Movies on your Pocket PC

[Shaun Stuart]

I like to watch video on my Ipaq but have never tried watching a whole movie yet. I am interested in your experience - how often, if at all, do you watch full length movies.

[Dermot81]

I watch movies all the time on my ipaq 3950. I actually prefer watching on my ipaq than on my desktop because I can lie down on my bed, throw on some headphones and watch in peace. In fact, after encoding for the ipaq, the movies actually run a lot more stable than my desktop. My desktop likes to stutter the sound sometimes when playing a movie (i think because of bad clusters on my hard drive).

Anyway, I usually just queue a new movie every other night on direct connect, go to sleep, the next night I put it into virtual dub for encoding, and then by the morning it is ready to go.

I have a wifi connection, so I just stream the movies through that, works great. With PHM and my ipaq running at 472, through trial and error, every movie I encode now is at native 24 fps (no decimation), 320x180 (roughly), 22hz mono mp3 compression, and 275kbps video bitrate. The movies look great, and usually at the end of the 2 hour movie only 1-2 frames have been dropped!

The only complaint I have is one in every three movies I encode has a short 2-3 second lag between video and audio, still working on fixing that just need to fiddle around with Vdub a bit more.

[Steven Cedrone]

I have ripped a few movies (and tested them) for traveling, but I haven't watched them yet (read ebooks instead)...

Steve

[Weyoun6]

Depending on the screen, divx movies can look better on the ppc than on your desktop.

[disconnected]

I probably would (on plane trips, especially) if someone would write an app that were really simple to use to get movies from DVD to PPC form.

Many kind people have written instructions for this, but after the third paragraph or so my eyes glaze over and I give up reading.

[possmann]

what would the average size of the movie be - say a 2 hour movie - how many MB of storage are we looking at?

[Don't Panic!]

I've looked at several full Length films from FIlmspeed and Mazingo but unfourtunately your poll is to specific for me to vote in, I only watch movies every now and then. sometimes going months without viewing one.

Don't Panic!
Bobby

[delfuhd]

Well I recently encoded Fight Club to mpeg and made a VCD out of it, but I had to make two cuz the file was just over a gig! and that's what, a 2 hour movie and ten minutes or so? Not exactley sure, but I'm very skeptical on video on my iPAQ because of the size of the movies I'd like to have on there...

[Pat Logsdon]

I watch movies just about every day. I can usually squeeze in an hour or two of video and the same for reading an e-book.

...one in every three movies I encode has a short 2-3 second lag between video and audio, still working on fixing that just need to fiddle around with Vdub a bit more.
Have you tried adding the rotate filter in Vdub BEFORE the resize filter? I had the same problem you described, and it went away for some reason after I switched the order.

Well I recently encoded Fight Club to mpeg and made a VCD out of it, but I had to make two cuz the file was just over a gig! and that's what, a 2 hour movie and ten minutes or so? Not exactley sure, but I'm very skeptical on video on my iPAQ because of the size of the movies I'd like to have on there...
You might want to try the DivX format instead of MPEG. Better quality, MUCH smaller file size. There's a very good guide on how to convert video to this format at Pocket Matrix (http://www.pocketmatrix.com/guides/dvd2divx/).

[Buddha]

I often have a movie or an episode from some series or program (which I either ripped from dvd or recorded from tv) with me. Just in case, should a 'dead' hour come up or should I have to wait longer than expectedfor someone or something.

[jaja_75]

What is the best VGA-out for watching movies on the move ? :roll:

http://www.lifeview.com.tw/eng/images/video_cable.gif

Colorgraphic Voyager CF:
Pro : VGA, S-Video, NTSC/PAL composite video
Con : 2 fps 320*240 (with PocketTV)

Margi Presenter to Go CF:
Pro : VGA
Con : 3 fps 320*240 (with PocketTV), no S-Video, no NTSC/PAL composite video

IA Presenter CF VGA:
Pro : VGA, S-Video, NTSC/PAL composite video
Con : don't work with PocketTV

LifeView FlyPresenter CF:
Pro : VGA, S-Video, NTSC/PAL composite video, 20 fps 320*240 (with PocketTV)

Toshiba Pocket PC e740, e750 and e755 Expansion Pack:
Pro : VGA, ( + USB host ), (CF slot free)
Con : no S-Video, no NTSC/PAL composite video
?? fps 320*240 (with PocketTV)

Reference :
http://www.lifeview.com.tw/eng/pro_...comparison.html

[ppcvidz.com]

I've figured out how to convert media to pocket PC in two simple steps:

1. Using the software found here: http://www.share2.com/dvdripper/ I convert a DVD to a VCD (MPEG-1) and save it to my local hard-drive with "Infinite" selected for size so that the software doesn't break the file into parts. A 2 hour 15 min movie was about 1.6GB if I recall correctly and about 4 hrs to encode (Little hint - start encoding before going to bed, it will be done when you wake up).

2. Using Windows Movie Maker 2.0 that comes free with Windows XP, I import the video of the movie I want to make. Make sure that you uncheck the box on the bottom left "Open File" menu (Sorry I can't recall at the moment what it's called). Unchecking that box doesn't let WMM2.0 break the movie into different smaller files for individual editing. Leaving it checked makes it take 10-15 minutes to import a movie rather than about 20 seconds. Drag the video to the "timeline" at the bottom of the screen, then save your movie. When you save it, choose "show more options" and it will let you choose different encoding types. I always choose "Movie for Pocket PC (Fullscreen) - 218kps" and then it takes about 1hr to save a movie. That 1.6GB movie is now about 215MB (I may be slightly wrong here, I'm trying to do this from memory).

So that's it! In two simple steps and only 5 hrs (On an Athlon XP2200+, 512MB DDR333, 60GB IBM 7200RPM 2MB cache, Lite-on 16x DVD) I have full length films that can be played on Windows Media Player.

If you don't feel like paying for the software, I found a serial number at the bottom of this forum thread: ***URL Removed*** which is where I first found out about the software. Having tried it and knowing that it works, I'm going to actually purchase it.

***Post edited by moderator 4/4/03 10:41 est.

[disconnected]

ppcvidz --

Thank you! That was actually easy enough even for me.

I tried the DVD Ripper and then bought it; it's not exactly cheap, but definitely worth it to me for the ease of use. I guess I have an early version of XP Home, because my version of MovieMaker was 1.something, but it had a link to the Microsoft website, where they have version 2 available for download.