Tungsten T and DVD questions

P

Pooface

New member
Hello all! Just purchased a Tungsten T and a Kingston 256mb memory card. Was hoping to download a full movie to the T using freebie software ... and can only get about 70 min on a 256mb card. Here's what I'm doing now ... looking for improvements, hopefully free or low cost purchase third party software(s).

1) Use DVD Decrypter to 'rip' the DVD onto a desktop computer.
2) Use FlaskMEG to convert the ripped file to MPEG-1 format.
3) Use Kinoma Producer to convert the MPEG-1 file to palm file format.

Takes about 100mb to convert a half hour of video (using the middle setting, not full screen).

Also, the process to transfer the file to the Palm is unbelievably slow. It took about 45 minutes to transfer a 3 minute video (via the usb cradle). I figured at that rate it would be 7-8 hours for a 30 min video, so I just let the thing transfer overnight at home via bluetooth.

So ...

Is there any way to improve compression, either through Kinoma or another software, to get a couple of hours of video on a 256mb card?

And is there any way to speed up the data transfer?

Thanks!
 
You may want to look at the following:

www.virtualdub.org

You can use virtual dub (free) to create AVI files which I find have better compression than MPEG.

In addition, you'll need the DIVX codec, there are three (or more) versions, at least two of which are free for use.

Then you need the player. I have Kinoma, but I find that MMPlayer is really better for the movies since it accepts AVI or MPEG format as input where Kinoma produces a .pdb file (Palm format)

As for transferring to the card, you can purchase an inexpensive card reader for your computer, and do a direct transfer to the card, or you can look at the software program Card Export. Version 2, which I think is still in beta, is much faster than the earlier version, and is also faster than the Palm transfer.

Virtual Dub is a pretty detailed program for video conversion and there are other "front end" programs which will allow you to specify the setup from a GUI (Graphical User Interface) instead of having to look at ALL the options in Virtual Dub.

The conversion program takes time. I'm using a 2.4Ghz P-IV and it takes 1-2 hours to convert. Once it's done, using a card reader, I can transfer the 120mb file to the card in 3-4 minutes.

I've been able to put two full length movies on a 256m card, with reasonable video and sound.

fnagle
 
fnagle,

Thanks for the great suggestion re: the video problems. Purchased a copy of mmplayer (a bargain at $15) and used the following settings:

resize to 160,120
every second frame
144 kps bitrate
divx video
22050, 32, mono audio

and can now fit a little over 3 hours of video onto my 256mb card!

And as it turns out, my daughters HP photoquality printer can take the sd card, so I can transfer the three hours in about 15 minutes. Think that would take about two days via synching!

Again, thanks for the help!
 
Back
Top