This Card Makes Me Gig(gle)!

[Brad Adrian]

Keeping true to my W?BIC ("Why? Because I Can") nature, I finally broke down and got a new 1 gigabyte compact flash card for my Pocket PCs. I know it's probably an extreme case of overkill. But, hey, you know how much we love our extreme toys. I plan to load the card up with a couple of MPEG movies (about 300MB each) for an upcoming trip and a ton of music (Just how many songs are in a "ton," anyway?).<br /><br />If you had (or have) a CF card this large, what would you load it up with? Anybody out there already maxxed out a card this huge?

[ricksfiona]

I gotta wait for an affordable 1GB SD card. Affordable being around $150.

With 1GB, I'd convert my favorite DVD's to MPEG's and take one of them with me for my own pleasure and to whoo the non-techies. I'd load most of the card with MP3 and rest with business data.

[AndrewLubinus89]

I suppose I would stick a couple divx videos on it as well as every cd I have and every cd my sister has and hey while I'm at it I'll stick every cd my mom has as well. (or is this turning my cds into mp3s illegal?). And I would stick all my e-books and all my games onto it. :-D

[etalianstallion]

I purchased a 1GB SanDisk CF card recently ($140 after a $75 rebate) and so far I have 3 movies on there. Still have a good 300 MB left for music. Just haven't had too much time to tinker with it lately but I do plan to fill it up soon. :D

Oh, the endless possibilites. Can't wait for a 1GB SD card that is reasonable in price so that I can free up my CF slot on my Axim in case I need to go wireless or get a GPS.

Anyone got the Pretec 3GB CF card (is that even out yet)? Yes, that's right, I said 3GB. Now THAT's the mother of all CF cards...

[Cracknell]

I would rip CD at higher rate, if not .wav. hah, that would fill up that CF in no time. if a full sound CD is about 600MB, the CF might fit 2 album or so.

(well, there your have it how many songs are in a "ton")

[rzanology]

I'd rip and convert my gladiator into an MPEG, throw a few high res PICS on there....and top it all off with all my pdf manuals I own :)....I love you guys man...never though I'd see the day people think just like me....just for nothing, i just got my hands on a wifi cf card :D there goes the neighborhood and their AP's

[Animaster]

Why wasting Space with an MPEG Movie? Try to encode the movies as DivX.

I´ve done some tests with the Pocket MVP Player, which plays DivX Movies, as well as Mpeg I, Ogg Vorbis Audio and MP3. How about that:
A 90 min Movie in good quality, 24 fps, fullscreen (landscape mode) with MP3 Stereo-Audio at about 140 MB. All you need is DVDx + Virtual DUB. And some Time to test the perfect Settings. 8)

I´ve even encoded StarWars, Episode 1 as Divx. It´s about 2 hours long and has 56 MB. OK , it´s not Fullscreen and not really what I would call good quality, but it´s watchable.

On my 512 MB CF, I have about 3 complete Movies and lots of MP3´s. Hopefully I´ll get one of those 1GB Cf-Cards here in Germany.

The Pretec Card with 3 GB was only a Prototype as far as I know. Well I even thought about ordering one, I guess about 2500 $ was the prize for a prototype 8O

[jizmo]

One more voice for MVP, quality is great with much lower filesizes. I've done 100mb movies with 25fps and the quality is way better than satisfactory.

With divx, 1gb flash card holds easily more than ten hours of video on your PDA. That's one whole season of Simpsons plus a full lenght movie. Should keep you occupied for awhile ;)

/jizmo

[dMores]

i'd fill it to the brim with "that '70s show" and giggle everywhere i watch it.
(my favorite!)

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I have two 512MB SD cards. One is inserted into the SD slot and the other is inserted into the CF slot using the Panasonic SD-to-CF adapter.

Here's yet another vote for PMVP. Never thought one application could be so important to me. But I've ripped my share of music videos, movies, etc. That combined with OGG files (instead of MP3/WMA) for listening pleasure and you have an app that can't lose!!

[Ben909]

I managed to fill out a 1Gb Microdrive card with about 100mb of installed programs and the rest taken up with a load of MP3's. My PPC was hooked up to my car stereo and mounted on the dashboard 8) . I have since reverted back to a 256 SD card, because I preferred the slimmer option of not having to use a CF sleeve (on an iPaq 3870).

[MadAxeMan]

(Just how many songs are in a "ton," anyway?).


100

[sponge]

Well, I've had no problem filling my 512MB CF card. ~250 MB of apps and games, and the rest music videos at around 6-12MB each, and 5 Aqua Teen Hungerforce episodes about 15MB a piece.

[Cypher]

I've got a 256MB SD and a 512MB CF card that are nearly permanently resident in my PPC. The SD holds the vast majority of my files and installed software. The CF is essentially for storing pictures, movies, and other huge files. Still, it's only about 2/3 full at any given time.

BTW, is that a metric tonne of music or were you using english units?

[trane4]

My passion is music. Currently on my card: Beethoven symphonies, sonatas, string quartet, Miles Davis cds, Bach - more than half left over for more.

A 256mb SD card is on the way for mostly books and more music.

Amazing to have over a gigabyte of music, books incl. dictionaries in your pocket!

[CoreyJF]

Before I switched to the Toshiba, I had the 2 gig pccard drive for my IPAQ. Easily filled it up. Over a gig of MP3 on there alone. I also recorded some TV shows with snapstream at the PPC level.

[don dre]

I have a 1 GB microdrive. I've got it full with mp3's, pic's, programs, and a divx file.

[patwoods]

I´ve done some tests with the Pocket MVP Player, which plays DivX Movies, as well as Mpeg I, Ogg Vorbis Audio and MP3. How about that:
A 90 min Movie in good quality, 24 fps, fullscreen (landscape mode) with MP3 Stereo-Audio at about 140 MB. All you need is DVDx + Virtual DUB. And some Time to test the perfect Settings. 8)

Can you maybe point me to a tutorial for getting the settings right on VirtualDub and DVDx if you had a moment? I'm a PPC (and PC) n00b (I am still a mac-lover first and foremost) and have not had the opportunity to learn how to rip my DVD's down to PPC size yet.

Any help or direction is really appreciated! Thanks!

[Brad Adrian]

I've actually been having a hard time getting Pocket MVP to work on my Axim. I installed it to the SD card, and it seems to run okay, until I try to play a video. It doesn't run, and the control bar at the top of my screen disappears, requiring a soft reset.

UPDATE: I must have grabbed an older version, because I downloaded it from another site and it's working now.

[Sanjay Srikonda]

I use it to backup my work to the card. I also use it as my own personal walkman.

With the nexipax dual CF card plus battery, I get the walkman I always wanted, PLUS surfing the web while on the way home or around town and great battery life to boot.

[welmoed]

Where would I find the software to turn a DVD into a file that I could play with PocketMVP? Right now I'm just using the player for MP3s but I would love to show off a bit more :wink: .

--Welmoed

[luebster]

This is from another thread you can read here (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8141&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10).
Ask yourself this before you begin. How bad do you want to watch movies on your Pocket PC and why do you want to do this? For me, personally, I have some down time at work and I have the ability to watch a movie during that time, read a book, play a game, etc. I also drive quite a bit and enjoy being able to watch it while my wife drives or while I drive, she can watch a movie on her PPC.

The reason why I ask you this is because it takes up to 4 hours (depending on the computer you have) to encode a movie. It's slow... it's not hard, nor "daunting." It takes approximately 180-200 megabytes of space, so you have to have some type of memory card. Are you willing to let go of this much space for one movie?

If you're still willing to do all of this then do the following:


1.) Learn some terms in this glossary; in case it becomes confusing !:

http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/

2.) Go to this website and save the website and all of its contents onto your computer (in Internet Explorer: FILE->SAVE AS->PICK A DIRECTORY TO SAVE IT TO THEN->SAVE) you're going to use it a LOT for reference. It's a good tutorial; and I would have written one myself, but this does an excellent job at doing it, so don't fix what isn't broken:

http://www.pocketmovies.net/dvdrip.php

NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU SAVED THE WEBPAGE AS "WEBPAGE COMPLETE!"

3.) Download SmartRipper:

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/smartripper.cfm

This rips the VOB files (see glossary; #1 above).

4.) Download TMPGEnc:

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

This merges the VOB files and the audio files together to create an .MPEG.

5.) Download DVD2AVI:

http://arbor.ee.ntu.edu.tw/%7Ejackei/dvd2avi/

This extracts the audio from the DVD files.

6.) Load the DVD you wish to rip into your DVD drive on your computer and follow the EXACT instructions on that tutorial! I can't stress this enough! It is setup in a way that you CAN NOT FAIL! It's going to take a while so don't think something is wrong with the process, it's just a pain in the neck.

7.) After your .MPG (.MPEG) file is complete you're going to have a very large file. I personally don't agree with putting a .MPG on my Pocket PC due to the fact that it's just too large. I always send it through Windows Movie Maker to compress it down to 100-200 megs; if your using Windows XP then you're in luck.

8.) Download Windows Movie Maker:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/downloads/moviemaker2.asp

9.) Import your .MPG into Windows Movie Maker and save it using the Pocket PC format that is already available for you (back in the day we used to have to do this manually; that was a task).

10.) After your movie is done then put it on your card and enjoy!



References and personal opinion:


-Use Dolby Dobly Digital Sound for audio
-Use 48->44.1 kHz for audio sampling
-Download, register and use PictPocket Cinema as your viewer instead of Windows Media Player. It supports 12bit dithering which makes all movies look better:

http://www.digisoftdirect.com/Products/PictPocketCinema.html

[PhatCohiba]

I´ve done some tests with the Pocket MVP Player, which plays DivX Movies, as well as Mpeg I, Ogg Vorbis Audio and MP3. How about that:
A 90 min Movie in good quality, 24 fps, fullscreen (landscape mode) with MP3 Stereo-Audio at about 140 MB. All you need is DVDx + Virtual DUB. And some Time to test the perfect Settings. 8)

Can you maybe point me to a tutorial for getting the settings right on VirtualDub and DVDx if you had a moment? I'm a PPC (and PC) n00b (I am still a mac-lover first and foremost) and have not had the opportunity to learn how to rip my DVD's down to PPC size yet.

Any help or direction is really appreciated! Thanks!

I'm so exicited you've given me an opportunity to talk about PMVP. Its sweet.

Links you need:

Get the latest beta version of the software from: Pocket MVP Downloads (http://home.adelphia.net/~mdukette/downloads.html)

If you have questions or want to lurk out good info on creating DIVX files (like the Divx 5.03 problem with PMVP) go to
Project Mayo PocketMVP Encoding Forum (http://forums.projectmayo.com/viewforum.php?forum=25)
If you have player questions go to the Project Mayo PocketMVP Player forum (http://forums.projectmayo.com/viewforum.php?forum=23)

Some good encoding walkthrougs:

http://forums.projectmayo.com/viewtopic.php?topic=6013&forum=25

http://www.jens-seiler.de/pocketpc/pocketdivx-en.html

Mother of all walkthroughs from Pocket Matrix (though its for old version of Divx (4) and the old player)
http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/dvd2divx/


Start small, so you can work out your problems. Don't start with a 2 hour movie that would take a year to encode, just clip out a scene or a video that you want to play with.

(btw. I'm ripping a elmo video as we speak, my two year old is now pointing to my ipaq going "Elmo!, Elmo!" Just call me geeky dad!
Though this still doesn't compare on the geek scale to loading Web Favorites onto my Amex Blue smart chip and getting it to work with a PCMCIA Smart Card reader in my laptop.)

[Gen-M]

Brad - it will not take much time for the answer to the question to become obvious (but different for each person).

Storage obeys a parallel to Parkinson's Law:

Storage Needs grow to exceed the Storage Available. 8)

In my case I have my library of ebooks on my 2 gig hard drive and I don't have enough room for my music! :wink:

That's why I just got a 5 gig drive. :lol:

[dacs29]

Ahh...1 GB??

I have a 20 GB HD hooked up to my iPAQ using a PCMCIA external HD enclosure.

Mostly, it's used for storing lots of MP3s so I have access to them in the car.

David

[Kaber]

1GB of sniffed packets (http://www.cam.com/vxsniffer.html)... delicious.

*the following post was made for educational purposes only. No APs, living or dead, were hurt during this post.

[CharlesWilcox]

I bought the 1 gig from amazon at $140 after the $75 rebate.

I've encoded a bunch of home movies to play at 240x180 15fps... Not full screen, but no dropped frames and a very clear image. The non-techies are wowed when I show them pictures of my kids on my Axim. Then I pull out a 3 minute movie of my family singing happy birthday to my daughter at the hospital the day she was born... Not a dry eye in the house... :cry:

I also have about 6 hours of NYPD Blue, a movie - Spy Game recorded through my ATI AIW Card by Snapstream... and about 300MB to spare. :D

[ExtremeSIMS]

I am taping the current season of Coupling on BBC America to MiniDV, then importing to my Mac. I burned a DVD of the first 3 episodes, and now I can re-run the MOV to AVI or something else to watch on my Pocket PC.
When my wife goes shopping, being able to watch shows, read offline (or online web, if I am near the Apple store, or perhaps now at Starbucks since the T-Mobile price dropped), etc. is a boredom fighter!

[slothdog]

Great thread to start on the day I get my tax returns... mwuahah.... :twisted:

[PetiteFlower]

(Just how many songs are in a "ton," anyway?).


100

Nah, a ton of songs is OBVIOUSLY 2000 songs!

[Solarix]

1GB of Memory on an expansion card? What would I put on it? Simple - Fight Club, The Craft, and Monty Python & the Holy Grail in DivX format.

[sponge]

I would suggest the PocketMatrix guides, very good tutorial:

http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/

[ghostppc]

Ahh...1 GB??

I have a 20 GB HD hooked up to my iPAQ using a PCMCIA external HD enclosure.

Mostly, it's used for storing lots of MP3s so I have access to them in the car.

David

dacs29,

Where did you get the drivers for the IPAQ to see your external hd? 8O

[ctmagnus]

dacs29,

Where did you get the drivers for the IPAQ to see your external hd? 8O
Answering in dacs29's place, this (http://www.phm.lu/PocketPC/Articles/SCSI/) may be the answer.

[bmhome1]

PCMCIA hard drive driver here:

http://www.tjotala.com/hardware/storagebrick/default.htm

[Konsole]

What bit rates do people use for Divx?

lets say 320x240 @ 15-25fps, w/ mp3 audio... what bit rate?

Note, I am using a 200Mhz Xscale... which i could overclock to 300.

Is my 200mhz cpu going to just eliminate the possiblility for divx?

Ive got a 256mb SD card, but its mostly filled with excell and word docs. i also have a bunch of technicall docs on it for work. I have a few mp3's but I dont really use it as an mp3 player very much.

Basicly I want to know what should work on this thing. Everything I have tried so far is jumpy. I use PocketDivX right now.

[dacs29]

PCMCIA hard drive driver here:

http://www.tjotala.com/hardware/storagebrick/default.htm
That's the place. Only I got a DN-Boy kit off Ebay for $30.

David

[Kaber]

Sometimes it sounds like a race car garage up in here.

The "my workspace/home setup" picture thread was a great example.