Movie Playback on the BlackBerry Bold Using Badaboom

CPU Usage and Final Thoughts

One last thing that I want to point out is CPU usage. One would think that instead of performing transcoding on the CPU, that the NVIDIA graphics card would be the only thing under load, but that is not the case as it actually uses both the CPU and GPU to do the transcoding. The CPU load is due to the fact that it has to move the frames between the graphics card, the computer processor and then to the hard drive. With the frames coming at over 200 FPS this puts a load on the processor as you can see from the screen shot above. Our Intel QX6850 processor runs at 2.66GHz and was bouncing around between 25-40% load during transcoding. If you are using an AMD or Intel dual-core processor expect to see a much higher CPU load!

Final thoughts and Conclusions

What started off being a short fun article/guide to explain how to playback movies on the BlackBerry Bold 9000 turned out to be a little longer than I expected. Once all the proper software is installed on your computer you can transcode a DVD movie and have it playing on your phone in under twenty minutes. It might seem like an overwhelming task after reading this, but it’s simple and quick one you have all the right pieces to make it work.

The Badaboom Media Converter was amazing to use and the fact that it completely transcodes a DVD using a bit rate of 2500kbit at a resolution of 480×320 in under 16 minutes was amazing. Two years ago it took me 3-4 hours to transcode a DVD using a bit rate of 237kbps and a resolution of 320×240! The performance gains that can be had with GPU computing are obvious and I’m a big fan of using the GPU to complete tasks like transcoding. If you have an NVIDIA graphics card that supports CUDA then this is something you have to try out to believe it.

Something else that often gets overlooked is the MicroSD card and in this situation the Kingston 8GB Mobility Kit saved the day. At $31 the 8GB Mobility Kit comes with an 8GB class 4 SDHC MicroSD card and adapters to use the MicroSD card with USB, SD and miniSD card slots. This is ideal for those that want to use their memory card in various devices and/or those who switch between a desktop and notebook frequently.

Some of you might be wondering how long the battery lasts while playing movies and I’ve been able to get a couple of movies in during the day with typical cell phone usage. If you use a Bluetooth stereo headset the battery life will obviously decrease, so if you can you might want to use a wired headset for the best sound and battery life combination. That said, the internal speakers in the BlackBerry Bold 9000 are impressive in their own right.

Legit Bottom Line: Playing movies on the BlackBerry Bold 9000 is easy to do with the right software, and transcoding is painless if you can take advantage of a program like Badaboom!