Windows Media Player Question-HELP!

[robt]

Hello, All:
I'm new to the PPC group, and ever more frustrated trying to use my PPC Windows Media Player. Is there any simple way to view any type of video (movie trailers, music videos, etc.) without having to download some other app? I so want to impress people with the video capabilities of the iPaq, but the movie trailer clips at windowsmedia.com can't seem to be copied from my PC WMP7.1 to my PPC. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Sven Johannsen]

The reality is that the PPC MP has a very limited suite of video formats it supports. Predominantly it wants a wmv (windows media video). The desktop version supports a lot more. We have all longed for a MP upgrade that allows additions of more codecs to expand both the audio and video capabilities.

To help out though, Microsoft does offer a free app, Media Encoder, that you can find on the Windows Media web site that can convert a significant number of video formats to wmv, and even adjust size and frame rates to optimize for the small platform. This is great if have a digital video camera. While a recent movie trailer is a neat demo, a video of your own grandkid has a lot more personal impact.

[FredMurphy]

There's always PocketTV. Great for playing DVDs reencoded as MPEG1 from a large storage card.

Fred

[PhatCohiba]

Here is what I'd recommend:

First Get the Pocket Divx Player. Don't bother with the release 0.8 from projectmayo.com get the latest beta from http://home.adelphia.net/~mdukette/downloads.html.

Install it in main memory, doesn't work for me installed on the storage card. It can play MP3, MPEG1, ogg, and most importantly DIVX 4 & DIVX5 codex.

Just want to show off, go get some samples from the DIVX Pocket showcase:
http://www.divx.com/showcase/pocketshowcase.php

Want to do more, learn how to rip from DVD and encode for your pocket pc.

Go read at some rip and encode articles, with free tools to do the job at: http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/.
http://www.pdatweaks.com/howto.php?itemid=6.

I encode DIVX 5 for the pocket pc beta player .8j/k using the following settings:

Divx 5 Settings for Pocket PC
- Resize from 720x480 29fps (NTSC) to 320x208. (Divx must be divisible by 16 so 208 and not 213 or whatever would maintain the 4:3 ratio.)
- Drop every other frame down to 15 fps
- Reencode the audio down to 24bits MP3 MONO. (could be higher for music)
- Set the bitrate in the encoding to 160-200k depending on sound bandwith.
- Rotate 90 degrees so the player doesn't have to.

I've ripped and encoded the Patriots Superbowl dvd, it encodes down to 1 to 1.5 mb min, which is quite resonable.

You can demo some fine looking full screen video that will blow away that postage stamp in WMA.

Good Luck. Post your results.

ps. I also use the Pocket PC real player for streaming video from the internet, its pretty sweet. (http://www.real.com/realonemobile/download.html)

[spursdude]

if you have windows xp, you can use windows movie maker (should be in your program list) to reencode into windows media video. a downloaded episode of smallville, converted from a divx avi, takes about 60MB for 45 minutes of video. the quality is quite nice.

set windows movie maker to work for full-screen PDA.