Product Reviews

Our first thought when we reviewed Popcorn 1.0, Roxio's application for DVD-to-DVD copying was, 'why?' Pocorn provided an elegant way to copy content from one DVD to another and enabled you to compress the content of commercial dual-layer discs so it would fit on a regular single-layer DVD. However, it didn't (and still doesn't) allow you to make copies of encrypted DVDs, which rules out its most useful application - backing up your DVD movie collection.

Of course, breaking the encryption on DVDs is illegal in many

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countries, so its omission is understandable. However, it means you're limited to making copies of non-commercial DVDs.

Nothing has changed in version 2 in that respect, but it does have an ace up its sleeve. You can now take a non-encrypted DVD, DVD image, Video-TS folder, or any QuickTime-compatible video file and encode it for a video iPod, mobile phone or a PlayStation Portable. You can also output files as DivX, Mpeg-4 or H.264 movies.

If you opt for iPod output, you can choose to output in standard, high or For TV versions, while if you opt for DivX, you can choose from a number of profiles, including Home Theatre and Portable. Each output medium also has a Custom option that provides access to just about every tweakable parameter. Despite the new features Popcorn 2 is easy to use, and you'll feel right at home if you have used Toast.

We were under-whelmed with the original version of Popcorn, but version 2 makes a great deal of sense. Forget the DVD-to-DVD copying and use it as a great way to encode any video content on your Mac for your iPod, phone or PlayStation Portable.