THE most stable and powerful DVD and Blu-ray movie player available, CyberLink’s PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D Ultra offers an array of new features, including 3D support. The changes start with the interface. Across the top of the player, just beneath the menu, are tabs for movies, video, and music. The latter two sections’ panes appear as file browsers. Unfortunately, the program is slow to enumerate files when you browse a media-filled folder.

CyberLink touts the new powerDVD as a universal player, thanks to its support for real Media, .mkv, .flv, .3gp, and .3g2 files. Even so, it couldn’t handle an h.263-codec-based .flv file, nor could it recognize my ogg Teora files, even with a DirectShow filter installed.

in other respects, playback was excellent. Behind the scenes (or via adjustable controls), powerDVD offers tools for upscaling 480p video to 1080p, increasing frame rates to smooth HD pans, and compensating for excessively dark scenes.

Another new feature is the ability to upscale 2D to 3D. Te results were passable, though early 3D-encoded content does appear sharper. A future free upgrade will fully support the 3D Blu-ray titles coming this summer.

PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D adds social features, too, such as uploading videos to YouTube; integrating with Windows 7 libraries; and sharing comments via Facebook, MoovieLive, and Twitter. Te addition of 3D makes powerDVD 10 Ultra a worthy upgrade, and other enhancements round out the application nicely. The only dramatic improvements, however, involve image stabilization and support for the new media formats.

PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D

There is no shortage of transcoders out there, which is, of course, software that converts media files from one format to another by essentially playing each frame and resaving it in sequence. That said, there is a shortage of free transcoders that work well and do their job quickly. MediaCoder, however, is just such a program.

Most transcoders require a great deal of tweaking and codec installation, but MC reduces this nonsense to a minimum. The base installer includes almost all the codecs (such as DivX) and utilities (such as LAME) you will need to convert almost any audio or video file into a different format and copies the files into their correct locations automatically. There are auxiliary installers for ripping DVDs with DeCSS and an ancient codec pack for dealing with, well, ancient multimedia files. There are extra plug-ins for specific CPU optimizations, but that is basically it.

The interface is at once straightforward and confusing. Selecting files or folders of files to convert is easy, but selecting different transcoding options involves two tabbed subsections of the main dialog box that make it easy to miss a key setting. Options for transcoding to portable devices such as the iPod, the PSP, the Zune, and several mobile phones are within the dialog box that appears after clicking the Extensions button in the toolbar. The documentation is sparse, requiring regular visits to the MediaCoder user forums for tips.

Still, there is no arguing with results. Directories filled with dozens of MOVs and AVIs were relatively quickly converted to DivXes with outstanding video and audio quality and with minimal intervention once the process was started.

The beta is a bit rough around the edges, crashing once or twice during my evaluation, but there is potential for MediaCoder, especially at its price of “free”

URL: mediacoder.sourceforge.net