Video optimization question.

[mirkazemisaman]

I have an Axim X5 advanced and use Pocket TV for my videos. I have decided to optimize some of my own videos rather than downloading from the net >> what is the best resolution for Axim X5 Advanced running Pocket TV? I want it to be fairly smooth...

[Andy Whiteford]

This is entirely up to yourself. Video formatting is entirely down to your own preferences. After you know how you want it to look, you can decide what kind of quality / file size ratio you want to work with.

As an idea, I usually encode widescreen movies for my Pocket PC as 320 x 180 which is the ratio 16:9, the same as a widescreen tv.
I rotate the output by 90 degrees prior to encoding so I don't have to rely on the app on the Pocket PC doing this when it comes to playback and can view the movie in landscape.

Video and Sound codecs/bitrates are entirely an individual thing and depend on how good you want the final movie to look and how much storage space you have. It's best to play around and find a compromise you are happy with.

If you are limited in space, you can encode your movie at the resolution 240 x 135 (still 16:9) and do not rotate this prior to encoding and just playback in standard portrait on your Pocket PC. This is quite small on screen but still watchable and allows good quality at a smaller filesize.

BTW, if your original movie is in the aspect ratio 2.35:1 as many are, use the resolutions 320 x 136 or 240 x 102 to maintain the aspect ratio.

[PapaSmurfDan]

Do yourself a favor and ditch MPEG-1's first of all. PocketMVP does playback Divx 5 files at 320x240x30fps near perfect on my 400mhz Axim (and all of my encoded dvd rips have 0 frame skipping). If you must have mpeg1 playback, you can keep PocketTV around as it is sligltly better for those files. There has been many dicussions around here regarding encoding Divx's for playback in PocketMVP. Personally, I find a two pass encode at around 160-200kbps to look very good on the Axim screen. In the end with the audio encoded, my movies tend to be around 1.5-2mb/min. If you need a guide, pocketmatrix.com has a good dvd->divx guide taylored for PPC's (Just use divx 5.02, as it has been supported for a while now.)

However, this is probally very true for even PocketTV, You want your video to be 320 or 240 pixels wide (depending on orientation) and prerotated. Scaling on PPC's is a slow process compared to desktops, unless you have an E740 with the ATI chip on it.

[mirkazemisaman]

I totally forgot about the fact that PocketTV only plays Mpeg1... what is a good general "video player" for PPC? What formatts does PocketMVP support?

Thank you for the replies by the way.

[Andy Whiteford]

DivX. That's all you need to know. ;)

[PapaSmurfDan]

I totally forgot about the fact that PocketTV only plays Mpeg1... what is a good general "video player" for PPC? What formatts does PocketMVP support?

Thank you for the replies by the way.

PocketMVP supports Divx 4.x, 5.x, 3.11(unsuppored though), xvid(I have had issues with my encoded xvids though, I stick to Divx 5.02 for PPC's), and mpeg-1 for video. It supports both AVI and OGM Containers. For audio it supports ogg's and mp3's. In the rumor line, wma (audio) may be supported in the near future.

Mpeg1 support is not as great as PocketTV, however it does work well. If you are going to re-encode audio files to fit on your PPC, take a very close look into ogg's though. PocketMVP will support an OGG audio soundtrack in video files, however oggs do require more cpu power and it becomes a huge balance act of audio quality vs video quality :\ I just use low bitrate mp3s in videos.