Greetings and Welcome
For all the Mac’s sophistication at creating and editing videos (via iMovie, Final Cut Pro, etc), it is decidedly lacking in the “hobbyist tools” for video conversion department in comparison to Windows. In particular, tools for creating and editing videos (avi files) for Philips DVP642 have been notably limited.
Thus, on this site, I hope to present a Mac user-centric view of authoring content for the Philips DVP642 DVD player. I decided to put this site together after about a year of fiddling with the technologies involved, having to devise many of my own solutions, since information for the Mac OS X user is largely missing from the internet.
I plan to focus on testing many strategies for creating compatible videos using a number of different programs and methods, reporting on my results while focusing on speed, quality and ease of creation.
And while my efforts are directed at providing solutions to Mac users, I will not limit myself to Mac software exclusively. Mac software will be my primary focus, however the transition to Intel has opened a new door to video transcoding via programs like Parallels and Boot Camp that allow Mac users to utilize Windows programs with acceptable performance.
It should be noted though, that at the time of this writing (August 2006), the DVP642 has largely become obsolete compared to newer DVD players with greater capabilities (the DVP5960 for example). However, the installed base for the player is significant and I’m sure not everyone is rushing to upgrade, even at the new players’ modest prices.