how to put high capacity video in mass storage of Nokia N900?

[supersniper3008]

Hi , I have a movie with high capacity ( more than 4gb) and I can not put it in my Nokia N900 as other lower capacity movies. Pls help me to solve this problem. Thanks

[Laughing Man]

The problem is likely because the main storage space of the N900 is formatted as FAT32 which caps out at 4 GBs per file size. Thus if you want to put a bigger file on there you may have to re-format the storage drive into a type that can support bigger files (like EXT2).

[supersniper3008]

Thanks for your information, and how can I change the mass storage to put the bigger video in my phone ?

[jabawok]

its reasonably tricky, and will mean you will only be able to read/write to the n900 over the usb cable from a linux machine (ubuntu or similar). So I'm really not sure you want to do this. How about you use 7-zip and split the large movie file up into smaller volumes?

I'm assuming you just want to transfer it somewhere, seeing as theres not much chance of the n900 being powerful enough able to play back such a huge file..

[cashclientel]

will mean you will only be able to read/write to the n900 over the usb cable from a linux machine (ubuntu or similar).

Can't Windows 7 and OS X read EXT2 and 3 now?

[Rauha]

Can't Windows 7 and OS X read EXT2 and 3 now?
Don't know about Windows 7, but OS X certainly can't.

[pycage]

Windows 7 and ext3?

*checks temperature in hell* ... nah, not yet frozen over...

There is a 3rd party driver to read/write ext2 for Windows, though. But Microsoft still pretends such a filesystem does not exist.

[impatient]

May I suggest you DIVx the video.

[qwerty12]

May I suggest you DIVx the video.

Xvid, please. We're all open source fans here. ;)

[supersniper3008]

Because the mass storage of N900 so huge, and I thought it like a hard drive of a computer, and properly there is a way to format it. :)

[TooMuchMoney]

How about you split the movie, like in half with software.

[mikhmv]

here is how to convert to ext3: http://forums.internettablettalk.com/showpost.php?p=481181&postcount=133
if you want to use ext2 you should manually change all ext3 on ext2 in the script...

[Bingley Joe]

Don't know about Windows 7, but OS X certainly can't.

There's at least one driver available for OS X that enables read/write to EXT2/EXT3 volumes.. I haven't tried it, mind you, so I can't attest to its functionality (their NTFS driver hasn't given us any trouble though):

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/

[stlpaul]

ext2/ext3 driver for Microsoft Windows is here:

http://www.fs-driver.org/

[Alex Atkin UK]

As far as I can tell though the "camera not working when not FAT32" is still a problem.

Also, surely a file that large is likely to be a resolution/bitrate the N900 will struggle with anyway?

[Rob1n]

As far as I can tell though the "camera not working when not FAT32" is still a problem.

I don't think so, no. Last I read, it's just a matter of needing to set the permissions on the DCIM folder (when the camera app creates it, it does so with the wrong permissions).

[Alex Atkin UK]

I don't think so, no. Last I read, it's just a matter of needing to set the permissions on the DCIM folder (when the camera app creates it, it does so with the wrong permissions).

I read that too but people seemed to still be saying that fixes the camera app from failing to attempt to take a picture but it still fails to save them. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what people are saying, its a hard thread to follow.

[stlpaul]

supersniper3008, are you trying to watch the huge movie on the N900, or simply using N900 as a storage to copy this from one place to another?

If the latter, easiest would probably be to split it into 2GB or smaller chunks, copy to N900 and then join them at the other side. If you use linux there are basic commands split and cat which can do this for you. On Windows or Mac there are probably freeware splitter and joiner programs.

If the former, I would really recommend transcoding it to a more efficient format and scaling down to fit the N900 screen if it is very high resolution. However, you may be able to play the split files with mplayer on the N900, through a pipe or fifo or something like that perhaps.

[Luke Valentine]

If your plan is to watch it, then why oh why aren't you just converting it to a smaller file? The n900's display alone will only give you so much quality, you don't benefit from having such a large source file in any way, again, as you are limited by the device.

If you are simply storing it for transfer, splitting it, or wrapping it up in a zip or rar are you best options. Yeah, you cant access it on the phone when in a zipped format, but if your just transferring/storing, then theres no need to.

All this talk of reformatting the hard drive seems ridiculous. it almost seems that some just shoot straight for the most complicated solution, totally unnecessarily.

[Alex Atkin UK]

That really depends. If this is a DVD rip then converting it into anything else WILL reduce the quality, period. The N900 display is far higher resolution than an anamorphic formatted DVD movie.

That said, you will be struggling to play a direct DVD rip anyway. Only VLC or mplayer will attempt it, and even then it probably wont work.

[Luke Valentine]

But the reduction in quality isn't noticeable on that size of screen. Its like me watching a 8gb bluray rip on it, and a 2 gb reformatting done with the right settings. The human eye can not tell the difference on a screen so small. It just seems utterly pointless.

[Laughing Man]

I wonder if it's possible to re-format to NTFS? That way Windows could still read it without having to install anything additional to a Windows computer.

[Alex Atkin UK]

But the reduction in quality isn't noticeable on that size of screen. Its like me watching a 8gb bluray rip on it, and a 2 gb reformatting done with the right settings. The human eye can not tell the difference on a screen so small. It just seems utterly pointless.

Don't get me into that debate because its a no-win.

Basically, saying "you can't tell the difference" is like me saying "but EVERYONE should use an 8px font on their N900, they CAN read it".

Everyones eyesight is different so claiming "you can't tell the difference" is an oxy***** because I just might be able to. Plus that is before you consider the hassle of transcoding with odd sync issues and the time spent doing it. I know I NEVER watch movies on portable devices, simply because I would not know in advance which movie I might want to watch and so its not transcoded ready for me.

[supersniper3008]

I think Nokia and Maemo team could think about this problem if they want develop N900 to become the best multimedia phone with huge capacity storage like this