Encode movies for PDA
In next few days i will go to business trip to Amsterdam. Flight time is about 3.5 hours, so i will have chance to test my new PDA Battery. I have a few ideas how to spent flight time, and i descided to watch few movies. Following short how-to will help you encode movies for your PDA.
To encode movies you need mencoder (from MPlayer package) and at least xvid and mp3 codecs. I have this codec packages installed on my desktop:
libavcodec0d
libxvidcore4
w32codecs
Before start encoding you need to note few parameters:
- video bitrate
- resolution
- fps (frames per second)
- audio bitrate
Optimal values for my Pocket LOOX N520:
- video bitrate = 400
- resolution = 320×240
- fps = 30
- audio bitrate = 128 cbr
You may to try different values, but with that one i get best size/quality ratio.
Here is full command what i use for recoding:
mencoder Input_file.avi -ofps 30 -ovc lavc \
-oac mp3lame -lameopts br=128:cbr:mode=0 \
-vf pp,scale=-3:320 \
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=400:vhq:vpass=1 \
-o Output_file.avi
Where:
- ofps — frames per second
- br — audio bitrate
- vbitrate — video bitrate
But this is not finish yet ;-) I prefer two pass encoding, so next command you need to run are:
mencoder Input_file.avi -ofps 30 -ovc lavc \
-oac mp3lame -lameopts br=128:cbr:mode=0 \
-vf pp,scale=-3:320 \
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=400:vhq:vpass=2 \
-o Output_file.avi
Where vpass value changed to 2. Two pass encoding are much longer but gives much better results.
Output file will be 4 times smaller:
1468551168 2007-01-09 05:24 Input_file.avi
391221710 2007-01-27 18:47 Output_file.avi
So on my 2GB Secure Digital card i can store about 5 movies with good quality. Its more that enough for my 3.5 hours flight.