Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Hi,

I'm getting mixed results on playing tv programs on my N800 OS2008. Basically, just wondered how to compress the programs I have saved to the ideal size? What is the ideal size, FPS etc?

Thanks

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

it basically has no problem playing any mpeg4 type at 400x240... that size means its displayed exactly 4 times on the screen. More than enough for a 4,13" screen... I use 768 or 1024 kbs for that size, but i tried 1800 without that causing any trouble. For conversion i use imtoo 3gp ocnvertor and the divx profile it has... im sure there are better apps, but the output quality is nice, its fast (on my computer, converting for my cowon d2 is about 2x speed, psp is about 1x speed, n800 is 3x speed) and i already had it installed.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Thanks for the advice, will take a look at this!

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

I am having some luck using Nokia video converter for files I saved on my Archos is .avi format. However, I can only play in the pre-installed media player. Canola plays the videos very choppy at best. Not sure why this is. Which player are you using?

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

I find using Mplayer to be best. I would try that.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

This is what I am using:
http://xoomer.alice.it/sepaolo/n800vc/

25 fps, optimized for the N800's screen, left default audio settings alone. I just hook up my N800, and select the N800's SDHC as the output folder, and then queue a whole bunch of TV episodes for conversion overnight.

The next morning, it's just disconnect and go :)

Speaking of which, time to get my Heroes Season 1 encoded for the N800. Been procrastinating too long

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/videoconverter

Works great for me but I'm using an N810.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

The reason Canola plays videos from Nokia's ITVC choppily is that Maemo's mplayer is optimised for DivX/Xvid-style videos, rather than the MP4 that ITVC outputs. If you have mplayer installed, Canola uses it by default. A search of the forum will show how to get it to use the built in framework rather than mplayer.

The built-in Media Player isn't as optimised, but plays both transcoded DivX and MP4 files perfectly well. It's certainly much improved over its OS 2005 cousin.

In lieu of optimisations for MP4 in mplayer, more intelligence in the funky front-ends like Canola and MediaBox on which playback engine to use based on a given file's type would be wonderful.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

ghoonk,


What do you use to tape the TV shows?

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Sorry, I cant find this, can anyone point to how to change this?

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

nokia video converter won't run on vista 64 bit so i use winAVI mobile converter to encode .avi into .mp4. no stuttering, no artifacts, and you can skip through the video with no hesitation of the picture.

settings i use are: 400x240, 512000 bitrate, 64000 audio bitrate, 29.97 fps

so anyone unable to use the nokia converter, or you want to use the built in media player to watch video i suggest trying winavi mobile converter. it can create great .3gp for nokia mobiles as well!

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

I recommend avidemux. It's open source, multi platform, free. You can make scripts to automate everything. Finest quality of results. You can cut your videos before or after conversion, etc. etc. My how-to for DVD conversion: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...8&postcount=13

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

I gave up taping and ripping. I have Heroes Season 1 DVDs sitting in the hall, and likewise for some of my J-Anime, so instead of ripping them, I just BitTorrent them and then convert them

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

It won't run on WinXP SP1 either. It's a very picky app.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Nokia Video Converter runs perfectly on Windows Vista x64 Ultimate. I dunno what's the problem.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Here's the screenshot (sorry for russian interface :) )
http://i046.radikal.ru/0801/2f/873f7a823d3ct.jpg

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

In all fairness, it's not the Video Converter that's picky but the Microsoft libraries that we're using to build the app :)

We're planning on formal Vista support with our next release. Unfortunately for XP, we're going to have to require SP2 going forward.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Geez, guys, just go with the other converter I mentioned already. I've converted almost a hundred movies from WMV, MP4, and AVIs already, and every single one of them has played back fine on my device, with or without Canola :D

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

None of the other converters have as simple an interface as Nokia's, though. It's literally drag and drop, can convert multiple videos simultaneously and manages the copying to the device.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Has anyone been able to get it to play videos at native resolution (800x480) that look decent?

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

True that, and I thank vbrilon and his team in Nokia for working hard on getting the app right.

Their UI is nicer, but if I were to drag a bunch of videos for encoding, the third one in the queue will always choke and it would just say 'Processing' with no progress even after one night (hence a wasted night of encoding).

While N800VC appears to look less user-friendly at first glance, here's what I can do with it:

1. drag and drop a file into the interface and preview the output before i chuck it into the queue for encoding

2. designate an output folder -- my N800 is usually connected to my desktop overnight and I designate my video folder as the output directory. The next morning, I just disconnect my N800 and get on the road, knowing fully well that the files are in there.

3. A bunch of BMW Films in WMV format not only choked on the Nokia software, but came out all choppy and I ended up encoding the whole lot in the N800 Video Convert software, and that turned out perfect (if anyone wants them, just let me know - each converted video is around 30 to 40 MB in size)

If anyone's willing to run a quick test, I would like to test the output file size using Nokia's Internet Tablet Video Converter vs the N800 Video Convert using a control file. This way, we can see if the Nokia software has a better encoding. I've been told that the more compression there is in the file, the more CPU power is needed to playback the file, and this translated to reduced battery life. This is something worth exploring further, for those who are looking to find a better balance between battery life and playback quality.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Sure, only they're not called "videos", but "photographs".

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Thanks. That was really one of our main design goals: create a video conversion app for people who don't care to fiddle with settings or a command line.

Er... really? Can you please file a bug against this if you can reproduce it consistently? This is definitely one of the use cases we tested

Can you explain that please? I have not used the app so I am kind of clueless on this -- how do you preview before any encoding is done?

That's a pretty good idea actually to automatically copy when done if a certain folder is available. Would you mind filing that as an enhancement request as well while you're in Bugzilla? :)

Please, please, please file this as a bug and attach a small sample of the WMV video. We aim to convert any type of video properly, but with the huge number of variations in source material, it's hard to test with everything. I'd really like to fix this bug.

The main difference will be the result of the different codecs we're using. Most of the Open Source projects are using mencoder as their back end, which for legal reasons Nokia cannot use. The Nokia Video Converter uses commercial codecs to do the encoding. It would be interesting to get a side by side comparison of the output quality.

BTW, as a reminder, the latest Video Converter release has a really nifty developer API access into it, so if it doesn't do something you want it to do, it's fairly trivial to write some code to get it to do so.

Re: Best vid quality & compressor?
 

Can anyone help mee please. I downloaded imtoo video converter for mac and tried to convert some videos, but allways the aspect ratio is wrong. No matter what I do. So what are the correct settings?