compress music and photos

[rookcnu]

I am trying to find a way to compress each song in my music collection and each photo in my photo collection so I can use up less space on my 2bg mini sd.

Issues:

- all of my stuff currently resides in itunes

- need to compress these files in to format that is compatible on my wife's 30 gb video Ipod and my pocket pc without having to keep seperate collections of the same stuff for each. I use TCPMP on my Cingular 8125.

- can this be done in some kind of batch proces or does it have to be done one song/photo at a time?

thanks!

[cid92]

Can't speak for the photo part, but being a live music trader, the audio portion is something that maybe I can shed some light on.

If you already know this skip it. Basically in audio there is lossless music (WAV), Compressed lossless (SHN, FLAC, APE) which needs to be decoded back to WAV in most cases to listen to (Winamp has SHN and FLAC addons that let you listen to the songs without de-compressing them), and then lossy music (MP3, AAC, OOG, WMA). Technically speaking, the lossy music is already compressed into a small format that will work on the iPod, your phone, etc, etc. The only way to compress it even more would be to drop the kbps rate of the music which in turn introduces more digital artifacts and makes the audio sound like crap. Listen to a 64kbps MP3 compared to say a 192kbps MP3. World of difference in the highs and lows.

Being an iPod user, there is no way that I am aware of that a non-MP3, non-AAC, non-OOG, or non-WMA file (no DRM though on the WMA) can be played on an iPod. If it's not one of the supported formats, it's a no go. Also being a user of TCPMP on my Sprint 6700, the same thing goes there. They just have a few more options. I'm not aware of any addon for TCPMP that allows it to play say, zipped MP3 files. Besides, even if it did, the iPod would not play zipped files so you need to find a compatible format which in most cases is simply going to be MP3. 128kbps is probably the lowest format I would recommend. Personally for MP3 music, I use 192kbps because to me it is the best mix of smallest format with acceptable digital artifacting. I'd love to go to 256kbps or even 320kbps but for the iPod, it would simply eat up too much room. If I really had my way I'd use WAV only but I'd like to hold more than a 125 songs on my iPod (6GB Mini version).

Don't know if this answers much of anything but I figured anything could help.

[Jason Dunn]

With your Pocket PC, you can select the quality of the music you want to be transcoded.

1) Open up Windows Media Player 10
2) Connect your Pocket PC
3) TOOLS > OPTIONS > DEVICES
4) Your Pocket PC should show up as a device. Click on it, then select PROPERTIES
5) You can select the quality of the files you want to have on your Pocket PC. So you can select 64 kbps for instance and when WMP10 sees a file that's a 256 kbps MP3, it will down-sample (transcode) the song. You lose some quality, but there's no way to avoid it.

Regarding your photos, WMP10 *may* resize them for you. It depends on the device being connected, but unfortunately there's no way to select this manually in WMP10. Get something like ACDsee (www.acdsystems.com) and use it to batch-resize your images. Or get Picasa (www.picasa.com) and you can export entire albums/folders at 320 x 240.

Regarding the iPod...I have no clue. I find iTunes difficult to use and entirely inflexible, so I have no idea if it can do anything to help here.

[rookcnu]

Thanks to both of you for your responses. each of you brought up something that leads me to another question:

How do i know what kbps size each od my files are? When look at the properties of each, it tells me the size (i.e. 31.5 mb), but not the kbps. How do you check that?

Thanks!

[cid92]

Thanks to both of you for your responses. each of you brought up something that leads me to another question:

How do i know what kbps size each od my files are? When look at the properties of each, it tells me the size (i.e. 31.5 mb), but not the kbps. How do you check that?

Thanks!

First off in iTunes, do you burn your own music? If so did you ever change the default settings? If not, then you are burning in 128kbps AAC which is Apples MP3 solution because Apple has to take every workable format in the industry and put its own spin on it :wink:. If you did change the settings, then it's just depends on what format you set it too. If this is music that was already MP3, it should indicate it when you get the info on the song in iTunes but I'm not at home right now so I cannot verify that.

Another way to check MP3 files is go to the file itself and right click on it. Pick the Summary tab. Bit rate is listed for all MP3 files. Not sure about AAC but it's possible it does that as well. Again, I would need to check that from home.

[Jason Dunn]

How do i know what kbps size each od my files are? When look at the properties of each, it tells me the size (i.e. 31.5 mb), but not the kbps. How do you check that?

Best way to find this out is to right click on them and select properties. If it doesn't show up there, load it into Windows Media Player 10, then in the playlist right click and select properties.

[rookcnu]

Jason,

tried your tip from your first reply to my post. Did you do this through Activesync? I get through Tools, then Options, but the rest isn't there the way you explained.

Thanks,

[Jason Dunn]

tried your tip from your first reply to my post. Did you do this through Activesync?

No, Windows Media Player 10 on your desktop/laptop computer. Activesync is not involved in this process at all. You need to use WMP10 to move music over onto your device in order for the transcoding to happen.

[rookcnu]

Okay - I've got all of this down so far.

Next, how do I compress my movies? I have them in the 700 - 900 mb range, but I hear that everyone is getting them down to as low as 128 mb. How do I get them compressed that low? And,... will the quality suffer?

Thanks!

[Jason Dunn]

Well, what video format are your movies in now? And what format/device do you want them to be in? We need more info. :-)

[Guest979]

BTW, the bit rate is indeed listed in iTunes, in fact it is immediately below the file size.

[rookcnu]

Sorry - my videos are currently in mp4 format to play on my wife's Ipod. I want to compress them to a smaller size for my 8125, but still want them to be able to play on her Ipod.

Thanks.

[Jason Dunn]

Sorry - my videos are currently in mp4 format to play on my wife's Ipod. I want to compress them to a smaller size for my 8125, but still want them to be able to play on her Ipod.

Well, first try a player that plays MP4 files:
http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about

If that works, you don't need to encode them to something else. Making them smaller will likely mean you won't be able to use them on the iPod any more. If you want to try re-encoding them to different formats, here's a tool that I use and find quite useful:

http://www.diversifiedmultimedia.com/

[Menneisyys]

I am trying to find a way to compress each song in my music collection and each photo in my photo collection so I can use up less space on my 2bg mini sd.

Issues:

- all of my stuff currently resides in itunes

- need to compress these files in to format that is compatible on my wife's 30 gb video Ipod and my pocket pc without having to keep seperate collections of the same stuff for each. I use TCPMP on my Cingular 8125.

- can this be done in some kind of batch proces or does it have to be done one song/photo at a time?

thanks!

As far as photos are pictures, the answer is a big yes.

There're several tools that will do the conversion. Of them, I prefer ImageMagick. With it, a single batch file will transfer all your images in a directory (and all its subdirectories).

I've uploaded the batch file to http://www.winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/resize.bat . You'll only need to change the path to convert.exe in it.

Also see http://www.winmobiletech.com/PICVIEWERS for more info if interested.