Need an introduction lesson on movie encoding for PPC [Archive]

famousdavis

01-09-2004, 10:42 PM

I've seen a few posts regarding the encoding of a movie to play on the PPC. While generally speaking, this isn't of interest to me, here's a situation where it would be handy:

On long travel trips (in the plane or in the minivan), it'd be nice to give one of my kids my PPC, a pair of earbuds, and let them watch/listen to a Disney movie.

I have many Disney DVDs. I'm presuming that what makes this a cumbersome -- if not impossible -- task is that Disney probably has some copy-protection mechanism that prevents copy or reencoding from the DVD format to something playable on my PPC.

I don't have much by way of software to use. I have WMP on my PPC, which is what I presume I'd use to play the movie. I don't know if WMP on the PPC can play MPEGs or not, but if it can, I'd need to know how to convert my DVD-formatted movie to a filesize that fits the PPC.

And if it is impossible, practically speaking, because of Digital Rights laws and/or copy-protection on the DVD medium, just say so and I'll avoid a nights' work trying to make that happen.

Many thanks!

Ripper014

01-09-2004, 11:32 PM

famousdavis

01-12-2004, 07:23 PM

Do a search on the site... or even this forum and it will lead you to several posts that have links to guides for encoding. Any require software you can find on the net for free... I would recommend PocketMVP as a player... I have been using it for a few years as my movie player...

Encoding is not all the difficult... but it is time consuming...

Aww, shucks, I guess I could do that....but I was hoping that someone could point the ultimate thread that answers all questions and provides the clearest explanation of how to rip movies for playback on the PPC.

Do you have problems encoding Hollywwod (or Disney) DVDs that have some sort of copy-protection on them? I'm guessing that must be a problem, or else honest folks would legitimately copy movies from their own DVD library, but dishonestly share those copied movies using file-sharing services on the Internet.

Pat Logsdon

01-12-2004, 07:47 PM

Most DVD's need to be decrypted before you can rip them, due to the fact that they're region-locked. There are several tools available that can do this.

Among the highest-rated is DVD Decrypter v3.1.9.0, available for free on afterdawn (http://www.afterdawn.com/index-menu.cfm). It's not illegal to have, but I'm still not going to link to it. Try a Google search for "afterdawn + dvd decrypter".

When that program is run on your DVD, it'll spit out new versions of the .vob files that can then be re-encoded.

I've recently started using Dr. Divx (http://www.divx.com/divx/drdivx/) for these files, but there are a number of free applications available as well. Once Dr. Divx finishes a high-quality divx rip (I use the home theater setting), the resulting .avi file can be opened in Virtual Dub (http://www.virtualdub.org/), and re-encoded down to a size and bitrate that's viewable on a PPC.

As far as guides go, there are a few out there, some better than others. Here's a thread (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22554) I posted in recently, where I linked to a guide that I used when I first started re-encoding for the PPC.

It's kind of time consuming to get everything set up, but it's not really all that difficult. Once you do it once or twice, it's a snap, and it's VERY cool to watch a movie on your PPC.

Also, you won't be able to play DivX movies in WMP. As Ripper014 said, PocketMVP is the best (and I think the ONLY) solution for playing DivX on the PPC.

sracer

01-12-2004, 10:11 PM

For an easy-to-follow DVD->WMV encoding guide, check out mine:
http://myweb.cableone.net/evalondon/speedzone/vid.html

over 18,000 visitors can't be wrong. :wink: :lol:

maximus

01-13-2004, 02:24 AM

Encoding is not all that difficult... but it is time consuming...

Actually it depends on the speed of the PC that you are using. It usually takes less than 20 minutes to encode a complete movie into DIVX AVIs.

Aww, shucks, I guess I could do that....but I was hoping that someone could point the ultimate thread that answers all questions and provides the clearest explanation of how to rip movies for playback on the PPC.

http://www.bigdsvideo.com

It has the link to all the necessary softwares, the standard setting for good quality encoding ... all you need to have. Next step would be to play with the variable (bitrate :wink:) to make the output even smaller.

A full length movie can be compressed into a 90-100 megs DIVX AVI with decent quality.

famousdavis

01-13-2004, 06:15 AM

Ding-Dong-Dang!

Well, I'm working through the guide that Surgical Snack provided (thank you, Surgical Snack and others! :) ). I can't believe how many steps there are to this, Surgical! Wow!

But, amazingly, so far I've had no trouble following all those steps, although I have no idea what I'm doing. The only hitch so far was in trying to uncompress a .rar file -- I had to install WinRar to uncompress the .rar file, as I guess WinZip doesn't know anything about that file format (or isn't configured to recognize that file format).

Right now, I'm running the first of two passes that will create the DivX AVI file. Time to go to bed, I guess, as there is another 90 minutes to go before I can even begin the 2nd pass!

Wouldn't it be nice if DVDs just came with a PPC-ready version of the movie! 0X

Pat Logsdon

01-13-2004, 06:40 AM

Well, I'm working through the guide that Surgical Snack provided (thank you, Surgical Snack and others! :) ). I can't believe how many steps there are to this, Surgical! Wow!
You're welcome! Just remember that you can save your settings in Virtual Dub under File -> Save Processing Settings. This will save all of your filters, and even your compression info.

Right now, I'm running the first of two passes that will create the DivX AVI file. Time to go to bed, I guess, as there is another 90 minutes to go before I can even begin the 2nd pass!
VDub can do batch processing, too. When you go to save your first file as an .avi, name the file and pick the location, but then choose the checkbox that says "Don't run this job now; add it to job control so I can run it in batch mode". Then change your compression settings for the second pass, and do the same thing. Then do File -> Job Control -> Start, and go to bed! 8)

Wouldn't it be nice if DVDs just came with a PPC-ready version of the movie! 0X
Somehow, I don't think the MPAA would be very keen on that. :mrgreen:

Zathras

01-13-2004, 12:19 PM

Wouldn't it be nice if DVDs just came with a PPC-ready version of the movie! 0X

I've been thinking this for some time now. I've been thinking how you might market pocket movies. How much would you charge? If I've purchased a movie for $19-$29 I'm not going to want to buy the pocket version too.

I don't think it would be too much trouble to include the pocket version on the DVD since they are only 200meg or so. There'd have to be some way to copy protect the movie though. The movie makers would never want to distribute easily copied and shared versions of their movies. But, we are already doing that now. Just go the iPOD route and start selling the pocket movies cheaply and see what happens.

famousdavis

01-13-2004, 07:27 PM

Well, let everyone be forewarned -- the process of getting a movie from DVD to PPC-sized DivX-encoded movie file is LOOOONG! Mind you, I started with a long movie -- it was the first non-Disney one I grabbed out of my desk -- at about 180 minutes. But there's probably something on the order of 6 hours of file processing on my Pentium 2gig machine!

I finished cutting the movie, but it was too big for my SD card, and I didn't have time to split the AVI file before I had to leave for work, so I'm anxious to see if the final result is a winner or not.

Question: the movie I picked to transfer to my PPC was encoded way too darkly -- eg, the brightness control ought to have been boosted to get a pleasing picture on my monitor. Was there a filter in VirtualDub that I could have used to increase the brightness of the original DVD, so it would appear more brightly on my PPC?

I'll report later tonight on this newbie's first attempt at cutting a PPC movie. Given all the different software pieces required, I'm amazed I've gotten this far without hitting a brick wall.

famousdavis

01-13-2004, 07:39 PM

VDub can do batch processing, too. When you go to save your first file as an .avi, name the file and pick the location, but then choose the checkbox that says "Don't run this job now; add it to job control so I can run it in batch mode". Then change your compression settings for the second pass, and do the same thing. Then do File -> Job Control -> Start, and go to bed! 8)

Boy have you been helpful on this thread, Surgical! :D

I mentioned in my previous post how long this process is. It wouldn't be half-bad, though, to get to the point where I can do that two-pass process while I'm in bed sleeping. I could probably punch out one movie a night that way.

I'm really hoping my experiment works and I really can play a movie on my PPC tonight. My kids will think it's cool, and my wife -- who probably could care less -- will think it's helpful on a future road trip. Of course, the price of portable DVD players probably makes all this PPC-movie encoding work less useful (portable DVD players have a bigger screen and they just work without all this effort).

Pat Logsdon

01-13-2004, 08:31 PM

...something on the order of 6 hours of file processing on my Pentium 2gig machine!
That's kind of a long time - did you decrypt it first, and that's part of the 6 hours? Two pass encoding, or more?

I finished cutting the movie, but it was too big for my SD card, and I didn't have time to split the AVI file before I had to leave for work, so I'm anxious to see if the final result is a winner or not.
Tip: It's a piece of cake to chop up movies in VDub. Open up a clean instance of VDub and then open up your (too large) final processed file. Then make sure that both audio and video are set to "Direct Stream Copy". This will ensure that the cutting process won't result in further compressed files. Then simply position the slider at the start of the movie and go to Edit -> Set Selection Start. Then move the slider to where you want your first cut to be, and go to Edit -> Set Selection End. Then you can go to File -> Save as AVI, and it'll save just the highlighted portion. It should take under 30 seconds.

When that's done, just move the slider to the end (or the next cut) and select Edit -> Set Selection End, and save that section. Rinse, lather and repeat. :mrgreen:

Question: the movie I picked to transfer to my PPC was encoded way too darkly -- eg, the brightness control ought to have been boosted to get a pleasing picture on my monitor. Was there a filter in VirtualDub that I could have used to increase the brightness of the original DVD, so it would appear more brightly on my PPC?
Yup. I think it's called "Brightness", and if I recall correctly, it allows you to modify both the brightness and the contrast. It's in the video filter list - the same one with "resize" and "rotate".

Make sure you use the preview function in the Resize Filter window to ensure that you've got the settings how you want them before you start your encode.

I'll report later tonight on this newbie's first attempt at cutting a PPC movie. Given all the different software pieces required, I'm amazed I've gotten this far without hitting a brick wall.
I look forward to seeing that! It's kind of exciting, isn't it? There's definitely a feeling of reward when you see your hard work coming to fruition. :mrgreen:

Pat Logsdon

01-13-2004, 08:34 PM

Boy have you been helpful on this thread, Surgical! :D
No problem - I'm just glad you're finding it useful! :wink:

I'm really hoping my experiment works and I really can play a movie on my PPC tonight.
Please post back and let us know how it went, what you think, problems, weirdness, etc...

Zathras

01-14-2004, 12:46 AM

Good luck famousdavis. Sounds like you are making quick progress. I think it took me 3 weeks until I made a playable pocket DivX movie. I was convinced it was an urban legend for a while.

I recommend being patient. There are a LOT of steps and variables. I'd recommend making short clips at first so it doesn't take hours to see the results.

I've read also that Disney movies are the hardest to rip. That they do every trick they can think of to thwart copying. Check the forums at the two sites below for "Disney" and you will get a long list. These are my two favorite sites for movie making info and software too.

http://www.divx-digest.com
http://www.doom9.org/

maximus

01-14-2004, 01:59 AM

famousdavis

01-14-2004, 04:03 AM

"It's better to be lucky than good."

That's been a personal tagline of mine for years. In many respects, I'm a lucky guy (though the concept of luck conflicts with my theological understanding of the sovereignty of God, but then, this is a PPC forum, not a theology forum, so I'll just stop right here! :wink: ).

SUCCESS!

Can you believe it, the whole thing worked and I got my first movie -- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (no sniggering!) -- to play on my PPC?

I did hit a few bumps with the guide that Surgical pointed me to. Namely, the PPC player I downloaded from a link in the guide came up as corrupted by WinZip. So instead, everyone's raved about PocketMVP, so I downloaded that, installed it, and used that to play my DivX-encoded AVI movie.

I made a short clip of the loooong movie, put it on my SD card, and tried it out. At first, things were a little jittery, but that is probably because the start of the movie on the DVD is 16:9 ratio, then switches to 4:3 for the rest of the movie. As I played the clip a bit longer, I found that the video and audio worked, that they were in-sync, and that the landscape mode filled up my PPC's screen. Thankfully, PocketMVP is intuitive to use -- just tapping on the screen exits out of landscape mode and back into the program.

Now, I've split the 250MB movie into two 125MB parts, and I've put the first part on my SD card. I'm recharging the battery, and plan to watch the first cut (or at least some part of it) before bedtime.

The three older kids were fascinated -- as I expected they would be. My wife was mostly uninterested, as I expected her to be. :)

BTW, my 6-hours to do the work was a bit of a swag -- and it included the time to decrypt the original DVD.

I'll go through this effort at least once more, maybe to create my own "guide" for newbies.

The finished video was not as smooth as I'd like -- it feels like the kind of video that you get from using your digital camera to take a short AVI clip. I suppose there's ways to improve that, but the process is so intricate, I'd rather not try straying too far from the road to success just yet.

I've got more to say, but no time left at the moment to say it, so that's my report for now!

maximus

01-14-2004, 07:32 AM

Thankfully, PocketMVP is intuitive to use -- just tapping on the screen exits out of landscape mode and back into the program.

Actually I find that a bit annoying. I set the backlight to dim 1 minute of inactivity, hence after 1 minute of movie viewing, the backlight is off. When I tap the screen, pocketMVP exits play mode.

So before playing any movies, I have to set backlight to never dim, and when I am done with pocketMVP, i have to re-set the 1 minute dim again. Doh. Anyone has solution to the above ?

darrylb

01-14-2004, 11:04 AM

Zathras

01-14-2004, 12:00 PM

famousdavis, what ppc do you have?

I believe there are few ppc's that can play 32x240 smoothly. Two ppc's I can think of that might be able to are the the Asus A620 and the iPAQ 4155.

I have an iPAQ 2215 which is much faster than my old iPAQ 3900. Though the 2215 and the 4155 have the same basic processor, the 4155 is much faster with graphics. Bargain pda did a review of the 4155 and the graphics ratings made me want to cry. This was confirmed when I played some Windows Media 9 clips that played much smoother on a store's 4155.

http://www.bargainpda.com/reviews/default.asp?reviewID=240

Here are my favorite settings now for my 2215:

320x152@24fps, 220 kbps DivX video, 64kbps/44khz stereo Ogg -

For this setting I crop the sides of the original 2.35 (say 640x272) widescreen movie to a 2.1:1 ratio (576x272) and then resize to 320x152 to fill up more of the screen. If I left the movie at 2.35:1 it would have been 320x136.

320x176@24fps, 240kbps video, 64kbps/44khz stereo Ogg -

This is a simple 1/2 resize of a 16:9 ratio 640x352 movie. This is about the limit of my iPAQ 2215 for smooth playback without overclocking.

320x240@24fps, 330kbps video, 64kbps/44khz stereo Ogg -

320x240@24fps has always been my holy grail for smooth playback. I'm finally there, but I need to use Pocket Hack Master and overclock to 472 or 528mhz to get smooth playback at this setting.

A while back I started using Ogg Vorbis audio for my sound. I find 64kbps stereo Ogg to be about as good as 96kbps MP3 stereo. This helps me keep the file sizes down. Using Ogg creates a .ogm file instead of a .avi. These play fine using PocketMVP. If you want more info on how to use Ogg, let me know.

Tricks you can use to play 320x240 smoothly are decimating the framerate by 2 in Virtualdub to 12fps or cropping the top and bottom of the movie as much as you can stand (in units of eight) to say 320x224.

hipchick

01-14-2004, 02:28 PM

Actually I find that a bit annoying. I set the backlight to dim 1 minute of inactivity, hence after 1 minute of movie viewing, the backlight is off. When I tap the screen, pocketMVP exits play mode.

So before playing any movies, I have to set backlight to never dim, and when I am done with pocketMVP, i have to re-set the 1 minute dim again. Doh. Anyone has solution to the above ?

Easy fix :D All you need to do in PMVP is go to Settings --> Configure --> General tab --> Check the 'Keep Alive' box --> OK This will keep your device on.

Tip: Just remember that if you tap the screen when a file is playing, it justs pauses the play. To continue playing the file, tap the screen again. :mrgreen:

Pat Logsdon

01-14-2004, 05:36 PM

The finished video was not as smooth as I'd like -- it feels like the kind of video that you get from using your digital camera to take a short AVI clip. I suppose there's ways to improve that, but the process is so intricate, I'd rather not try straying too far from the road to success just yet.
What bitrate are you using? I noticed recently that the settings I used in the past did not work as well for the new DivX codec (5.1.1) and a Disney DVD (Pirates of the Carribean). My playback was a bit choppy on my first attempt as well. After trying a few different settings, I found that two tweaked settings resulted in great output:

First, I did NOT decimate frames at all, but rather trusted jeffmd's assertion (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22606) that this would not change the final file size. He was right! :oops: That was apparently not as important as I thought it was.

Second, I switched the resize filter compression to "Precise Bicubic" instead of "Bicubic".

The resulting video was very smooth, and looked very crisp.

I also tried someone's suggestion to set Pre-Processing to maximum (Extreme), but the video turned out horribly - everything was blurry, and it took about 30 minutes more to encode.

The changes I outlined above added perhaps 15-20 minutes to the previous encoding time.

Zathras

01-14-2004, 10:45 PM

Surgical, which Precise bicubic did you use? I see three options in Vdub:
(A=-0.75), (A=-0.60), and (A=-1.00).

Pat Logsdon

01-14-2004, 11:25 PM

Surgical, which Precise bicubic did you use? I see three options in Vdub:
(A=-0.75), (A=-0.60), and (A=-1.00).
I used -0.75. I didn't try the others, so I don't know if the outcome would be better or worse...

famousdavis

01-15-2004, 03:02 AM

Just to throw a spanner in the works. Looks like you have all solved the problem...

Has anyone tried this ('http://www.handango.com/PlatformProductDetail.jsp?siteId=1&jid=D6A12CF6EE3CF1FB4F635A6FEDXD2895&platformId=2&productType=2&productId=94375')?

It converts to WMP format in one go (well sort of). Looks simple to use though.

That is interesting! I think I could live with less-than-optimal results if I could have one program "do it all" for me. Fun as this little experiment has been, I'll eventually want to return to ease-of-use if I'm going to do this sorta work even infrequently. Life is short, you know? :wink:

famousdavis

01-15-2004, 03:07 AM

famousdavis, what ppc do you have?

I have the iPAQ 1910. Yes, it's a weakling from a processor standpoint, but I use Clear Speed to rev the processor for certain applications. Interetingly, the viewing experience didn't improve when I revved PocketMVP while watching my movie. So I conclude that the slightly jittery video is a function of my encoding process. I'd say that I'm getting 15 fps, when 24 fps or more would be preferable.

Still, your point about video display speed varying from iPAQ to iPAQ is intriguing. Perhaps my video performance really is a factor of the 1910, but not directly related to the speed of the core processor.

famousdavis

01-15-2004, 03:08 AM

famousdavis

01-15-2004, 03:14 AM

What bitrate are you using? I noticed recently that the settings I used in the past did not work as well for the new DivX codec (5.1.1) and a Disney DVD (Pirates of the Carribean). My playback was a bit choppy on my first attempt as well. After trying a few different settings, I found that two tweaked settings resulted in great output:

Ummm...I dunno right off the bat. I did whatever the guide told me to use. I do know that I installed the version 4 of DivX, not 5, because the guide said that PPC did not support version 5. I don't know whether the guide was up-to-date or not, but I didn't want to stray off the beaten path.

First, I did NOT decimate frames at all, but rather trusted jeffmd's assertion (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22606) that this would not change the final file size. He was right! :oops: That was apparently not as important as I thought it was.

I did decimate frames by 2 when I encoded. Reading jeffmd's post, it sounded like a trade-off: either you get smoother video, but it's not as crisp and detailed, or you get clearer, sharper video images but a slightly jittery video movement.

Second, I switched the resize filter compression to "Precise Bicubic" instead of "Bicubic".

The resulting video was very smooth, and looked very crisp.

I may follow your footsteps and see where that leads me. I need to work with smaller data files, though, so I can take, say, just one chapter from off the original DVD and work with that. Else, I'm up all night again, and I don't really want to do that (and neither does my wife!). :wink:

maximus

01-15-2004, 05:24 AM

Easy fix :D All you need to do in PMVP is go to Settings --> Configure --> General tab --> Check the 'Keep Alive' box --> OK This will keep your device on.

Tip: Just remember that if you tap the screen when a file is playing, it justs pauses the play. To continue playing the file, tap the screen again. :mrgreen:

Really ? On mine, 'Keep Alive' is already checked, but the screen still dims after 1 minutes. I thought that 'Keep Alive' is to keep the PPC from auto-off, not for the screen dimming ?

Yes, when tapping, it only pauses the movie, but it is also caused pocketMVP to exit from full screen mode.