So I brought in an xvid codec avi. about 170 MB, 20 minutes in program length, 24 fps, 704 x 396, VBR ranging from 3 Mbit/s to 400 kbit/s. Looks beautiful when played on a desktop. Looks great on the 810 too.

Canola 2 chokes on it. The default player can't play it (doesn't like the codec), but MPlayer works great. Sure, there is no playlist functionality (that I have discovered in the tablet version), but when watching longer form programing and in my opinion, video in general, who cares. There were some parts where frames got dropped when the bit rate got too high. MPlayer, full screen by default handled them even better when I took it out of full screen. It then snapped to the right, showing in its native res and leaving the left and top bars visible.

Have we figured out that 400 kbit/s is about all the N810 likes to munch on happily? Nokia's Video Converter would lead me to believe that 860 kb/s at 30 fps is doable.

I know some of the senior guys here have mentioned, but I thought I remembered that 24-25 fps was what we should aim for and I guess I can't remember the bitrate we should be aiming for.

It would seem to me that the xvid codec in an avi requires a far smaller bitrate than an mpeg4 when shooting for a similar quality.

Thoughts?