Also, it depends on the scene, so some vids will look/ run better than others, despite the same settings; a dialogue-based movie look better than a fight scene which will look better than an action-based sci-fi movie with tons of camera pans and odd backgrounds. A camera pan across a cluttered room seems to be the toughest to handle, whereas a boxing match might run smoothly at the same setting since there's less work being done.

Frankly 400:240 500/96 kbps is very good for everything I've watched on the N800, and 480x360 at 600/ 128 kbps is better than I've seen a "need" for, though of course quality is subjective, and tastes vary. Remember, of course, that we're viewing on a sub-5-inch screen and following from that, probably less-than-perfect audio situation, so there's no need for "perfect," but of course that shouldn't stop us from finding a set of "best." If someone can either recommend or email me a clip where I will notice a benefit of going from 480 to 600+ in resolution, I'd appreciate it, because so far I haven't been able to detect much of a difference.

In the "probably more info than you wanted" department:

At the moment, I'm playing with this cli statement, refined (and still refining) for my personal taste from the original which I saw on raiden's site, <http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=515> :

...on a pre-ripped DVD.

It seems to ignore the 800 video bitrate and the pass=2, and seems to set the bitrate by the scale setting, meaning 480:360 gets a higher bitrate than 400:240 no matter what setting of bitrate=XXX. Also, a different audio bitrate seems to change the video bitrate inversely; a higher cbrreset=XXX means a slightly lower video bitrate, while vid bitrate seems to have no effect on audio bitrate. Audio bitrate seems to be pretty stable, staying near whatever I set it to.

So yesterday with this statement I ended up with "ST:Voyager Endgame" at 87 minutes, 416M, 480x360, 557/ 96 kbit, while "Time Bandits" came in at 116 minutes, 714M, 480x360, 747/ 96. Why the large difference in video bitrate? I don't know, probably because the letterboxing in "Time Bandits," shrinks the screen, which I forgot about and intend to re-do later. "Endgame" runs perfectly, without a single hitch, while I have yet to view "Time Bandits," but an initial scan-through looks good.

You can set the scale to a single number and that will be the height, while the width sets "automatically," which is sometimes handy.

Next I'll be playing and looking to change to 44.1kHz from 48kHz audio, and taking suggestions if you can save me some time.

Joe