Palm T|X and Multimedia Applications

H

Helicreature

New member
Having moved from a Palm 3 based Handera to a T|X is like going from the dark ages to the 21st century overnight. What an adventure! I like the freedom of Wi-FI and being able to read my mail and do a little web surfing without having sit in front of a PC in my home office. Kind of liberating if you will...

So this leads me to explore other avenues of both usefulness and entertainment with little gadget. #1 is iPod-like functions (grabbing music and Podcasts), which seem to be really little more than downloading MP3s to a PC or PDA. #2 is video. I downloaded an AVI file of my son's school band concert from my DV camcorder to the PDA and was astonished at both the video and audio quality on the T|X using the bundled applications. So now I'm ready to learn more about other applications for compressing, downloading, and playing this stuff on the Palm.

I have been reading about TCPMP, MMPlayer and some other stuff in the forums and would like to get some opinions of what people have tried and like (and tried and dislike). Here are a few questions I have at the moment:

1- What do I need on the PC to create compressed videos for the palm?

2- Are there good applications that have sync conduits for audio? I looked a Rhapsody that came on the T|X install CD and it appears to do this, but I'm wondering if there are other utilities, like plug-ins for media player or better applications that are subscription service independent.

3- iPod has a plug-in unit that can send the audio to the radio in a car which seems quite useful for listening to downloaded Podcasts. Is there anything like that for the Palm?

4- Are there any utilities that can be used to send Podcasts to a T|X during a hot sync? Currently I save them to the PC and drag-n-drop them on the Palm Quick Install icon.

As you can see I am in the dark ages in regards to this technology so any and all information and opinions is welcome.

Cheers,
John
 
I personally WOULDN'T use ANYTHING else other than TCPMP.
The reason why i like it is because i dont have to go converting all my video's to a 'special' format (ie. .PDB for Kinoma).

1) well basically any video converter should do because when you convert from one format to another (eg. AVi-MPG or AVI-AVI) you can choose the screen resolution, quality and FPS. By changing these things it can lower the size of the file, so if you choose 320x480 as resolution, quality at (i have no idea.... just a lowish number that's on the list), and FPS at say 30-40 or so would mean that the video has been fairly 'compressed'. Make any sense? i'll re-word it if it doesnt

3) The 'Plug-In-Unit' is a radio TRANSMITER (not reciever if you were wondering). Something like this, http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_ID=166893
It's very easy to use. as you can see in the picture on that webpage there is a little screen, you choose which station you want to broadcast to from there (103.5Mhz for eg.) then you tune ANY radio (your car's radio for instance) to 103.5 and then you play whatever you like from your Palm (whether it be games, movie sound, music, podcasts etc.) and it'll come out of the car/stereo's speakers. Oh by the way, you plug this device into the headphone port ontop of your TX.

That's all i got :p

Camski
 
Camski,

Thanks for the info. After reviewing your response, I took a look at my Pinnacle Studio software and discovered that it allows me to make some of the settings you suggest. I wasn't aware I could do that with this software (guess I should RTFM again :rolleyes: ).

At your suggestion, I downloaded TCPMP and installed the basic PRCs from the ZIP file (there were many), but soon learned that while some of my audio/video files worked in TCPMP, others did not (formats not recognized), which meant I had to dowload additional plug-ins. I am still in the dark about the different codecs and the effects and advantages/disadvantages of each of them, so I guess that is my next homework assignment.

After some experimenting, I got my AVI files to play as well as some files I downloaded from http://www.pocketmovies.net/. Now I need to figure out going about making compressted files to put on the PDA.

I checked out the FM transmitter, and this is what I'm looking for. They have them at Tiger Direct for under $30. One model offers some 4-5 preset frequencies ($20) which are a little cheeper and the one you referenced allows the full FM radio band plus automatic shut off ($30).

Cheers,
John
 
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