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Jason Dunn
11-24-2002, 12:33 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/bridgman/02november18.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/...2november18.asp</a><br /><br /></div>I have no idea who Galan Bridgman is, but he seems to know a thing or two about digital video. He's written a useful article on converting video to a format that works on the Pocket PC. It's unfortunate that even though the 9 Series encoder is at release-candidate status, you have to use the 7.1 Encoder for Pocket PC video.<br /><br />Which reminds me of the incorrect statement I made in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735618739/jasondunn-20/">the book</a> - I was under the impression at the time (late September) that WMP 8.5 would have full support for 9 Series Windows Media Video. Which of course it doesn't. :oops: It was, ah, a little challenging getting 9 Series information, but 9 Series video support won't be added to WMP until the next version (presumably WMP 9).<br /><br />"You can do some amazing things with digital video in Windows XP, such as making home movies to carry on a Pocket PC. In this column, I'll help you optimize video for the Pocket PC, using video creation tools available from Microsoft. Using Windows Movie Maker, the movie creation application included with Windows XP, is the easiest way to make your own videos to play on your Pocket PC. It's not a high-end tool designed for professionals, but you can use it to create videos encoded for viewing on a mobile device with limited power, such as a Pocket PC."

/dev/niall
11-24-2002, 02:06 AM
You can use the v9 encoder to create movies for the PocketPC, am I missing something?

jizmo
11-24-2002, 02:12 AM
I used Divx to pack a 1h 30min movie to +-70mb more than one year ago. Did I miss something about optimizing to mobile devices here? :wink:

/jizmo

Sheynk
11-24-2002, 02:30 AM
The problem with doing it on Encoder, is that u get a slide show not a movie, the quality is horrid in comparison to other way to encode. Go to www.pocketmovies.net they have lots of tips for making clips ofr ppc

heyday
11-24-2002, 03:32 AM
DiviX is the only way to go.

Heyday

/dev/niall
11-24-2002, 04:39 AM
The problem with doing it on Encoder, is that u get a slide show not a movie, the quality is horrid in comparison to other way to encode. Go to www.pocketmovies.net they have lots of tips for making clips ofr ppc

Converted an episode of Farscape about a month ago (to watch while flying to Ireland) using Encoder 9; it was just fine; a nice balance of quality and size. I may have tweaked the codec used, but you can definitely produce decent results with the current Windows Encoder for the PocketPC.

DivX is indeed nice, but last time I checked it didn't decode 5.02, right? I'll probably start using it on the iPaq again once they do support the most recent codec.

Jason Dunn
11-24-2002, 05:32 AM
You can use the v9 encoder to create movies for the PocketPC, am I missing something?

You can, but you can't use the 9 Series video codecs - you need to change the codecs back to 7.1. Or am I missing something?

heyday
11-24-2002, 05:33 AM
The latest is supported I believe but I still use 4.x and it works fine.

Jason Dunn
11-24-2002, 05:33 AM
The problem with doing it on Encoder, is that u get a slide show not a movie, the quality is horrid in comparison to other way to encode. Go to www.pocketmovies.net they have lots of tips for making clips ofr ppc

Naw, I disagree - the default template in the 7.1 Encoder works just fine to create movies. Now it's not full screen by default in the template, which is what the 9 Series encoder offers.

Jason Dunn
11-24-2002, 05:34 AM
Converted an episode of Farscape about a month ago (to watch while flying to Ireland) using Encoder 9; it was just fine; a nice balance of quality and size. I may have tweaked the codec used, but you can definitely produce decent results with the current Windows Encoder for the PocketPC.

Yeah, you must have changed the video codec to 7.1 - they problem is, at least on my system, that when I used the Pocket PC template and went into the video codec options, I could only select from among three 9 Series choices - WMP 7 codecs weren't listed! I never quite figured that one out...

Ultimately the Pocket PC WMP team really put us in a bind by not having a 9 Series-compatible player ready to go. :cry:

rudolph
11-24-2002, 05:39 AM
The latest is supported I believe but I still use 4.x and it works fine.

Yep, it supports 5.02. Well the latest alpha version (.8L) does anyway, I'm not sure about the .8 release (I can't remember).

http://forums.projectmayo.com/index.php is where you can find more info abou pocket Divx from the fourms there.

You can download the latest release at: http://home.adelphia.net/~mdukette/

/dev/niall
11-24-2002, 06:14 AM
You can use the v9 encoder to create movies for the PocketPC, am I missing something?

You can, but you can't use the 9 Series video codecs - you need to change the codecs back to 7.1. Or am I missing something?

Nope. I misunderstood you... thought you were saying you had to use the old software to use the 7.1 codec. My bad. ;)

/dev/niall
11-24-2002, 06:21 AM
Yeah, you must have changed the video codec to 7.1 - they problem is, at least on my system, that when I used the Pocket PC template and went into the video codec options, I could only select from among three 9 Series choices - WMP 7 codecs weren't listed! I never quite figured that one out...

I thought the same thing; bad UI I think. Those three codecs are for audio; the video codecs are right below (where you can select the old 7.1 codec). The v9 audio codec works fine on the current Pocket PC WMP (and on the 7.1 desktop version).

ppcsurfr
11-24-2002, 08:09 AM
The trick here is to make your own profile.

I've made my own profiles for the Pocket PC and they all seem to play really well. With the X-Scale ASUS I could encode a 20fps clip and it plays really well still keping it at a good quality 225K at about 1.6MB per minute.

Similarly, Pocket TV would yield 24fps at the same size... for a highly compressed file, I would say this is really great.

For regular StrongARM devices, I can only get 15fps... butt it seems that with the new WMP 8.5... I might be able to push it a bit more and probably squeeze out another 1 to 3 fps with WMP on the Pocket PC. If I can run it at 20fps on a StongARM device in full screen mode... I'd be very happy.

ppcsurfr

Mobile Bob
11-24-2002, 09:08 PM
The trick here is to make your own profile.

I've made my own profiles for the Pocket PC and they all seem to play really well. With the X-Scale ASUS I could encode a 20fps clip and it plays really well still keping it at a good quality 225K at about 1.6MB per minute.

Similarly, Pocket TV would yield 24fps at the same size... for a highly compressed file, I would say this is really great.

For regular StrongARM devices, I can only get 15fps... butt it seems that with the new WMP 8.5... I might be able to push it a bit more and probably squeeze out another 1 to 3 fps with WMP on the Pocket PC. If I can run it at 20fps on a StongARM device in full screen mode... I'd be very happy.

ppcsurfr

Thank you for the information. This is exactly what I needed to know to get my home digital video to play on my PPCs with good quality. I had tried the three standard PPC profiles provided in Movie Maker, and none of them produced acceptable quality video (although the audio was outstanding).

And thank you Jason for posting a link to the Bridgman article. That article, and most of the posts in this thread, have been very helpful. :)