order to accomodate any temporary files needed during the extraction process.

For comparison, you can expect roughly the following data rates when you decompress the video:

Typically, the space required for any audio or subpicture data is insignificant compared to the space required for the video data.

A: DVD video is always specified to be played in one of two aspect ratios, 4:3 (Fullscreen) or 16:9 (Widescreen). The native storage format of the video, however, is typically 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL) which does not match either of those ratios. The DVD player is therefore expected to scale the video appropriately to play it in either the 4:3 or 16:9 format.

Cinematize 2 offers the following three options for you so that you can get the frame size you want. These options are available under the Video tab, using the "Aspect Ratio" pop-up menu.

• Automatic Adjustment
  This setting will attempt to scale the video frame to be the specified 4:3 or 16:9 by shrinking either the height or the width. The dimension that is modified will always be the one resulting in the least amount of scaling. This is the recommended setting.

• Preserve Vertical Size
  This setting will attempt to scale the video frame to be the specified 4:3 or 16:9 by adjusting only the width. The height will not be changed. This setting might result in better quality for certain interlaced video tracks, particularly for PAL video.

• No Size Adjustment
  With this setting, Cinematize will not scale the video frame to be the appropriate 16:9 or 4:3 size, and instead will keep the frame at the native DVD size. As a result, the image may look rather distorted from what you might expect.

1. Open iTunes and choose iTunes>Preferences
2. Click on the Importing tab
3. Next to "Import Using" choose "AIFF Encoder" from the pop-up menu
4. Close the preferences window
5. Drag the MPEG audio file produced by Cinematize onto iTunes
6. Highlight the file and choose Advanced>Convert to AIFF to encode it into AIFF
7. Import this audio file into your editing program

A: You get this error message when you try to use Cinematize with an encrypted DVD. Most of the commercial DVDs available today are protected with Content Scrambling System (CSS) encryption. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the US prohibits "circumventing" this encryption.

A: Cinematize 2 now does active synchronization of the audio and video using timing information from the DVD. Both tracks will now start at exactly the right time and be exactly the same duration. This should take care of the overwhelming majority of cases.

Certain difficult DVD discs may still cause trouble, however. Here are suggestions for some of the problems you might encounter:

• Video system mixups
  You may be selecting an NTSC video output codec when the movie is actually PAL, or vice versa. Selecting a proper video output codec should fix the problem.

• Poorly encoded MPEG video
  This can fool Cinematize's default automatic decode mode selection. Manually selecting the correct decoding mode should fix the problem.

• The video frame rate changes midway through the movie
  You can solve this problem any of three ways: by extracting the introductory material and movie as two separate segments; by manually setting the decoding mode to match the main movie; or, by using the Progressive Pulldown decoding mode.

• Variable frame rate video
  This can be fixed by selecting Cinematize's Progressive Pulldown decoding mode.

Macintosh-specific questions

A: There seems to be a bug in iMovie HD 5 (iLife 5) related to importing certain QuickTime movies. These movies play fine in QuickTime, but iMovie imports them as widescreen (16:9) rather than fullscreen (4:3) clips. This problem seems to be fixed in iMovie HD 6 (iLife 6). For iMovie HD 5 users, there are two workarounds:

1. Import the audio track and the video track separately rather than together
2. Save the clip in DV Stream format rather than QuickTime and import it that way

A: Yes, there is a trick to do fast imports into iMovie by dragging your movie directly into your project. Here are the steps to follow:

iMovie 3 or iMovie 4:

1. On the Segment tab, select your clip
2. On the Video tab, choose Decode to QuickTime, and one of the DV codecs
3. On the Audio tab, choose Decode to AIFF
4. On the Output tab, choose Output Format as DV Stream, then extract
5. Locate your iMovie project, or create a new empty project
6. Drag the movie file(s) produced by Cinematize into the Media folder in your iMovie project
7. Double-click on the project to launch iMovie
8. iMovie will show a dialog to let you accept the DV file into your project

iMovie HD 5 and 6:

1. Follow steps 1-5 above
2. Control-click on the iMovie project and choose Show Package Contents
3. Drag the movie file(s) produced by Cinematize into the Media folder in your iMovie project
4. Double-click on the project to launch iMovie
5. View the trash and then move your clip to the clips pane or timeline

A: iMovie 3 and iMovie 4 seem to have trouble importing longer movies, even though you can play those movies just fine in QuickTime. This import limitation has been removed in iMovie HD (iLife 5), and it is not present in other Apple video programs such as Final Cut Express or Pro. Here are some ways to get a longer segment into iMovie 3 or iMovie 4:

1. Extract a single longer segment and save in DV Stream format. Drag the resulting DV file into your iMovie project Media folder and launch iMovie (see above).
2. Use Cinematize's batch extract mode to automatically extract each chapter as a separate clip. Each of these can then be imported into iMovie.
3. Extract your segment in several smaller chunks, then import those one by one into iMovie.
4. Extract a single longer segment, then chop it into smaller chunks using QuickTime Pro

Windows-specific questions

A: Generally, this problem happens when your video card drivers are out of date or corrupted. The solution is to download the latest video drivers from the manufacturer of your video card or video chip (e.g. Nvidia, ATI, Intel, etc).

A: Most likely your QuickTime movie frame rate is set higher than 30 frames/sec. Premiere seems to be unable to handle movies with these higher frame rates. Here are some possible workarounds for the problem.

1. In Cinematize, choose the Decode Mode of "Force Video Mode."
   This will force the decoder to save at the standard video frame rate. You may have sync problems if your movie uses a variable frame rate technique, but you might be able to fix this in Premiere.

2. Use the MPEG-2 Program Stream format
   In Cinematize, set both the audio and video to decode to MPEG-2 Program Stream. Then set the Output Format to MPEG-2 Program Stream File. The result will be a file with extension .MPG that should import into Premiere.

3. Use an AVI file containing DV video
   In Cinematize, set the Output Codec to be "DV/DVCPRO - NTSC" (NSTC video) or "DVCPRO - PAL" (PAL video), the audio to be Decode to WAV, and the Output Format to be AVI. This will generate what Microsoft calls a "DV-AVI" file. This type of file should import correctly into Premiere.

A: PowerPoint for Windows is extremely picky about what movies it will import and play correctly. There is also a certain amount of politics involved, as Microsoft is trying to promote its own proprietary Windows Media Video file format over other more open formats. In any case, we recommend one of the following methods to get your extracted movies into PowerPoint:

1. Use MPEG-2 Program Stream format
   In Cinematize, set both the audio and video to decode to MPEG-2 Program Stream. Then set the Output Format to MPEG-2 Program Stream File. The result will be a file with extension .MPG that should import easily into PowerPoint. If necessary, you should then adjust the movie frame size in PowerPoint to match the 4:3 or 16:9 playback aspect ratio the movie requires.

2. Use the MPEG-4 File format
   The procedure is the same as we describe here for saving for use on the web.

3. Convert to WMV format using Windows Movie Maker
   In Cinematize, set the video to decode to QuickTime with the appropriate DV codec for your video format. Set the audio to decode to WAV, and the Output Format to AVI File. Open Windows Movie Maker and import the resulting AVI file. Drag the clip onto the timeline, then save the movie out choosing "Best quality for playback on my computer" which will generate a WMV movie file. This WMV file should import correctly into PowerPoint. If necessary, you should then adjust the movie frame size in PowerPoint to match the 4:3 or 16:9 playback aspect ratio the movie requires.

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Macintosh version:

1. Drag the folder "Cinematize 2.0 Demo" containing the application to the trash.
2. In the Finder, choose Go>Go To Folder and type "/Library/Receipts".
3. Drag the file starting with "Cinematize" to the trash.
4. In the Finder, choose Go>Go To Folder and type "~/Library/Preferences".
5. Drag any files starting with "com.miraizon.cinematize" to the trash.
6. Empty the trash.

Windows version:

1. Choose Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs (Win XP)
2. Choose Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs (Win 2000)
3. Click on Remove

A: In order to reinstall Cinematize, you need your original installer. If you purchased a box version or a back-up CD-ROM, your CD is your installer and you can use this to reinstall. If you purchased a download version, your installer is .dmg file for Macintosh or .exe file for Windows. It is your responsibility to keep the original installer in case you want to reinstall the application later. If you do not have your original installer, you can request a new one using this form.

A: Yes. Cinematize 2 includes its own video decoder, so the QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback component is not required for any of the functions in Cinematize 2.

Be advised, however, that if you choose to save your clips in raw formats (e.g. Elementary Stream or MPEG-2 Program Stream) you will need the component to play back those clips in QuickTime or in other Apple applications.

Macintosh-specific questions

1. You may have a permissions problem on your system
   You can fix this by doing a "Repair Permissions" operation. Simply run the Disk Utility tool (in your Applications/Utilities folder), highlight your hard drive on the left, and click Repair Disk Permissions. Once this operation has completed, you should be able to install Cinematize correctly.

2. You may have corrupted fonts installed by HP printer software
   This will affect programs such as Mail and Safari also. Here are some links from Apple and HP describing the problem and how to get around it.

   • Apple article 25725 about Installer problems
   • Apple article 25717 about Mail problems
   • HP document 44592 recommending to trash the offending fonts

Windows-specific questions

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