Movies on a Palm

M

myd00dlebug

New member
Well, with my first OS 5 device and the niiiiice resolution, etc, I decided that it was now time to get some movies rolling on my T5. (Using MMPlayer of course :D) I'm having a bit of trouble doing this. I'm using VirtualDub and have tried XviD and DivX with not much luck. My first test was to get Star Wars Episode II on there. I don't care about file size or anything since I'm splitting the files up and loading different parts into SD cards, Internal Flash, etc.

The first time I encoded, I used XviD at about a bitrate of 50. Next time I used 150 and DivX, but dropped the audio bitrate to something more standard for a Palm. With XviD the video ran fine, but at that low a bitrate, everything was blocky and it was a total pain to watch. Second time, I got the video looking okay, but MMPlayer doesn't seem to play it very well. It's very slow and laggy, although the audio sounds fine and it stays synced. Any ideas? What's common for people encoding movies to Palm? I have Ep II widescreen so I was keeping the video that way and letting it play 320x480.

Thanks in Advance guys!!
 
if its out of sync, make sure you have the lates MMplayer, the early once didnt work well. I have V 2.12 and there are no sync problems.
I use Pocket dvd to turn them into AVI files that can be read by MMPlayer
It works perfect the only catch.... $32.00. But I already converted about 30 movies. you can leave it over night and it will shut down your pc when finished.
One nice feature, they use a slider, once you pick the format it can tell you how much memory vs. the quality of the picture. Allows you to get a happy medium.

I have a T3, and I assume that it should work great on the T5.
I usually leave 10megs for both video and audio buffers on the MMplayer.

mas
 
But, as a moderator, I'm certain that you searched for it and read it thoroughly before you posted your own.

In case you want to read it again, though, it can be found here.

I may dust it off. It's been a while and times/technologies have changed a bit, but some of the underlying principles can still be applied on today's devices. I, myself, have a Z2 and I have found certain settings that work well for that device that I may add to the prevailing thread. Look for it soon.
POL9A
 
I don't think Matthew is encoding from DVD source. If he is, he must have already ripped the vobs and be using virtual dub mod with mpeg2 support and ac3 codec, which i don't think he is....

The "That's it I'm ready for the movies" thread was great, but to read it from the beggining would not only be a huge task, it would be confusing as lots of things changed during the writing of it..

Anyway, use PocketDivXEncoder :)
http://divx.ppccool.com
It's great. Virtual Dub is great too, but complex and takes a long while to learn throughly.

Forget 480x320 by the way, it won't happen (at 25fps) without a lot of overclocking. However, as your movie is widescreen, it should be 16:9 ratio. In which case you should enocode to 480x270 so as not to strech the video. That is still to big for the pda to comfortably play in high motion scenes, so you may be better to try something like 464x261...

Anyway I'd recommed you have a read of the 12th post in this thread (by me :D) and then post any queries in this thread. As far as the bit about resolution goes in my post, you can select the T3 as a pda, as long as you decrese the resolution manually:
http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/sho...perpage=15&highlight=dvd on palm&pagenumber=1

iiicRuled
 
Great stuff guys, couldn't ask for better people around here (even when we disagree)!! :D I took a peek at those threads and they helped some. I had run across PocketDivX just before reading the replies here, sounds good, I'll try it. BTW, for those using MMPlayer, here's a nice page that has some great info (at the bottom): http://mmplayer.com/encoding.php

There is a slight performance issue with the T5 I think. MMPlayer seems to have a tad of trouble on occasion with 'jolting' the video. I lost the DVD sometime after I ripped it so all I have for source is a 1.2GB DivX Movie at 720x480 (encoded at 700kbps/sec). It looks great, I'm just trying to get it closer to good on the Palm. Maybe MMPlayer needs some code changes for the PXA270 processor and OS 5.4. It definitely has problems with skins and such, so I've notified the creators and am waiting for a reply. I might get some beta testing options!!!

I'm gonna keep trying, first with PocketDivX, then if it doesn't work, back to VDub. I've been using that for awhile so I kinda know my way around it. I just couldn't seem to get the settings where I wanted em. Thanks again!
 
A DivX movie for encoding source is good and quick! You'll find PocketDivXEncoder extremely fast on that kind of thing.
The jolting issues are because you are using specifications that MMPlayer/T3 just can't handle. We have to bear in mind, the lower dynamic heap means the T5 may not even be up to playing movies that the T3 can, but that is not necessarily the case.
Firstly you no doubt want to keep a full frame rate to keep the motion fluid, therefore everything else needs adjusting accordingly.
Seeing as you have a nice source file (from DVD) you'll only need about 200-250kbps for the video, to get a very nice result.

Give these settings a try in PocketDivXEncoder:
Selet the picture of T3 on entry.
Open the movie.
Select Picture Quality 10
Click the arrow next to audio quality for custom settings.
Use Original Frequency (probably 44,100) 56Kbps, mono.
You video is 3:2 ratio, therefore by default the resoltion will set to perfectly full-screen, i.e. 480x320. Your palm just cannot play that sized movie at 25fps. If your movie has black bars top and bottom, crop them off and that will help. But let me just say this:- work on 120,000 pixels as your ABSOLUTE MAX. Try to keep it to 110,000. 480x320 = 153,600 pixels. Waay to many. Whatever you resolution becomes, just keep it below that maximum pixel number. I predict that your movie has black bars top and bottom, and that the actual movie is only 720x405, which would be 16:9 i.e. true widescreen. In that case, after cropping, you movie will be 480x270 on maximum screen size. (Note: if you do have black bars it's very important to get rid of them, as they use up precious processor power.) Still too many pixels.
Use the resize to change it to 448x252. This is pretty near full-screen and is more realistic for MMPlayer to play properly.
Click advanced options on the right and check VHQ and B-frames. Using B-Frames is a double edged sword: it uses more processing power but MMPlayer can easliy skip them. If you don't use B-Frames and MMPlayer gets behind, it can't skip to catch up. If you use B-frames though, it can skip to catch up but is more likely to get behind due to increased processor power needed for the b-frames. Experiment with it on and off.
Make sure "make avi file....." is checked. (No OGM support in MMPlayer STILL :()
Don't check anything else ESPECIALLY not XviD! That will make it go sloooooow. (Note: PocketDivXEncoder actually doesn't use DivX atall, but the libavcodec, which is basically as good as XviD/DivX.
Then encode away! I would get approx 250fps (using P4 2.6Ghz) enocoding speed, encoding from a DivX source. So that's only 6 mins per hour to encode, like 10 mins for your average movie :)
Give it a whirl, I think, and hope, you'll be pleasantly suprised!
iicRuled.

P.S. Most people get round the problem you are experincing by encoding with a maximum width of 320 (e.g. 320x240 etc) then using the zoom feature. I hate doing this as it looks awful, but if the guys ever add an interpolation filter into MMPlayer, this will be a great option.

P.P.S You're right about the buggy skins. The default skin causes some playback/stutter problems. Use the red skin or another one, but just not the default! Also put a nice big buffer in MMPlayer. Maybe 512k for audio and 2,048k for video. Leave B-frame skip slider at 150 (obviously it only has any effect it you encoded with b-frames).
 
I can't seem to change the buffer sizes. I noticed this last time I was using MMPlayer. I've got version 0.2.13. It's kind of odd. Does this have anything to do with streaming settings? I can adjust those if that would have any effect.

I've got a 2.3ghz P4 and it usually takes about 2 or 2 1/2 hours to encode using 1-pass, slightly longer on 2-pass(the one I'm doing now). The movie is 2 1/2 hours long, so it's going about 30fps. Would my video card have any effect on this? It's AGP4x nVidia GeForce 420 MX :rolleyes: I have a 128MB card in the house, but I've got to get a 300w (min is 250w I have 185w) microATX power supply first (which is proving hard to find). I hate non-"standard" parts.
 
Strange. No the streaming settings are for listening to music over bluetooth etc. You should just be able to highlight the buffer values shown and enter your own, as long as your don't enter a higher value than the dynamic memory you have avallable....

That encoding speed is PAINFUL!! Are you using PocketDivXEncoder and getting those speeds? I'd expect that kind of speed using virtualdub, but definately not in PocketDivXEncoder. As I said PDXE uses the libavcodec which is lightening fast as long as there's no colour conversion going on. (If you're converting from DVD vobs, for e.g. you have a YUV-RGB colour conversion which takes ages.) But as you're encoding from a DivX file in the first place (RGB), there is no colour conversion, so it should fly- along at least in PDXE.
The graphics card would have no effect here atall. When re-encoding a video file from another video file like this, the bottleneck is going to be the CPU.

Am I right in thinking the 30fps encoding speed was either using VirtualDub, or using PocketDivXEncoder with the XviD box ticked??

P.S. One pass is probably the best option for the kind of bitrates we use for Palm encoding. Two pass will share the bit rate out evenly in proportion the complexity of the video, but you'll be left with a video of medium quality all the way though. With one pass you'll get high quality in the simple scenes and a bit worse quality in the fast moving scenes. I find this vastly preferable as you end up with better quality for most the movie. But I grant it's down to personal taste.
 
Got the buffer settings changed and WOW, what an improvement!!! :D I had been trying to change them while in landscape mode, and for some reason it wasn't liking the virtual input from the right hand side of the screen. Once I changed to portrait, everything was fine. Then I switched back to landscape to watch the movie.

It took about 2 hours with PocketDivX, options you told me to check, I checked. I actually haven't loaded that version of my movie on yet. I used VDub before to encode at 480x320 x 20fps (B-frames on). Audio is set at 24kbps at 22khz. I bumped up my audio buffer to 512k and the video buffer to 3MB (tried 2MB also and not a whole lot of difference). The movie plays fine at 480x320...no downsize at all!!! If I run into high action sequence or something, it will occasionally have to "pause" the video to rebuffer, but it does this minimally. My T5 is turning out to be more awesome than I dreamed!! This particular movie is at a bitrate of about 300 I believe, divided into 2 parts so I can fit it all on. (I have only a 128MB SD card.)

Thanks for the help. iicRules especially!! BTW, you can keep your job, I have no desire to go into the movie re-encoding business full time. :D (Well, at least not until I get my 64-bit 4ghz Pentium that doesn't yet exist)
 
Lol, glad it's working for you now. The reason you're getting good results playing at 320x480 must be that you've lowered the frame rate to 20... Much easier for mmplayer than 25 or 30fps.
Slightly confused by the slow encoding speed with PDXE... If you're interested I'm sure we can pin down the problem- because there is a problem somewhere! It seriously shouldn't be that slow, if you're encoding from DivX as source.... Could be caused by adjusting input frame rate or input audio codec maybe.... Anyhow as long as you're happy, that's all that matters :) Tho it does still confuse me!

BTW, slightly off-topic, but I'm a fellow IE 'dumper'. Mozilla firefox is awesome, but I'm having a small problem in relation to these forums... In the "Your Reply" box, when replying to messages on this forum, the text entry box is half the width it should be :( Is it just me or does this happen to you too?
Cheers.
 
Actuallly, no worries:- it appears it's not just me. There is a simple fix which Admin would need to carry out, so I've brought it up in the Mod's forum.
iiicRuled
 
Yeah, I've been putting up with the input box for the past year or so. Annoying I know. PDA Street uses vBulliten, but they're using an old version. Version 2.1 is what I'm thinking. The latest is 3.0.3 I think? It's in the 3s somewhere. Anyway, it's much better, more dynamic, etc. Maybe we could petition to have the system upgraded at the same time!

As for input boxes, there's just some code that's not IE/Mozilla compatable. There's probably a better tag to use or something.
 
Did Firefox ever come out with the anticipated "1." they were going to have ready in October - or was it August?

I've tried 00.84 and 0.92 if memory serves . . . it's okay but with all the multiple fixes on IE I think I'll stick with my 8 cleaning utilities (!!)

Firefox was TERRIFIC, however, especially with the multiple tabbed browsing, and a very clean interface. Also easy to tweak using those "scripts", and a lot of the plug-ins were great, especially the "mouse-pointer" thingie.

Just curious how you're liking it and if you still have a problem with Yahoo. Firefox wouldn't work well at the time with that, and that's one reason I dropped it. If you ever uninstall it, PM me and I can give you some "hints" of where all the hidden stuff is -- FF leaves a LOT OF ORPHAN files in places that'll amaze you (not just the user folder!)

Aplogies for "off-topic."
 
...I've been using Safari for the couple of years and I like it a lot. It's had tabbed-browsing all this time, but it doesn't have the RSS feed thing like FireFox. I do like the alternative to IE, however, and have been using Mozilla on my Windows computer (also using tabbed-browsing.) I've just downloaded FF onto my PC to see what the hubbub is all about.

Yes, OT we know. It's probably no worse than having a rager for T|5 "stickies" or re-inventing the wheel by writing new threads because the older ones with all of the same knowledge are "too long" to read.
God! Good morning to me! Where's my coffee?
POL9A
 
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