Monday, May 12, 2014

Best Way to Backup DVD The Art of the steal for Repeatedly Watching

 
The Art Of The Steal Movie Synopsis: 

Retired motorcycle daredevil/art thief Crunch Calhoun (Kurt Russell), more famous for his crash landings than his death-defying leaps, considers himself something of a master thief, but he winds up in prison when he's double-crossed by his brother and partner-in-crime Nicky (Matt Dillon).
After serving his sentence, Crunch is tempted to complete one last heist to make some money by stealing one of the most valuable books in the world. He reluctantly reunites with Nicky, and reassembles their old crew. With a painstaking plan in place, can the Calhoun brothers pull off the job and hold on to their tenuous truce? 
  
Case:I got a new DVD which film release date on May 6, 2014. Since I watched this wonderful movie in the theater, I still exited about the amazing plot in it. I just want to enjoy this new movie with my friends –one of the already released  film franchise again or anytime I want. Is there anyway to backup my DVD of The Art of the steal for repeatedly watching? 

Of course, the answer is no doubt. As we know, DVD disks are vulnerable stuff and if you are a DVD fun/collector, I bet you don’t want your precious new purchased DVD get scratched or damaged. Then how to avoid this unlucky situation happening to your precious DVDs and also you can enjoy the movie of high DVD quality at the same time? Here I suggest you to make a DVD backup to your computer for watching. If you haven’t done this before, you can follow this easy tutorial below. You just need a DVD ripping tool, Many of such tools are provided on the internet but Pavtube DVDAID is definitely a good choice. Strong decryption ability, lossless output quality, high conversion speed, etc are all its superior features. Learn more about this software...

Tutorial for you to copy movie from DVD to your computer for backup:

Step 1. Directly download Pavtube DVDAID from here. Then install and drive it. 

Pavtube DVDAID is an excellent DVD backing up tool that can make 1:1 copy of your source DVD with original structure including extras and menus. Meanwhile, this app is regarded as a great DVD ripping program to help users convert DVD collections and various videos for new how tablets and smartphones including iPad mini, iPad Air, iPhone 5S, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Kindle Fire HDX 7, Google Nexus 7/10 and more. 
 

   
Step 2. Launch it and load your DVD movie from discs to the app. 
  
Step 3. Click the “Browse” button to set output folder where you want to save the copied DVD movies. 

Tips:
 
1. If you’d like to copy only movie content and leave out the extras and commentary, the Directly Copy is exactly what you need, which copies intact. VOB main movie from original DVD disc without extras.
 

2. You can Click the “ ” button to make full disc copy.
   
Step 4. Hit the copy the entire disc icon on DVD Ripper main interface and start DVD backing up process. 

Additional Tips: 
    
1. There are various output profile presets.

Many people like me own would love to enjoy movies and TV shows from physical discs to more than one mobile phone and tablet. You can count on DVD Ripper because it offers so many output formats that you would find the suitable one eventually.

The general format is "H.264 Video(*.mp4)" from "Common Video" option. 

 
You also can convert and put DVD to your other portable devices like iPad, iPhone, Samsung phones and tablets if you want to watch the “The Art of the steal” on the go. Presets are also provided for you to conveniently select. 
   
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Movie review: ‘Dorothy’s Return’ to Oz is 2nd rate


Transported back to Oz by a magical rainbow, Dorothy (Lea Michele) and Toto head for the Emerald City and again gather new friends.

In the 75 years since “The Wizard of Oz” debuted, its sequels, prequels and spinoffs have struggled to carry on the film’s legacy.

A year after Sam Raimi’s mediocre “Oz the Great and Powerful,” the streak continues with “Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return,” an average, likable enough tale hampered by second- (or even third-) rate animation that borders on creepy.

Set many years after the Wicked Witch of the West’s demise yet merely the next morning in Kansas time, the film’s impetus involves the Scarecrow (voiced by Dan Aykroyd), Tin Man (Kelsey Grammer) and Lion (James Belushi) held captive by the ambiguously evil Jester (Martin Short).

Transported back to Oz by a magical rainbow, Dorothy (Lea Michele) and Toto head for the Emerald City and again gather new friends, this time to save their old ones.

Composing the chemistry-rich B Squad are an obese owl (Oliver Platt), a marshmallow soldier (Hugh Dancy), a china doll princess (Megan Hilty) and a repurposed tree that looks like the StubHub Ticket Oak with bad teeth (Patrick Stewart).

When so moved, they belt out ballads ranging from lackluster (Bryan Adams and Jim Dooley’s contributions) to Disney Princess quality (Tift Merritt’s “Even Then”), though the odds of any reaching “Let It Go” status are blessedly low.

While never boring, with the exception of an inspired candy courtroom scene with a Circus Peanut gallery and a jury of one’s Peeps, the film’s humor is limited to the Jester’s manic dialogue, little of which elicits a giggle.

Mostly, “Legends of Oz” is one more outing with familiar characters that neither adds to nor tarnishes the land’s good name.

Until a worthy successor arrives, it’s best to stick with the original.

Grade: C. Rated PG. Playing at the Beaucatcher, Biltmore Grande and Carolina Asheville. 


Thursday, May 8, 2014

Pavtube 2014 Mother’s Day Coupon: up to 40% off Blu-ray/DVD ripping tool

Good news: 2014 Mother’s Day is just around the corner, have you got something unique and special for Mom? If she’s fond of watching Blu-ray/DVD movies on smartphone, tablet, TV, etc. you shall never miss this up to 40% off special from Pavtube Studio!
 

 
To thanks for your faithful support during the past years, Pavtube now offer 30% off ByteCopy, 40% off Ultimate Converter and 40% off DVD Ripper as 2014 Mother’s Day special for your beloved Mom. It starts from May 8th to 12th, five days in total. Don’t miss this deal!

30% off Pavtube ByteCopy (Windows/Mac)

A magic Blu-ray/DVD ripping software (Pro version), it’s not only capable of ripping Blu-ray/DVD to desire formats (MP4, MOV, M4V, TS, MKV, AVI, WMV, MPG, VOB, etc), but also offer a Multi-track preset to enable you backup movie to lossless MKV or MP4/MOV/ProRes with multiple audio tracks and subtitles, so that you can free choose wanted languages during playback.

40% off Pavtube (iMedia Converter for Mac/Video Converter Ultimate)

The best deal of Ultimate Converter ever! With this tool at hand, you’re not only able to rip Blu-ry/DVD movies, but also convert footages of Mom and make a easy-to-watch video to put on portable devices, computers, to video editing programs or uploading to your YouTube channel.

40% off Pavtube DVD Ripper (Windows/Mac)

It has outputs for almost all the Android models, so you can start getting DVD movie library ready for your Android devices like Kindle Fire HD, ASUS Transformer Prime, Nook (HD/HD+) Tablet, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy S4/S3, Google Nexus 7, Google Nexus 10, Nexus 4, Lenov ThinkPad tablet, Sony Tablet S, Toshiba Thrive, Motorola Xoom, etc... 

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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Play AVI on iPad Air Solution - Convert AVI to iPad Air for watching freely

Ever since the birth of Apple iPad Air, it has become one of the most popular devices in the whole world. It’s popular for it’s portable and extraordinary visual experience. Inside, it’s powered by Apple’s new A7 chip, helping it run apps faster and making it feel quicker overall; as well as a M7 coprocessor, bringing 64-bit desktop-class architecture to the tablet. It also boasts a high-definition Retina Display with 2048×1536 resolution and over 3.1 million pixels, It makes iPad Air absolutely perfect for watching movies. 
  
    
Can iPad Play AVI Videos?
    
With the debut of the one-pound iPad Air and the second-generation iPad mini, you may wonder can the new iPad Air or mini play AVI files now. Disappointed, once again Apple has not provided overall AVI support for iPad.
  
Though the new iPad Air is thinner, lighter, but much powerful, its support for AVI is just as the former iPad models do: iPad Air still only plays Motion JPEG encoded AVI files and can’t play AVI files encoded with DivX, Xvid, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, DV, H.263 and etc. So does the new iPad mini. Therefore various troubleshooting in playing AVI on iPad will occur just as below:
  
1. I just got the news that iPad now supports AVI files; so I downloaded some .avi files from the internet for playback on my iPad. To my disappointment, I even cannot transfer the AVI to iPad, let alone to play AVI on iPad.

2. Though I successfully add AVI to iPad, I cannot play the AVI files on my iPad properly, there is only audio but no video scene.

3. I use a software called Handbrake to convert AVI to iPad supported MP4. However, the converted AVI is still unplayable on my iPad Air.
  
About AVI format 
     
AVI is a good video format with good quality and extra small size and is open, these may be the reason why we won't give it up and now strongly require to play the AVI movies on iPad Air, but you need to accept the truth that iPad Air cannot support AVI files natively. So, if you have large quantity of AVI files transferred to iPad Air , you'll need a third-party app to help to achieve this. I mean you may have to convert the AVI to a playable format (e.g. MP4) by iPad Air on your Windows PC or Mac. 

How to Solve Can't Play AVI on iPad Air?
  
What if we want to play AVI on iPad even in the situation that iPad has not yet fully support playing all kinds of AVI movies?

In fact, it is that easy! Simply convert AVI to iPad more supported MP4, MOV, and then you will never worry about cannot transfer AVI to iPad for successfully playing various AVI on iPad of any model. Pavtube video Converter Ultimate is which is an easy-to-use yet all-in-one video conversion tool which can help you encode/re-encode more than AVI files to iPad Air compatible videos with original HD quality in perfect audio/video sync. Besides, You can also convert MKV, WMV, MTS, MOV, FLV, to all popular format for playing and sharing anywhere you like. 
   
How to Convert AVI to iPad Air?

This AVI to iPad Air converter is very easy to use. Just some clicks you will finish the operation steps. Please following the guide to realize transferring AVI to Ipad Air with best formats.

Step 1: Load video files to this AVI to iPad Air Converter 

Download the Pavtube AVI to iPad Air Converter on your computer, install and run the program, add videos. You can choose to import videos or the entire folder by clicking the top left two icons. 
  
     
Step 2. Choose format for iPad Air. 

Click "Format" drop-down list and choose "iPad>iPad Air Full HD Video(*.mp4)" as the compatible MP4 preset with best video quality. Or you can choose other presets if you don't need full size videos. 

To get the customized profile, you'll need to download a patch here) The output videos could fit on your device perfectly. 


    
Step 3. Customize video specs for iPad Air (Optional). 

You could also click the "Settings" to adjust the video and audio parameters of output files. 

In the Video Settings, you can select Encoder, Frame Rate, Resolution (you could define it yourself according to your iPad Air tablet) and Bitrate for your movie. 

In the Audio Settings, you can select Encoder, Channels, Bitrate and Sample Rate for your movie. 

Step 4. Start AVI Videos to iPad Air Conversion. 

You can hit the big red "Convert" to start converting AVI to MP4 with best video settings for iPad Air. After the conversion, click "Open output folder" in the conversion window, or "Open" in main interface to quick locate the converted video. 

After getting the converted movies files, you can transfer them to new iPad Air via iTunes. If you don’t know how to put and play video on new iPad Air , just follow the steps to realize it:  

1) Make sure you have install iTunes. If not, you can free download iTunes here:http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ at first. And launch the iTunes.

2) Connect iPad 3 to PC.

3) Choose “File – > Add File to Library…”

4) Drag the .mp4 file you want to the iPad icon.

After that, you can enjoy your AVI files on iPad Air freely. Hope this article helps.

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Making a Personal Movie:'Chef,' movie review


If you’ve ever struggled to find a balance between nurturing a career and making time for friends and family, Jon Favreau’s latest should hit home.  He leads Chef as Carl Casper, a successful chef whose career is decimated by one abysmal review.  In an effort to regain some stability while also giving himself the freedom to take risks with his craft, Carl leaves the Los Angeles restaurant scene behind to run a food truck featuring his own, unique menu.  For more on the film, here’s my review.

A movie like “Chef” begs for a smorgasbord of puns, so let’s get those out of the way: This undercooked but still flavorful comedy may not have much meat to it, but the small side dishes can be a meal in themselves.

Jon Favreau steps away from helming blockbusters such as “Iron Man” to write, direct and star in this congenial fable. Carl Casper (Favreau) is a one-time culinary wunderkind who’s now middle-aged, with a wide midriff and middling reputation. His loyal staff includes efficient hostess Molly (Scarlett Johansson in a cameo) and chatty sous chefs Martin (John Leguizamo) and Tony (Bobby Cannavale). 

When the restaurant gets a visit from an influential food critic, Carl wants to prepare something extraordinary, but the restaurant’s owner (Dustin Hoffman) orders Carl to do nothing special. The result: A scathing review, a Twitter war of words between Carl and the critic — and a chef without a job.

  
Trying to land on his feet, Carl, his ex-wife Inez (flighty but pleasant Sofia Vergara) and their 10-year-old son Percy (Emjay Anthony, quite the pro) go to Miami, where Inez’ slick first husband (Robert Downey Jr.) donates a rickety food truck. Carl and Co. give it a fresh paint job and drive it from Miami to L.A., selling Cuban sandwiches like hot cakes all the way. By the time they get to California, Carl’s got his groove back.

Favreau has always been a cool, amiable presence, all the way back to “Swingers” (1996) and his mini-gem feature directorial debut, “Made” (2001). His Queens-kid persona is impossible not to like. Scenes of Favreau at the grill bantering with Leguizamo and Cannavale could almost sustain an entire movie.
  
It does for a while. The moments when Carl connects with his kid click, too. But there’s a whole patch of “Chef” that feels wayward, as if Favreau has gotten so accustomed to Big Studio demands to cut details and get to the next explosion that he decided to stretch out every single small moment in “Chef.”

The good news is that his slow simmer approach here never puts us off for too long as the camaraderie between he and his cast gives “Chef” its mild yet tasty spice. 


How to Rip and Copy Blu-ray movies to Surface 2 tablet?

The Microsoft Surface is a great divergence from just a simple tablet. You can use it for Office Docs when needed and also works great as a tablet. The DUO-Tablet! As you see, The Microsoft new Surface 2's features large 10.81 in screen of 1920x1080 pixels, ultrafast wireless that makes browsing, downloading, and streaming content at blazing speed, and Windows 8.1 the most advanced operating system. It's great for watching movies. 


Get your movies off of your Blu-ray discs onto your Surface 2? If you have collected some Blu-rays and wanna transfer the Blu-ray files to Surface 2 & Surface Pro 2 for playback on the go. Whereas, due to format restrictions and copy protections, you will find it’s impossible to get Blu-ray movies to Surface 2 directly. Fortunately, now there is a workaround for this issue. We'd like to share the solution with all the Surface tablets owners.

The app I’m using is Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper. Applying it, I can easily effortlessly make your DVD videos playable on Surface 2 in just a few mouse clicks by fast ripping Blu-ray to a common video like MP4 for Surface 2 tablet. And I found the picture quality is excellent. So, this Blu-ray Ripper for Surface is an ideal tool for you. 

See also: 

Top 5 Blu-ray Ripper Review |Top Blu-ray Ripper for Mac Review 
New Movies Releasing This Week on 2014
Top kids' movies coming out on 2014 List with Reviews - part 1
Top kids' movies coming out on 2014 List with Reviews - part 2

Requirements:

1. Before anything else, you have to download an app that you are going to use later. You are required to download and install. 
2. PC running Windows 8.1 Blue, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista. 
3. Source media (commercial Blu-ray Disc). 
4. Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper.  
5. A BD drive for ripping Blu-ray discs. 
  
If you are Mac users, Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac is the best tool for you to convert Blu-rays to Surface 2 on Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.7 Lion, Snow Leopard 10.6. Follow below brief guide to make Blu-ray discs playable on Surface 2. 
  
Step 1. Download and run Pavtube Surface Blu-ray Ripper or Blu-ray Ripper for Mac, load your Blu-ray movies into it.

 
Step 2. Select output for Microsoft Surface. Here we choose MP4.

  
Step 3. You can Click on “Settings” to adjust bitrate, frame rate, video codec, sample rate and more to get you wanted video quality. If you are satisfactory with the settings of this profile, just keep the default.

Step 4. Press the big ”Convert” button to begin the conversion. 

Most Blu-ray movies have high quality, to ensure the quality lossless. The process will take some time. After the conversion completed, transfer the result video to Microsoft Surface via USB cable. 
    
Tip: 
1. Steps to transfer files to Microsoft Surface via USB wire.

2. Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper More Features:

1. Edit the videos before conversion, such as trim, crop, add subtitles, video effect, etc.
2. Convert Blu-ray to many other mobile devices and editing software like iPad 3, iPad mini, ATV 3, Nexus 10, Galaxy Tab 3, S4, Note 2, Sony Vegas and more.
3. Add srt, ass, ssa subtitles to your movies.
4. Backup Blu-ray main movie to VOB format with original quality.

Now, you are able to watch Blu-ray movies on Microsoft Surface 2 anytime and anywhere.

Related Microsoft Surface applications:
Play DVD movies on Surface 2/ Pro 2 without DVD drive
How to Rip your large BR selection to MP4 for using in portable devices 
Converting MKV to MP4 videos for Surface 2, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT/Pro
Tricks for playing Blu-ray movies on Microsoft Surface Pro 2
FAQs: How to watch Blu-ray movies (Folder and ISO files) on Surface 2?
How to transfer MKV, AVI, VOB, Tivo, WMV videos to Surface 2?



Tuesday, May 6, 2014

How the 'One Microsoft' mission is changing Microsoft Research

Summary: Some of the sweeping cultural changes affecting Microsoft are having an impact on the company's research arm, as well, says MSR chief Peter Lee.


Cultural changes at Microsoft over the past year-plus are reverberating throughout the company, including across the company's 1,100-plus-strong Microsoft Research arm.

Since last July's "One Microsoft" reorganization," things have gotten friendlier" between different teams at the company, including Microsoft Research (MSR) said Corporate Vice President and MSR chief Peter Lee. "There's more of a communal feel."

I had a chance to chat with Lee during an open house at Microsoft Research New York's new digs on May 5. The open house was held in honor of the two-year anniversary of the New York lab, which Microsoft created around a core of former Yahoo researchers that the company hired.

The MSR New York office is now home to about 20 researchers. MSR New York has a particular focus on social media and social science research, along with machine learning and big data.

In the not-so-distant past, some product teams at Microsoft had to be coaxed to consider incorporating MSR-developed technologies and techniques in their commercial products. TechFest, Microsoft's annual internal research fair, had become a place for researchers to try to pitch product teams to pick up their technologies.

Things are different now, said Lee, who became the head of MSR worldwide last July. Many product groups inside the company are clamoring to adopt technologies pioneered inside MSR. The Windows Phone team and Xbox teams, in particular, have been at the forefront of taking MSR technologies in building them into commercialized entities, such as the Cortana digital assistant in Windows Phone 8.1 and the Kinect sensor. MSR also has contributed to more enterprise-focused products, including the PowerBI business-intelligence and Oslo Office 365 social-feed app from the Office team.

When I asked whether Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's "mobile first/cloud first" mantra was influencing the types of research projects MSR is undertaking, Lee was quick to note that "MSR management doesn't tell (researchers) what to do."
That said, "We all want to be part of a winning team," Lee acknowledged. And the company's product teams, with their mobile first/cloud first marching orders, "are welcoming research with open arms," these days, he added.

More "open arms" seemingly has translated into more Microsoft research projects becoming commercialized and/or part of commercialized products. But Lee said he doesn't want to err on the side of MSR becoming nothing but an extension of the company's product groups. 

"We still need to be wackier and more forward-looking.... We are not just about product development. We are looking beyond the headlights," he said. 

An example of MSR embracing a longer-term view is Microsoft's recent hire of Norman Whitaker, who most recently was the Deputy Director of the Information Innovation Office at DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense's research arm. Whitaker previously was the Program Manager for the DARPA Urban Challenge program, which encompasses self-driving vehicles, as well as other kind of automated bots. (Lee himself formerly worked at DARPA before joining Microsoft.) At Microsoft, he will be heading up a new "Special Projects" team in MSR focusing on so-far unnamed disruptive technologies. MSR Special Projects is Microsoft's version of Google X, sources of mine have said. 

Lee is also personally committed to being more open and forthcoming about MSR's work, he said. That's another shift from the philosophy of some former members of MSR management. 

In the new One Microsoft, "we now have to work with everyone. If there are secrets (between product teams) at Microsoft, it makes things harder for us," Lee said. 

He also noted that 85 percent of MSR's work is done in conjunction with academic researchers who are intent on seeing their research published. That requires a level of openness and transparency. (MSR doesn't have to reveal all its secrets to us blogging sleuths and/or competitors. For example, MSR may opt to publish information about a newly developed algorithm without disclosing how, when and where it will be used by a Microsoft product group.) 

One more cultural change impacting MSR that I found interesting is on the cross-platform front. In recent months, Microsoft has been releasing more and more software and services aimed to work not just with Windows, but also iOS, Android and Linux. Lee acknowledged that the cross-platform emphasis is also happening in MSR, too. 

"We're looking at more cross-platform, and embracing competing OSes," he said. "There's more of an interest in exposing our services on other operating systems" these days. The MSR "Drawbridge" library OS work is just one example of investigations in this vein. 

The faster delivery cadence adopted by the Windows, Office 365 and other Microsoft teams is something in which MSR is involved, too. The idea of "test flighting" multiple features and updating services even more frequently than once daily are areas the implications of which are on the radar screen of research, too, Lee said.