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(21-02-09)
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DVD to Creative Zen
Last updated
December 16, 2008
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Your best DVD to
Creative Zen Converter Suite
for Windows
is
Aiseesoft
DVD to Creative Zen Suite
$35.00

An excellent choice if you want a simple way to
convert DVDs as well as other video such as home movies or video clips.
Key features:
- Simple to install
- Easy to operate
- Converts DVDs as well as movie video such as
home-made movies and video clips
- One of the fastest converters on the market
- Good Help function
- Good support
- Excellent features
- Good value at only
$35.00
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Your best DVD to
Creative Zen
Converter
for Mac
is
Aiseesoft DVD to
Creative Zen
Converter for Mac
$25.00
Note that this is not a suite. It will convert only DVDs (no
other video file types such as home-made movies or video clips),
but it does a great job of that!
Key features:
- Simple to install
- Easy to operate
- Converts DVDs only.
(Not
home-made movies or video clips)
- One of the fastest converters on the market
- Good Help function
- Good support
- Excellent features
- Good value at only
$25.00
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The Best Packages Ranked
Appendix
A glossary of terms often used with this type of software.
(Info provided by the
Aiseesoft website)
AAC - (AacPlus
v2, HE-AAC, AAC LC)
Advanced Audio Coding, or AAC, is a MPEG
(Motion Pictures Experts Group) audio standard first adopted as part of
the MPEG-2 family of standards. Like its predecessor, MP3, AAC is a
Lossy Compression format capable of delivering relatively high quality
at relatively low bitrates. There are actually two AAC specifications.
In addition to the MPEG-2 version of AAC, which was also referred to
early on as NBC for Non Backwards Compatible, there's a newer
specification developed for MPEG-4. This version is normally found in
the MP4 Container, either with or without accompanying video.
Dolby
Digital -(AC3)
Dolby Digital (AC-3) is Dolby's third
generation audio coding algorithm. It is a perceptual coding algorithm
developed to allow the use of lower data rates with a minimum of
perceived degradation of sound quality.
Some coders are designed to take maximum
advantage of human auditory masking in that they divide the audio
spectrum of each channel into narrow frequency bands of different sizes
optimized with respect to the frequency selectivity of human hearing.
This makes it possible to sharply filter coding noise so that it is
forced to stay very close in frequency to the frequency components of
the audio signal being coded. By reducing or eliminating coding noise
wherever there are no audio signals to mask it, the sound quality of the
original signal can be subjectively preserved. In this key respect, a
coding system like AC-3 is essentially a form of very selective and
powerful noise reduction.
ASF -
Advanced Streaming Format
Microsoft's new audio/video format, meant
specifically for streaming purposes. It doesn't specify how the video or
audio should be encoded, but instead just specifies the structure of the
video/audio stream. This means that ASF files can be encoded with
basically any audio/video codec and would still be in ASF format.
Many times ASF is confused with Microsoft's implementation of MPEG-4
video format, because most of the ASF streams are encoded using this
technology.
AVI - Audio Video
Interleave
A Container format used by
Microsoft's Video for Windows multimedia framework. Since it was
developed for Windows 3.1 in 1992 it lacks some features found in newer
containers like MPEG or MP4, but is still widely used by consumers and
even supported by some standalone DVD players. Although still supported
in Windows, and suitable for certain formats like DV, it's not a good
general purpose container, and even Microsoft uses other containers for
their own video formats.
Bitrate -
(bps)
Bit rate refers to the size, over time,
of a video or audio stream. Although most computer oriented applications
measure bit rate in terms of binary kilobits and Megabits where 1kb (1
kilobit) = 1024 bits and 1Mb (1 Megabit) = 1024 kilobits, bit rate
calculations use standard metric values for these prefixes, meaning 1kb
= 1000b and 1Mb = 1000kb. Bit rate calculations are typically made in
kilobits per second (kbps) or Megabits per second (Mbps). They can also
be expressed in other units, including bits per second (bps) or even
Megabytes per second (MBps). Notice the capital B denoting Bytes. You
should always use a lower case b to denote bits and upper case for
Bytes.
DAT
This can mean lots of things -
often it is used to refer to a certain tape backup format. In a/v
terminology it normally refers (at least most questions are focused on
this one) to files that VideoCD has in its SEGMENT or MPEGAV
directiories. These DAT files are basically MPEG-1 files with an
additional information and certain specific file structure -- they are
NOT "real" MPEG-1 files (their header data is slightly different when
stored on VCD) and you need to convert them back to "real" MPEG-1 files
in order to edit them even that most of the software players treat them
as regular MPEG-1 files.
DRM -
(Digital Rights Management)
DRM doesn't mean just basic
copy-protection of digital content (like ebooks, MP3s or DivX videos),
but it basically means full protection for digital content, ranging from
delivery to end user's ways to use the content.
If we speak about music DRM, companies wish to develop a product which
would allow record labels to sell copy-protected audio tracks over the
Internet, so that only the buyer could be allowed to listen the tracks.
This is technically difficult, because traditionally, national laws
require content owners like record labels, to grant "fair use" rights
for products consumers buy. This means that user has to be allowed to
make personal copies of the purchased music, in order to use the music
in car, in portable digital audio player, in his/her laptop computer,
etc.
DIVX
-
A new format for digital video, much like
MP3 is a format for digital music. DivX is the brand name of a
patent-pending video compression technology created by DivX Networks,
Inc., The DivX codec is based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. This
codec is so advanced that it can reduce an MPEG-2 video (the same format
used for DVD or Pay-Per-View) to ten percent of its original size.
FLV
(Flash Video) -
This is a proprietary file format used to
deliver video over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player (formerly known
as Macromedia Flash Player) version 6, 7, 8, or 9. FLV content may also
be embedded within SWF files. Notable users of the FLV format include
YouTube, Google Video, Reuters.com, Yahoo! Video and MySpace.
Framerate - (fps: frames per second)
Defines how many pictures (frames) one
second of video or audio contains, normally used acronym for frame rate
is fps - frames per second. Human eye can't see picture changes after
the frame rate is more than ~24fps. In American TV system NTSC the frame
rate is appx. 29.97fps and in European PAL system the framerate is
25fps.
4:3 -
(Full Frame, Fullscreen, Academy Ratio)
4:3 refers to an Aspect ratio (AR) with a
height that's 3/4 the width. It's also commonly referred to as 1.33:1 or
simply 1.33, in reference to the width being approximately 1.33 times
the height. This AR is also commonly referred to as fullscreen,
referring to the fact that video with this Aspect Ratio fills the full
screen of an analog TV. Widescreen video, on the other hand, must be
letterboxed, or vertically compressed to be viewed properly on a 4:3 TV,
resulting in only part of the screen being used for the image.
H.264
-
This is known as MPEG4 AVC. The standard is expected to offer up to
twice the compression of the current MPEG4 ASP (Advanced Simple
Profile), in addition to improvements in perceptual quality. The H.264
standard can provide DVD-quality video at under 1 Mbps, and is
considered promising for full-motion video over Top wireless, satellite,
and ADSL Internet connections.
MOD and
TOD -
These are the informal names of tapeless
video formats used by JVC (MOD and TOD), Panasonic (MOD only) and Canon
(MOD only) in some models of digital camcorders. Format names correspond
to extensions of video files. Neither JVC nor Panasonic, who pioneered
the format, have explained the meaning of these file extensions. MOD is used
exclusively for standard definition video files, while TOD is used for
high definition files. The formats were never given an official name.
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