Divx movies on PocketPC...how?

[syphix]

I have SmartRipper, DVD2AVI, TMPGEnc & VirtualDub 1.5.1 (the MPEG2 version). But I can't seem to get my movies small enough to fit on a 256mb SD card... I saw a post on here from someone who's put the movie "The Matrix" onto one (total size was something like 226mb!)...how? I've ripped my "O Brother Where Art Thou" DVD onto my drive, and it's in the process of stripping the audio off. How do recombine them into a small enough Divx file to fit?

[vincentsiaw]

try making your movie into WMA format, i mange to fit the whole 'Matrix' into less 200 mb, with reasonable frame rate and sound quality on ipaq 3900 series.

[syphix]

try making your movie into WMA format, i mange to fit the whole 'Matrix' into less 200 mb, with reasonable frame rate and sound quality on ipaq 3900 series.Hmmm....WindowsMedia...hows the video quality? And how exactly are you doing that? What software?

[Jude]

Check out the forums and encoding guides at forums.projectmayo.com and www.pocketmatrix.com first and all will be made clear to you regarding encoding DivX movies for the Pocket PC. Also, the later versions of Pocket MVP (which is THE DivX player for Pocket PCs) includes a pretty good encoding guide in its help file. It's available at www.pocketmvp.com A 256 MB SD card is quite adequate for most movies around 2 hours long.

Sure, its a lot easier to convert your movies to the WMV format (WMA is just for music/sound) using Windows Media Encoder or Windows Movie Maker. But once you've got the hang of encoding to DivX you'll begin to see the advantages of using this format. On an iPaq 3900 you can enjoy fullscreen 320x240 at 24 fps pretty easily. An equivalent WMV might stutter during busy scenes.

[Weyoun6]

Try using mono low kb audio and follow the pocketmatrix guides. If you keep trying until you get it down to the size you want.

[octop8]

Check out this link - it has a very comprehensive guide.

http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides

[Buddha]

Quality/size wise I wouldn't recommend WMV, its sucks compared to a good divx. If you want to know more checking the mentioned guides on pocket matrix is good and you can also have a look a this thread which discusses a lot of the aspects of divx on pocket pc:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8141


(BTW once you get the hang of it it should be no problem to fit a 1,5hour movie in 200MB and having 56MB left for something else... another tvshow maybe? :) )

[vincentsiaw]

Check out the forums and encoding guides at forums.projectmayo.com and www.pocketmatrix.com first and all will be made clear to you regarding encoding DivX movies for the Pocket PC. Also, the later versions of Pocket MVP (which is THE DivX player for Pocket PCs) includes a pretty good encoding guide in its help file. It's available at www.pocketmvp.com A 256 MB SD card is quite adequate for most movies around 2 hours long.

Sure, its a lot easier to convert your movies to the WMV format (WMA is just for music/sound) using Windows Media Encoder or Windows Movie Maker. But once you've got the hang of encoding to DivX you'll begin to see the advantages of using this format. On an iPaq 3900 you can enjoy fullscreen 320x240 at 24 fps pretty easily. An equivalent WMV might stutter during busy scenes.


Realy, 2 hours movie at less than 256 mb with 320 by 240 screen resolution and 24 fps?
i will be very pleased and happy if you can tell me the recepi to do these, what kind of software you actually use? and what kind of setting you use?

oh ya regarding encoding WMV, i use windows media Encoder version 9, but with special 'profile' if you intrested in trying my profile, i'll be glad to send you. :wink: [/quote]

[Jude]

Realy, 2 hours movie at less than 256 mb with 320 by 240 screen resolution and 24 fps?
i will be very pleased and happy if you can tell me the recepi to do these, what kind of software you actually use? and what kind of setting you use?


Filesize is all in the bitrate. A combined audio+video bitrate of 300 kbps or less for a 120 minute movie will surely fit into a 256 MB card. I usually set video bitrate at 200 kbps for animation or sitcoms, 200-250 kbps for movies, and 250-300 kbps for trailers, music videos, or other high-motion clips. I use Ogg Vorbis for my audio and set the audio bitrate at 48 kbps mono for movies/TV shows, or 64-80 kbps stereo for music videos. With these settings, you'll have no problem getting 24 fps 320x240 on an iPaq 39xx (as long as you're not running any other programs in the background). Performance may vary with other 400 mHz X-scale based Pocket PCs. On slower X-Scale Pocket PCs or those using 206 mHz StrongArm, of course you'll get lower frame rates, around 16-20 fps for 320x240 without dropping any frames.

Everything you need to know to encode can be found in the abovementioned guides and forums. The one single most important piece of software would be Virtualdub. And you need to install the DivX codec of course. I prefer to use 5.02 over 5.03 when encoding for PocketMVP.

[syphix]

AWESOME!! :D Thanks for the replies! Those guides at PocketMatrix REALLY helped: I'm almost to the encoding phase for "O Brother Where Art Thou"! I'm hoping to get it down to ~220mb. I'll post back here once I get it done, to write a short "success story"! :) Thanks again!

Jude: the aforementioned guides stated that PPC's couldn't handle Divx5...is this untrue? (they suggested Divx 4.something)

[Jude]

Jude: the aforementioned guides stated that PPC's couldn't handle Divx5...is this untrue? (they suggested Divx 4.something)

As long as you get the latest version of PocketMVP (it's at .8p now) encoding with DivX 5 is fine. Using that you can even play DivX on a Casio BE-300 (and that's not even a PPC!). Just don't use any of DivX 5's "Pro" features and you'll be fine.

[syphix]

Whoo-hoo!! Down to ~226mb w/ Divx5!! :D:D Ripped & stripped Star Wars 2: Attack of the Clones...it's on it's 2nd pass, looking to a bit larger than the 256 limit, so I'll have to split it...or buy a 512mb SD card....<shrugs> oh well...not at the price they're at right now!;)

Is there an advantage to doing a third or fourth pass? Divx5 shows "multipass, nth pass"...showing that it intends SOME to do a third or fourth pass....how would a third or fourth pass help? What's the advantage to it?

[Jude]

Uh-oh. I gather you used DivX 5.03. As of now Pocket MVP does NOT work with DivX 5.03's multipass encoding features. For two-pass encoding you have to encode using "original 1st-pass" and then "original 2nd pass". Which is why I still use DivX 5.02. I'll switch to 5.03 when Pocket MVP fully supports it (hopefully soon). Anyway, more passes mean better quality at smaller filesize.

If filesize goes over your limit, then just lower the bitrate a bit more.

[syphix]

Uh-oh. I gather you used DivX 5.03. As of now Pocket MVP does NOT work with DivX 5.03's multipass encoding features. For two-pass encoding you have to encode using "original 1st-pass" and then "original 2nd pass". Which is why I still use DivX 5.02. I'll switch to 5.03 when Pocket MVP fully supports it (hopefully soon). Anyway, more passes mean better quality at smaller filesize.

If filesize goes over your limit, then just lower the bitrate a bit more.AHHHHH!!!!....damn....I'll have to rip & strip that one all over again since I deleted those files after compression was done...I'll keep the 5.03 file for when PocketMVP DOES support it....

Where can I get a copy of 5.02? Divx.com only shows the "latest": 5.03

[Jude]

5.03 works fine as long as you don't use multipass or any of the profiles. Stick to using "original 1 pass" and "original 2 pass". You know, you really should take a look at forums.projectmayo.com

[syphix]

Looks like it's working great (especially since I can now put them on the SD card that finally came via UPS :) ). Only one problem: I use the "Decimate frame rate by -2" option, as suggested on PocketMatrix (http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/), and I'm encoding at 250kbps....but I'm seeing verticle lines on high action/panning scenes. It's VERY annoying. What options for encoding do you recommend?

[Jude]

I'm not sure what you mean, but those vertical lines could be interlacing artifacts. Just use the "deinterlace" filter in virtualdub. There are also lots of other better deinterlacing filters available such as "smart deinterlace " and "deinterlace area based". Just do a google search for virtualdub filters and they'll crop up, try to find which one works for you. When the source is a rip from a film on a DVD I like to use the "Dynamic Field Order Correction" filter too.

[syphix]

Jude - thanks! Deinterlacing did it! And on a 1-pass encoding (I'm too impatient sometimes! ;) ), it looks GREAT!! And "Xmen" is down to ~205mb! Thanks!

[Jude]

Pocket MVP updated! Latest version is 0.8q which now fully supports DivX 5.03 new features including profiles and multi-pass encoding. Try encoding with multi-pass, the quality you can get at low bitrates is astounding. More passes = better quality, but you need to do a minimum of three to see the improvement.

[syphix]

Great to hear! Glad I didn't delete those few movies I encoded in Divx5 multi-pass: I can now watch them! :D Thanks!

[mcasanova]

In my experience, I've tried to compress with Divx 4.xx and PocketMVP froze. I re-encoded with 5.xx and works like a charm

[syphix]

SUCCESS!! Divx5 multi-pass movies play FINE in PocketMVP!! Many thanks to Jade: I'll get to watch "Band of Brothers" on the plane during my upcoming vacation! :D

[Willmonwah]

THANKSS!!!!!!!!!!

This was the answer to my 3 hours of trying to put a 30 minute video onto Pocket MVP.

I should have looked here first :D

[Wil]

[targetdrone]

Success at last!!! I used Gordian Knot and broke down Back to the Future. I have a 1gb file for the computer (which I am about to delete), and kept trying things. I later used Windows Movie Maker to combine a 125mb .avi clip and a 26.8mb .mp3 sound clip into a 198mb .wmv that plays on my Axim, although slightly choppy and I have to use Windows Media Player to watch it. Is this a good size for a 1 hr 56min movie?

[Buddha]

The size is ok but if you have an avi and mp3 its useless to recompress it as a wmv... just combine the audio and the video with virtualdub and use PocketMVP to play it, which is a much better Media Player than the MS one

[dh]

Success at last!!! I used Gordian Knot and broke down Back to the Future. I have a 1gb file for the computer (which I am about to delete), and kept trying things. I later used Windows Movie Maker to combine a 125mb .avi clip and a 26.8mb .mp3 sound clip into a 198mb .wmv that plays on my Axim, although slightly choppy and I have to use Windows Media Player to watch it. Is this a good size for a 1 hr 56min movie?

If you use divx5 and follow the guide on pocketmatrix, you will be able to get a super quality movie for about the same file size.

I couldn't believe the quality from this it's brilliant. I'm actually going to try a lower bitrate to see if I can get the file even smaller without losing too much quality.

[syphix]

Possible problem with PocketMVP .8q...I get stutters (video & audio pause for a second, then resume) every 1.5 minutes or so. I'm turning on cache to see if it fixes this. Could it be my Axim, my SD card, my card reader (which transfers the video file to the card), my computer, VideoDub??? Damn...just saw it glitch after turning on cache...I'll try upping the amount it caches.

[syphix]

UPDATE: Found the problem - Pocket Hack Master. I'm growing increasingly irritated by this program: took me 10 days to get a registration code, then it makes other programs (most recently PocketMVP) glitch (I believe it's the scaling back of the processor power that's causing the stutters..not quite sure). Turning it off solves this problem, though, but makes me question why I paid for it... :roll:

[Jude]

There's a new release out, 0.8r, it fixes the stuttering problem and some other bugs like the viewport jumping problem in iPaq 38xxs.

[syphix]

Knew you'd come thru, Jude! ;) Thanks! I haven't noticed any stutters following closing Pocket Hack Master, but I haven't been playing many files since then, either. I'll simply update to .8r anyway to avoid other possible glitches.