Media Convert site
 

http://media-convert.com/

No luck yet converting YouTube vids. It seems to me this *should* work. I did convert a .flv to .mp3 but that's not exactly what I want.

(Oy! Do NOT suggest CLI to me!)

Well, any of the GUI wrappers around mencoder should handle FLV perfectly. I know my command line (oooh, scary and bad) version does and don't see why any of the others shouldn't either.

Indeed. Just send us alink to a flv file and we can check out if it works or not.

:):):):):):):):):):):):):):)

You could always use the VideoDownloader firefox extension to download the YouTube video in .avi format and then convert it to what you want.

I'm looking for a while-using-just-the-770 solution. Is memcoder a 770 app?

Nokia should either do a site like Media Convert or work with them for 770-format video.

Found two more online video conversion sites.

http://www.video4ipod.org/

http://venivideo.com/

Update: At the Apple Store (believe it or not, the Nokia Store is not so easy to find when you don't have the address!) and just converted a YouTube vis using the second site above. Opened and played in QuickTime beautifully. Now to find a way to convert to a *770* format online...

Updte 2: Clever bugger, I am. Read the Wiki, grabbed the Media Converter app onto this MacBook and converted the m4v file then attached it to a YMail msg for me to pick up via 770 later. Still, I'd rather *not* have the Apple Store in the center of the process!

youtube flv videos play very well on the nokia 770,without conversion, using the latest version of mplayer

on media-convert, select AVI output and following options :
video codec = mpeg4
ffourcc = divx

hot: You actually tried that and it worked?!!?

Oy. Apple will never let me in their store again (good thing NYC hs *two*!). I've been here about two hours do YouTube vid converts for the 770. Oy!

Update: In my defense, I felt I had to. Some vids I'd linked to a while ago had been removed due to, uh, issues. (Come on, what harm is there to upload a TV show theme? A cheapo low-res version is going to kill Hollywood or Burbank? Come on... the studios put higher-res movie trailers online for free!)

Right, I'm going to try and knock up a quick 770-specific media conversion site.

It'll allow you to upload a file, or enter a URL and get it converted to 770-specific format (I'm afraid I'll probably start off using the "smallest" setting on my encoder for bandwidth/disk space reasons). There'll also be a maximum file size (probably 50MB to start with).

Just compiling mencoder on the box now, there's a minor hiccup in identifying FLV videos direct from YouTube, but I'm sure I'll crack it.

Wednesday AM: Unsuccessful test. It seems to have converted and then d/led the file, but it's not anywhere on the 770! That's never happened before. Will have another shot at it this afternoon (from a better hotspot!).

Via Nokia 770 (with Chinese Bluetooth keyboard!) --

Thanks for those settings for the Media Convert website, but they failed. When I try to play the converted vid on the 770, it squawks something along the lines of "Resolution Not Supported."

This was a YouTube vid. I didn't specify any resolution, figuring if it was from YouTube, it was small enough to run on the 770.

Any other suggestions?

Via Nokia 770 --

OK, I've tried *4* times to come up with something from the Media Convert site that will play on the 770. No go.

Tried hotpotatoe's specs. "Resolution Not Supported."

Tried the specs again but this time I said I wanted to resize the video to 240x320. "Resolution Not Supported."

Tried the default .avi settings. "Codec Not Supported."

Tried the .avi settings from hot but changed the final one to the last on the list. *Twice* this resulted in a file that after alledgedly downloading to the 770, could not be found by either File Explorer or Video Player. WTF?

I gave up and typed this up to try to save others some grief.

You can try to experiment with this python based youtube download script and convert it into some nice GUI that launches mplayer automatically to play video.

Good luck.

Is the NOKIA playing 240x320 vidéos??

It's unlikely to be supported by default video player currently. Mplayer can play such video, but performance would be far from optimal. Can you share youtube link to such video for testing? All the video clips from youtube that I have seen up to this moment were 320x240.

Whoops. Did I screw up by reversing the numbers? Probably! Maybe I'll try the *correct* way and see. What res does the 770 like? And why isn't the 3gp conversions offered good enough for the 770?

Via 770:

OK, this is now officially driving me nuts. For a *third* time I'v run thiss file through the Media Convert site. And for the third time, it's told me the conversion was sucessful and that it was downloading. Lo, for the third time after receiving the file, it is *not* on the 770!

Not that it probably matters, but I was using hot's specs, although I told the site to resize the vid to 320x240.

Anyone else care to try to see what's going on here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA5vVa4WnUc

TIA.

Oh, of course it's first been run through the Video Downloader site, with the .flv on the 770.

NYC Apple Store
 

Hey Mike, I'm also in NYC... Were you actually told never to return? :)

- Bill

You mean The Apple Store? Nah. All stores should be so no-pressure hands-on (you hear that, J&R and CompUSA?).

Update: I've tried some 3gp and one AMV conversion. No go. Even tried looking for more video conversion sites. Google results are 99% spamsites!

That's good. One can never tell in this day and age...
I actually picked up my N770 at CompUSA on 5th, they were no-pressure... In fact, I had to wait 10 minutes after I paid at the register for someone to grab it from the stockroom. :)

Thanks for the link, it is indeed 320x288 resolution. Anyway, in spite of it having not very suitable resolution, this video can be played using MPlayer defaults settings with about half of the frames dropped (that is watchable). So it is even better than I expected :) Also If you tweak settings and run it without scaling in a small frame in the center of screen, it plays smooth.

Thanks, that's an interesting option (a link would be welcome). Of course if you used that youtube-dl python script, you would get the video downloaded just fine too :)

By the way, what's your goal? Are you trying to find a way to download and watch youtube video on Nokia 770? Or you are really looking for a video conversion site as the name of this topic implies and the solution for youtube only does not suit you?

maybe a wrong MIME content-type ?

I don't know what would be involved with this mplayer and Python script stuff. I'm not a Linux person (nor is the 770's intended general audience!). Is there a tutorial somewhere?

My goal? To be able to grab a video -- from YouTube or whatever -- and convert it via a web interface into a version that I can then play on the 770. I want to do away with the desktop (and Apple Store!) for this. Why should this be difficult to do? Is Video Player simply *that* bad? I don't see why those 3gp conversions wouldn't work...

Video Downloader site: http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

It's basically like the keepvid site except it *works* with the 770! At least I can grab the .flv file in case YouTube deletes it (which they have done to several files I was tardy in getting!). (Aside: Hey, Universal: Up Yours! Lay off YouTube, MySpace, etc, you greedy bastards. As Jeff Jarvis said: "Mr. Morris: I’d pay to see you face your artists — 50 Cent, Eminem, Elvis Costello, BB King, LL Cool J, Chris Rock, et al — and call them “software” to their faces." http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php...deaf-and-dumb/ )

try the settings i mentionned above + res 240 x 192, and 12 frames/sec (fps). if it fails, then no way

Announcing VidConvert - online video conversion for the Nokia 770
 

Right, here we go:


A 770-targetting video conversion site: you can upload a file, or enter a URL (including YouTube videos, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA5vVa4WnUc) and get a video file which will play back on the 770's included Video Player.

In fact, if you choose "Open" from Opera, Video Player will even stream it back from my server. Mmm, nice.

Only one video will be encoded at a time and the results will be saved for 24 hours. I've only *just* this second finished it, so please be patient if there are any bugs, and let me know of any problems.

Cheers,

Andrew

I've just entered this in the URL field and got back:

http://www.bleb.org/cgi-bin/vidconve...cgi?key=iezalu

...and it plays back on the 770 perfectly :-)

First try: no go.

Select file from 770.

Tap Convert.

Get watch icon.

Watch icon goes away.

Nothing else.

I've rebooted the 770 and cleared the cache and am about to try again.

Hmm, if it still doesn't work can you send me the file?

For YouTube URLs it works! Major thanks!!

Hmmm... I hit a Youtube vid that wouldn't convert!

I got an error page, copied the text, and lovely Opera took the opportunity to crash (sneaky bugger!!!).

Try for yourself and see if it works for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E06cNv55jTs

Another error:

Invalid key

One of three error occurred:
No key was specified.
The submitted video has not yet been processed.
The submitted video was processed over 24 hours ago and the results deleted.

If you think (2) might be the case, you can check again. There are currently 3 items in the queue.

That's not an error - that's due to it only processing 1 item at a time. As it says, there are currently 3 in the queue, yours may well be one of them. Suggestions for an improved message welcome.

I'll investigate the YouTube vid which doesn't convert after I've worked out why the web server is no longer serving web pages :-(

I *think* the problem is unrelated to VidConvert...

Hmm, there's something funny about that - mplayer can't find any video stream. I'm not sure why.

Anyway, bleb's back and serving web pages, though it may be up and down as I try and narrow down the problem.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Site still just sits there if I try for a file from the 770. Anyone get that bit to work?

Right now, it's moot for meas the 3 files on my 770 are from YouTube.

Works for me from the 770.

I've just tried a direct link to an AVI, a YouTube page, a Google Video page and an existing AVI I had on my MMC card.

Note that as it's an x64 box, it's not possible to get a RealVideo codec. However MPEG, 3GP, most AVI and probably WMV and MOV files should all be OK.

What feedback should I be getting once I hit the Convert button if I'm telling it to grab a file from my 770? I've gotten a watch icon momentarily, an Uploading dialog momentarily, but I also have the Load plug-in active, and it shows no CPU activity. Seems all dead to me!

It should go to a page which informs you of the status of the processing, if you've just clicked "Convert" you should have two possible results:

1) "VidConvert Results" - it's either in-processing (and the progress will be shown), or the resulting AVI will be shown.

2) "Please wait" - you're in the queue, and will be processed in turn.

Absolutely nothing happening is very strange. How big is the file on your 770? Could you email it me so I can try?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Cheers,

Andrew

This OS, even the 2006 flavor, is strange. Just had a catastrophic crash wherein I had to take out the battery! What mag view are you at when you hit Convert? Some page buttons on sites won't work for me unless I'm at 100%. (Nokia, 2006 is beginning to behave like 2005 under heavy use! Why is it that the more I fill on-board Storage things slow down? Is frag taking place here?!!?)

I deleted the .flv vids since they are still on YouTube. Sorry!