Is there any command in mplayer that allows you to play a video with high bitrate by reducing it, for example if I have a video with 2000 kbps that the n800 obviously cant play, is there a command in mplayer to decode the video as if it was, lets say, 700 kbps (which is a bitrate the tablet can handle). All this without actually converting the video.

Thanks

...there's a whole separate executable, mencoder, that usually installs along with mplayer, that handles transcoding video files.

but, to answer your question, no -- there's no command within mplayer to accomplish that.

So youre saying that theres a way but not from mplayer?, or there is no way at all?, would it be possible to 'modify' the mencoder settings to do that?

Yes. I am saying that there is no such option in mplayer.

I'm not sure you entirely understand what the mencoder executable does. It is a transcoding program, which allows you to create video files with parameters you set. You'd feed your high rate video files into it and specify options to create the output video you want.

It might be considerably easier for you to search for tablet_encode and/or the Video Converter software published by Nokia (Windows) -- feed it your high rate video files and get one output that has been optimized to run on the tablet. Either of those solutions will ultimately do what you want -- create a video file that plays on your tablet. As a side bonus, you won't need to eat up 2.25 gigabytes per hour of video in storage on your tablet, either.

I use a small script that uses mencoder to encode my dvd's or avi's to something watchable on my tablet.. still creates a new file.. ends up between 5-800mb for a dvd..

mencoder ftw.

Sorry, when it comes to linux im a little slow. So mencoder is like a video converter but for the tablet?, anyway what i was looking for was not to transcode the video into another one but to decode the original video 'on demand' (well acrually not fully decoding, decode it with lower bitrate).

Thanks for your help

No mencoder has nothing to do with the tablet.. it allows a huge range of possible options to convert video from say AVI to MPEG4 or whatever...

I dont know of any way to transcode a video 'on the fly' because it usually takes a ton of processor power and usually a long time to transcode video... doing it 'on the fly' would result in very slow choppy video i would think...

"mplayer -lavdopts lowres=1 video.avi" will decode a video at reduced resolution, which improves performance at the expense of quality.

Ok thanks for your help anyway

Hi Marce,
Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I detect a bit of uncertainty. Your original post is a little confusing to me.

Correct me if I'm wrong- I think what you are trying to do is send a full resolution video to the Nokia. Then you want to play that on the nokia, without creating any extra files on the nokia.

I see a couple of problems. Firstly, you are transferring a LOT of data to the nokia. For example, a full length DVD would be over 4Gb. That will take a lot of storage space and some time to transfer.

Secondly, the nokia is not powerful enough to re-encode the video on the fly while you watch it, as has been pointed out. Theoretically you could transcode the video on the Nokia before watching it, but that would take quite a while (processing power limitation again), plus you would need even more storage space (0.3 to 0.8Gb) for the converted file, and probably the same again for temporary files created during the conversion.

The way around all this is to covert (transcode) the files on your computer (laptop or desktop), then transfer the converted files over to the nokia. That way the file you transfer is smaller (0.3 to 0.8Gb) and can be played directly on the nokia.
There are a number of ways to convert the video on your PC. It depends what operating system you have. Media converter works on Windows and on Mac or Linux machines. There are other options listed on that wiki page also.
Theres also some more help to be had here Converting (re-encoding) videos, playing music, ebooks.

The bottom line is convert the video on a PC to a format the mobile device can handle, then transfer just the converted file.

Hope that helps.