That's it...I'm ready for movies!!

[Pride Of Lions]

I think.

What info can y'all share with me regarding movie players for the TT? Do I need any particular amount of space on the handheld's memory? Will it run from the card (128MB SD)? Do I need a bigger card? (Please say yes. My girlfriend needs the equivalent of a doctor's note for me to buy that 512MB Lexar card I've been eyeing. ) Do I need a converter to make my own movies Palm-compatible? Are there movies/TV shows out there that I can download? It'd be nice to download the latest "Simpsons" in case I miss it and watch it later on my TT.

Is the speaker on the TT good enough for video playback or should I just use the headset jack with my headphones?

Are the video players like e-book readers in that only some e-books are available for certain readers, are only some videos available for certain video players?

I tried a search and only just got enough info for me to ask the ??'s.

Thanks in advance.

POL9A

[OldBlue]

I'm using Kinoma Player. I converted a few short movies w/ sound taken with my Olympus digital camera using Kinoma Producer.

I also converted Van Halen's music video "Dreams - Blue Angels" which lasts 4 minutes 53 seconds and takes 24.1 MB on my SD card. It plays beautifully and sounds great! ... BUT, the Real Video file of the same thing is only 2.86 MB! Obviously, better compression would be good. I'm hoping the MP3 player for the TT that will be released soon by Real will allow Real Video files to be played. That would allow entire movies to fit on the SD cards.

I had also tried TealMovie and it was OK, too, but their support never got back to me with a problem I encountered with compressed sound, so after the trial period expired, I deleted it.

The speaker in the TT is just OK. Music and sound it much better using headphones plugged into the TT's stereo phone jack.

OldBlue

[maledetto]

Using Kinoma Producer you can take any audio or video file and convert it to Kinoma's standards. Once converted you can save the file on the TT or SD Card. I have a Matrix Reloaded Teaser at 4.5MB (1min 18.7sec) and Star Trek Nemesis at 9.0 MB (2min).

So if you do the math, lets say a episode of the Simpson's is 20min when you cut out the trailer and using the above times and sizes 1min = 4MB, that would make the Episode 80MB. While your at it through in a Enterprise Episode to at 40MIN = 160MB.

No this does not include PDF files, Documents, Music files (using PocketTunes), and other items.

If she's your 'girlfriend' why do you have to beg? Sounds more like a wife or significate other that controls all the money in the relation ship. IMHO

[slm2fly]

anyone have some Kinoma movie files or trailers they can e-mail me so I can show them off on my tungsten to my co-workers...I think they will be amazed. My e-mail address is rrigters@aol.com

really appreciate it

Bob

[OldBlue]

slm2fly

Go to Kinoma's web site (www.kinoma.com) and menu your way to their sample panorama and video page. There are several files for download. (I like the one of the Porsche Boxster taking a twisty road.) Also, on that page is a link to Sony Entertainment, where you can get movie trailers for Kinoma Player. I downloaded "Men In Black II" and "Spiderman."

I'd send you some of my movies, but I don't think you'd want one of my mother telling me to turn off the #$&^%$# camera! :D

OldBlue

[Pride Of Lions]

Cool!! Thanks y'all!

Ive downloaded a Kinoma demo and the accompanying sample video. It seemed cool, but there was no sound. Maybe the sample didn't have audio. Also, it was quite puny. Like 160x120 pixels or something. I presume that I can resize my own videos with the registered version, correct?

Also, where can I find content to resize and Kinoma Produce? I'd hate to have to shoot a live-action "Simpsons" episode with my digital camera 19 seconds at a time.

By the way, she is my "girlfriend" and I don't have to beg to spend my own money. It'd just be nice to show her what my Palm is capable of. That way, I could have "Simpsons" for me and her shows for her and mutual shows for us all on one card without having to hear all that talk about how irresponsible I can be with my money.

But that was funny. It made me smile. If she sees this post, she'll use your comment as another vote for the "let's-hurry-up-and-get-married" contigent.

POL9A

[OldBlue]

Pride Of Lions

Go back to Kinoma's web site and download the HiRes versions of the video files. That will fill the screen and look sharp. ... You can also download a trial of Kinoma Producer from their web site. It works really well!

Also, make sure the speaker icon at the lower right is black. If it's clear, that means your sound is muted. Tap the speaker icon to enable it. You can adjust the volume level by tapping the 5 graduated bars to the right of the speaker icon.

Have you installed SplashPhoto and loaded into different albums pictures of all the great times you and your girlfriend have had? :D (I'll have to show you what I keep on mine for my wife.)

OldBlue

[Pride Of Lions]

Cool. So I tried your link (OldBlue) for kinoma.com, but I kept getting a connection failure message. I tried to type it directly into the URL and the same results.

But the good news is that earlier today I took your suggestions and downloaded the trial Kinoma Player and Producer. But without the Kinoma link to give me stuff, I've gone about downloading movie trailers (Two Towers. Oooohh!) and I just tried to convert it into Kinoma-format with the Kinoma Producer. Unfortunately, the trial only converts the first 15 seconds of anything. So now I'll try to HotSync it to the handheld and we'll see the results. Cross your fingers.

P.S. OldBlue, I love SplashPhoto. And I even have a folder called "Joy Division" dedicated to me and my girlfriend and my trusty, dusty digital camera.

[Pride Of Lions]

Howdy.

I just HotSync'ed and the bit of "Two Towers" that I just converted was transferred straight to the SD card. I opened up "Kinoma" (with the trial version of Launcher X that I keep hearing rave reviews about and I'm really digging it. I'll probably register it. But anyways...) and saw my converted "Two Towers" file right there under the sample clip I got from Kinoma. The sample clip said "video" after it while the converted trailer had "a/v". I clicked on "Two Towers" and my screen just froze. Just a white screen. Getting no response from the Palm, I performed a soft reset and returned to Kinoma. I played the sample clip that I'd earlier downloaded. It played just wonderfully (albeit mighty puny. I was pretty sure that I'd downloaded the hi-res version, but I'll try again if the website ever opens up.) Soooo...

Anyway, another question I have is that when I open Kinoma Producer there are, like, a thousand choices for Sony's, a few for Palm's, some Handspring's some others, but no "Palm Tungsten T" option.

Is Kinoma really the answer, guys? I must be missing something, right?

POL9A

[sleuth255]

Start by choosing Palm Tungsten T in the device list dropdown on the upper right of the Kinoma Producer app. If you don't have the TT listed, then you don't have the current version of the producer (or the player for that matter, which may explain your white screen lockup).

The current version on their website is v1.5 which fixes a lockup problem on the TT in the player, and adds more features in the producer btw.

Now, in the producer, press the advanced settings button that's under the device list dropdown. In the dialog that's displayed, you can adjust the bitrate all the way up to 1000kbps and the framerate to the maximum 30. Go ahead and do that now.

Now try converting your Two Towers trailer (or Nemisis, which I like better due to its not-as-widescreen-as-the-two-towers format (which makes it bigger on the TT).

Use your favorite SD loader app to move the resulting 13.7 meg Nemesis or 20.8 meg Two Towers file to your TT (I use Card Export)

Now commence to impressing the hell out of all your friends!


Yowsa!

[maledetto]

sleuth255,

Do you have the converted Two Towers file online somewhere? Would really like to see it. Thanks.

Pride Of Lions,
Did not mean to make life ruff on you or to put more fuel to the fire. But your relpy made me LOL and my wife wonder what was so funny. After I showed her you slaped me across the head and LOL too. I'm the one that spends to much, on computers and technology while she hardly spends a thing.

[sleuth255]

Well, if you can give me an email address that can handle a 20meg attachment then I'll be happy to send it to you. I don't have access to an FTP site... sorry.

[maledetto]

The email address that is in my profile has the capability of 20MB. Thank you in advance.

[sleuth255]

Sorry, but your profile doesn't let me email you. It says that you have chosen not to receive emails through this board. I can't see an email address when I pull up your profile either...

[maledetto]

k, in that case

maledetto.buchanan@us.army.mil

[sleuth255]

On the way! I sent you two towers and nemesis. Enjoy!

[Pride Of Lions]

Thanks. Y'all are the best.

sleuth255: You're right. The version I had wasn't from the Kinoma website, it was some other software site. I guess they didn't have the most recent wonderfulness. I finally got onto Kinoma's site (had to type"http://kinoma.com" into the URL. Without the "www." part. Then it connected rather flawlessly.) So now I have Kinoma Player and Producer v1.5 and took your suggestions regarding the bitrate and frame rate. Converted my "Two Towers" trailer. Took a bit. Ended up being about 20.1MB (like you said). Went to bed and woke up my "girlfriend" (that still makes me smile. I showed her your post, btw, maledetto. She LOL, too) and we watched it together. She liked it, but said it was too loud. I guess she didn't realize that I could control the volume. Anyways...

OK. So now I'm sold on the whole concept. But now I feel like I can only watch movie trailers of either movies I've already seen or movies I'll never see. I did a Google search for Kinoma content (recommended to me by another Palm TT forum user) and downloaded a movie. I think it's a foreign production, because I've never heard of it. And it has a foreign title. Anyway, this thing is like 80MB's big. And if I convert it, it'll be like a Gig or something, right? That means I could conceivably get my bigger card to accomodate it. Which is a good thing. But then what if this movie sucks?

I guess I'm trying to figure out how to get tried and proven content to convert to Kinoma Player goodness. I thought I could download Lakers clips and convert them, but after saving them to my desktop and opening Kinoma Producer, the Producer doesn't see them. It sees them on my desktop, but doesn't "see" them because they're greyed out. Do my potential converts need to be in any particular format originally so that the Kinoma Producer will recognize them? I used a peer-to-peer file-sharing product to download "Simpsons" episodes, and Kinoma converted one of them, but the other needed some "missing QuickTime software that's not available online" to convert it.

I think I'm on the right track. I just need to know if anyone out there has a line on where I can get convertible content and/or what format my content needs to be in so that Kinoma Producer will acknowledge and convert it for my needs and wants.

Whew.
POL9A

[sleuth255]

Here's what I've found out about Kinoma producer:

There tend to be a number of Codecs that AVI's are encoded with. The quicktime download from Apple doesn't include them all. When one is missing, Kinoma producer will error out when you attempt to convert a clip. I've seen it try to update itself once before but it failed so I wouldn't depend on that "feature".

One of the most common codecs missing from the default quicktime install is Indeo V. Its on apple's website. The install instructions for windows are rough; ignore them. you actually must copy all files to your system32 directory.

At any rate, check Kinoma producer's error message for your missing codecs. You will need to get the quicktime versions of the ones you need from Apple. Codecs for windows will allow media player to run clips but won't work with Kinoma Producer.

Hopefully, this will help!

[Pride Of Lions]

Dig.
So, I read your post, sleuth255, regarding the missing codecs and QuickTime and all that and I said, "Huh?"
Then I went to Apple's website and looked for "codecs" under their QuickTime page. Then the website looked at me and said, "Huh?" I even searched specifically for "Indeo V" and the computer said, "Excuse Me?"
So I gave up on trying to understand codecs for now. Instead, I tried converting another "Simpsons" episode I'd previously downloaded, which converted superbly (albeit lengthily.) And, with my settings at 1000kb/s and 30 frames/sec., after like, 100 minutes I had a .pdb of my "Simpsons" episode. (I don't even know which one it is. I was just so happy to get one with this peer-to-peer connecting thingy, I took it as is.) But now, my "S" episode is 156MB's. And I said, "Ai-yah!" (Because I don't quite have that mega-512MB SD card just yet.) So, upon further review, I decided to try the default Palm TT settings in Kinoma Producer (640kb/s and 15 frames/sec.) After conversion, it totalled 105MB's. And I said, "OK."
I'm currently HotSync-ing this mammoth .pdb right now and will report my findings presently.

You guys (and gals) rock!

POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

OK. Here's what we did last night. Palm-wise. Palm Tungsten T-wise.

Installed that humongous 105MB "Simpsons" episode via HotSync directly to the 256MB SD card. Took forever.

Went to bed and watched everything, in this order...

1) My movie trailers. They came pre-processed. So I figured that they were already in a wonderful conversion setting. They looked mah-velous.

2) That foreign movie that I was wondering whether or not it sucked. It didn't suck. Not at all. It, too, was already converted and it played flawlessly on the TT. The hi-res goodness was great. "Hoshi no Koe" is a Japanese anime and it had subtitles, but those were rather readable. Yay hi-res screen!

3) The afore-mentioned "Simpsons" episode. Now, I know I had to sacrifice quality for size, but it didn't look half bad. It was noticably of poorer visuals than the previous thingys I saw, but it was still recognizable. And as ever, funny as hell. (It's the one where Homer gets the crayon out of his brain and turns all smart.) And NO commercials. Bonus.

A couple of things...

1) Is there any way to program that background color in Kinoma Player? I'd love to turn it black to further enhance the frame of my viewing experience. It'd be a marked difference. I kinda got a headache trying not to notice that glaring white border.

2) I lost sync-sound about halfway through the anime and, later, the "S" episode. I didn't notice it as much on the anime, because I was reading the subtitles and watching the movie. I only noticed it when the sound went completely out. I assessed the situation, merely tapped on the screen to return the on-screen controls. The sound came back on. I tapped out of the controls and continued watching this wonderful gem of a movie.
I really noticed it on the "S" episode, because I understand English. I started to see that the sound was slightly lagging behind the visuals. Then the sound wanted to go away altogether. I said the "Nay!" and tapped the screen twice like before. Back to sync-sound. All was well again in the warm "Pride Of Lions" bed. "Simpsons" on command. No commercials. No second TV in the bedroom.

Have any of you experienced the loss of sync-sound?

Also, the reduced conversion of my "S" episode (Palm TT settings on Kinoma Producer: 640kb/sec and 15 frames/sec.) came out to 105MB's for 21min. 51sec. while the anime ran 24min 32sec and cost 81.2MB's. Is there another way to convert content besides Kinoma Producer that will crunch and squeeze it into a smaller memory footprint? Or can I tweak Kinoma settings to do so without further loss of image/sound quality? And is there a way to make that background black? It'd feel more theatrical that way.

Pushing the envelope.
POL9A

[sleuth255]

The info is buried in Apples quicktime support link.

Here's the link to the IndeoV codec.

Apple Indeo V quicktime codec for windows (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60369&SaveKCWindowURL=http%3A%2F%2Fkbase.info.apple.com% 2Fcgi-bin%2FWebObjects%2Fkbase.woa%2Fwa%2FSaveKCToHomePa ge&searchMode=Assisted&kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com&showButton=false&randomValue=100&showSurvey=false&sessionID=anonymous|160147657)

Sorry about that!

For more quicktime Indeo video codecs (commonly used in AVI's) go here (http://www.info.apple.com/usen/quicktime/) and do a search on "indeo". If you get any codec related error in Kinoma Producer, you can use this same url to search for your missing codec as well.

my bad:rolleyes:

[mmmkay]

What is so good about kinoma anyways?

(other than being the only movie player available, afaik)

the file sizes are *huge* :(

correct me if i'm wrong, i heard that realplayer is only going to have audio only? and i hope i'm wrong though, cos i'm pretty sure the T has more than enough processing power to handle realmedia clips (or windows media even.. )

whatcha' think?

[OldBlue]

mmmkay

I'm hoping the Real player for TT will play video, too. As you mention, the files for Kinoma are large compared to Real files. What's good about Kinoma is that it and TealMovie are the only movie players for TT at this time, so if you want movies, you have to choose one of them.

OldBlue

[mmmkay]

hmm i see.

i'm curious if theres any other video codecs that could be used royalty free, etc etc.

like highly lossy codecs would be suitable
kind of like ogg vorbis for music

[Pride Of Lions]

What's their point again?

sleuth255: You said if I got a "codec" related error message from QuickTime then I could search for them and I guess install them and all will be well with the Universe. But so far when I've converted thingys, the only error message I got on a particular "Simpsons" episode is that "QuickTime is missing some software that is not available online and blah blah blah."

I just attributed the problem to that particular "S" episode, because the other ones converted kinda nice-like.

But with the whole highly-lossy, royalty-free codec thing, just what do they do anyways? Will they allow me to compress my conversions into more bite-sized bittys? Then I'll get more on the card, right?

Or is it something else entirely and I'm just way off-track?

Living & Learning,
POL9A

[pdcparamedic]

I was unable to figure out Kinoma Producer and it only had a two day trial period. I wrote them, got extension on trial, figured it out and find it quite easy to operate. Have not used anything else, so nothing to compare to. Don't know the price, but when something works and I can figure it out, I will buy it.

pdc

[pdcparamedic]

Ok, it is $30. I guess a fair price, but again, don't know the competition and what they have to offer.

pdc

[mmmkay]

I just had a chance to try out Kinoma :)

It's not THAT bad. If you select the Cinepak Mobile codec and choose a low bit rate such as .. 160Kbit and 16.xx KHz sound... the filesize comes out to approx. 4MB a minute :p

At least that's with using 320x240. I haven't tried 320x320 resolution but I guess that would eat more space :p

The "wow" factor is quite high I admit now :)
I converted The Matrix: Reloaded trailer and it does look very very nice.

DivX encoded AVI's don't seem to work.

My verdict: Good stuff, but more codec selections would have been better, and filesizes are huge (related to last point).

[Pride Of Lions]

Earlier, I wondered how to change the background color of a "widescreen" video clip so that one doesn't have to be blinded by the default white header and footer.

It is embarrassingly simple. One just needs to choose the background color (or image) in Kinoma Producer (in the "Advanced" option field) BEFORE converting one's video content. THEN, one chooses to convert.

I kinda thought that it would be possible to change the background color after the content was produced in the Kinoma Player on the Palm. (It'd be a nice option, in case one obtains previously converted footage.)

Anyway, I'm pleased with the product, and the WOW factor is huge (especially for other people.)

With this codecs thing, I'm curious. We've discovered that the free QuickTime download from Apple doesn't have all the necessary codecs, does the paid-for registered QuickTime Pro possess all the codecs I could ever want/need?

Watching movies and stuff on this fabulous device,
POL9A

[nightwing]

re Kinoma producer, to get to the advance settings and to convert videos, has to be registered, right? is 30 bucks really worth it?

[mmmkay]

Yeah it needs to be registered I think :)

It's just a toy as far as I'm concerned. It would have been nice to be able to create 160x160 movies and have them scale up to the 320x320 display instead of a tiny stamp sized movie.

We need more codecs though! Especially more lossy codecs that let us have tiny files.

[Pride Of Lions]

Lossy codecs. Whatever those are. Bring 'em on.

Will they arrive with the paid-for registration of QuickTime Pro?

POL9A

[mmmkay]

I only have Cinepak mobile , b&w, 4 greys, 16 greys and colour (legacy) as my options for codecs for video :P

[Radioactive Man]

Hello... my first post. I'm seriously considering getting a tungsten in the near future. Actually, I'm sick of waiting for the Kyocera 7135 to be offered on Verizon... and am now thinking that I'd rather have the T|T anyway, along with a BT phone.
My question... just so I'm sure... you are actually able to use video WITH sound on the T|T? Is this using kinoma player/producer?
Question #2- I have heard that files on the SD card are copied to the available memory on the palm (limited to under 16mb). Is this true? If it is, then watching a Seinfeld or Simpsons episode, which is like 50mb would be impossible. I hope this is not true.
I hope you can all help... I'm anxious to buy one soon. BTW, the cheapest price I've found is Amazon.com, which ends up being $425 after shipping. Anything cheaper out there?
Thanks

[JEMShoe]

Originally posted by Radioactive Man
Question #2- I have heard that files on the SD card are copied to the available memory on the palm (limited to under 16mb). Is this true? If it is, then watching a Seinfeld or Simpsons episode, which is like 50mb would be impossible. I hope this is not true.

You can watch movies larger than 16mb. Whatever you can get on your SD card.

[Pride Of Lions]

Radioactive Man: Here is a thread on another forum that seems to have the most inexpensive T|T I've heard of. $370 T|T (http://discussion.brighthand.com/palmhandhelds/showthread.php?threadid=23598)

I'm hoping some of this "codecs" talk = smaller file sizes, but in my experience a 22 min. "Simpsons" episode (at the default Kinoma Producer Palm T|T settings) came out to 105MB's. The image and audio quality was most acceptable, but clearly not the best. I found that the sync-sound started to de-sync about halfway through.

If there were a software that let us convert content at smaller file sizes (Cleaner 6, anyone?), one could conceivably convert content at the highest settings and maybe get more bang-fot-your-MB. Colloquially speaking, of course.

To mention it, has anyone experience with Cleaner 6? Is this the answer to our prayers?

POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

In case y'all didn't know, there's a site that has converted episodes of stuff out there. ClieFLIX (http://www.clieflix.com) has episodes of stuff. They were down for a while to post new content, but they're back now. I downloaded a "Samurai Jack" episode the other day (the first episode, oooooooohh!!) and I'm about to watch it tonite.

It's a big file (110MB's. Yikes!), but it's "Samurai Jack" so we make room for it.

Wanting smaller files of the highest quality,
POL9A

[mmmkay]

And they have more volumes of Love Hina now!
haha lol ;-)


Now I have volumes 1,2,3,10,11,14 of 14 :\


heh.
Reading comics in bed before you go to sleep is addictive.

[nightwing]

has anyone tried contacting Kinoma about additional codec support? DivX Virtualdub can convert a 400mb mpg (ie a typical episode of 24) to half its size in AVI...unfortunately, Producer doesnt have the codec in it yet.

mmm...on the side, can anyone point me to a good online vendor for a 512mb card so i can load these wonderful episodes i need to catch up on?

[Pride Of Lions]

nightwing: One price-compare site has them here. (http://tomshardware.bizrate.com/Lexar%20Secure%20Digital%20Card%20SD%20Memory%2051 2%20MB,mpoi__cat_id--465,prod_id--6646125,rf--wgg.html)

I know that other price-compare sites are out there, but at least this is a starting point.

mmmkay: You do the PDA comics thing, huh? You might be a PC kinda guy, maybe. I'm a Mac kinda guy and their (ComicGuru) software suite for converting comics is geared only towards PC's, so they say.

Although, they also say that I can view converted comics on my T|T regardless of computer OS, but I just haven't been able to come across the Palm OS app. that allows for such wonderfulness. If you have it, could you perchance e-mail (prideoflions@mac.com) it to me? Or if you know where I can download it, maybe post the link?

It would be much appreciated. That way, next time I go in for dental work, I can bliss out with comics and tell them I don't need the pain-killers. :p

Still complexed by the whole "codecs" thing,
POL9A

[iiicRules]

Hiya- some were unsure what codecs meant so-
FYI There are 2 types of codecs.
1. Lossy
2. Losless

1. Lossy codecs compress the video AND cut information therefore quality is lost, however you can get TINY file sizes. An audio comparison is .WAV and .MP3 WAV is 10 times the size of MP3 however MP3 is lossy so quality is lost. However depending on the bit rate you encode at you can get quality that the human ear can't tell apart from the orginal wav- but with files a 10th of the size.!! It's compressed and information the human ear can't hear is removed.

2. Lossless compress the video to make the file smaller however no information is actually got rid of so there is NO loss of quality just smaller file sizes. However as you can imagine these files are still much bigger than the ones encoded with a lossy codec.

iiicRuled

[iiicRules]

Pride of Lions- I don't know if you are looking for Kinoma player because I haven't read the entire thread due to it's length!! But if you are here is the link:

http://www.kinoma.com/

The website has both the player for the TT (free) and the converter (there is a version for PC or MAC) (however only a trial you have to pay for the full version..)

iiicRuled

[Pride Of Lions]

iiicRules: Bless you, Citizen! I've been really displaced even since the word "codec" was introduced to me. Now it all comes together.

So, what does one need to introduce to one's conversion software such that we get these smaller file sizes we've been clamoring for? Do we tell Kinoma to get-with-it and exhibit a new version (for free download, of course) of their Producer that has these miracle codecs? Or can we (as normal individuals) kind of pre-convert our files with these water-to-wine codecs before sending them to Kinoma Producer? Or, is there another conversion software altogether that has these give-a-man-a-fish-feed-him-for-a-day, teach-him-to-fish-feed-him-for life marvelous lossy/losless thingymabob's?

The skies are parting. The fog is lifting. Smaller file sizes are within our grasp.
POL9A

[mmmkay]

POL:
Yep! I just got hooked :-)

Well you could try using Splashphoto. I believe they have a Mac version of their desktop software too. Just categorize all your images. Though that would mean lots and lots of files. Alternately, VirtualPC and use ComicGuru.. though I don't know how well that works. The converter is pretty simple to use too. One last thing you can do is send over the comic and have me convert it for you. :-)

I was tempted to buy an iBook, but then I would have to get all new software. New OS, new apps, new everything. Though it is kinda cool how the underlying OS is based on FreeBSD... :-)

[iiicRules]

It won't make any diference if you compress the movies with codec before sending them to kinoma unfortunatly as kinoma will just uncompress them and then redo them with it's own codec. What we need to do it's keep asking kinoma
A- Why the don;t have any decent codecs in thier software and
B- Why they insist on charging so much for a converter having been so nice and donated us the player.............

WE WANT Mpeg 2
WE WANT Mpeg 4
WE WANT DivX
WE WANT WMV
WE WANT ANY OTHER DECENT CODEC THERE ARE IF YOU (KINOMA) EXPECT US TO PAY LOADS FOR YOUR SOFTWARE!!!!!!!!

[mmmkay]

Wmv (or ASF) might be a bit hard to get :-)

[iiicRules]

Because it's made by Microsoft?? Fair point. But I thought it was a royalty free codec that could be used by anyone without payment etc............ like mpeg1 but unlike mpeg2....................

[Pride Of Lions]

iiicRules: I just fired off a missive to the fine people at Kinoma. I used a part of your post. I hope you don't mind, but you put what needed to be said in a way I never could because I didn't know how to say it in a way that they might understand.

The e-mail reads:

"It won't make any diference if you compress the movies with codec before sending them to kinoma unfortunatly as kinoma will just uncompress them and then redo them with it's own codec. What we need to do it's keep asking kinoma
A- Why the don;t have any decent codecs in thier software and
B- Why they insist on charging so much for a converter having been so nice and donated us the player.............

WE WANT Mpeg 2
WE WANT Mpeg 4
WE WANT DivX
WE WANT WMV
WE WANT ANY OTHER DECENT CODEC THERE ARE IF YOU (KINOMA) EXPECT US TO PAY LOADS FOR YOUR SOFTWARE!!!!!!!!

We want smaller files sizes, without unduly sacrificing quality. This is a big concern to us PDA users who don't have the money to keep buying bigger memory cards to fit our movie content.

We hope that you will be able to address this issue soon, or we'll be forced to explore other options.

Thank you in advance.

Registered Kinoma User."

Let's hope they don't look up my account and cancel me.

Smaller file sizes, by any means necessary.
POL9A

[mmmkay]

You should just provide them a link to the forum :-)


Also I think Ogg is working on a video format that's totally free just like Vorbis.

[iiicRules]

Excellent work!! I don't mind atall. Let us know as soon as you get a reply:) (If they do reply!)

[Pride Of Lions]

About giving them the address of this thread, but I didn't want to blow anyone's anonymity in case they didn't want to have participated.

But that's an idea, how would you guys feel about petitioning Kinoma with the e-mail (those of us who agree)?

I don't want to be the only one whose membership gets "lost" when it comes time to download the latest version. :D

Martyr,
POL9A

[iiicRules]

I don't mind if you give them the link to this thread. I'm not registered though! The program would have to have smaller files sizes (codecs!!) before I register:). And I'd have to actually have a Tungsten T!!! My brother bought one for me today because he saw a bargain (£300 $450) may not sound like a bargain but for england it is becuase of the 17.5% tax. He'll post it to me when I've paid him!!

iiicRuled

[Pride Of Lions]

It appears that ClieFLIX is going bye-bye. I got a lot of pre-formatted Kinoma video content from them (Samurai Jack!!) and I guess they're having some issues, soooo....

Now I need another source for my video/anime-on-Palm T|T cravings. Any suggestions?

Shaking and shivering and sweating, going through ClieFLIX detox,
POL9A

[jigoku]

I think I jumped into this whole kinoma player clie flix thing a week too late. Anyone know another place hosting kinoma format anything? I've seen all the movie trailers I could want, but havent found a reason to justify registering kinoma producer yet...

[sleuth255]

I agree, kinoma player should be able to recognize at least a few of the mainstream native formats like (the major flavors of) avi and mov

As an interim fix they could improve kinoma producer's performance.

[iiicRules]

Lets have a kinoma e-mail address and all send the same e-mail about the producer and see if we get replied to.
PrideOfLions- did they never reply to you?

[Kennethsf]

Does anyone have any idea what the size of the files on realplayer will be ( in relation to kinema)

and will realplayer play besides mp3 also video files?

[iiicRules]

We're pretty sure Real player won't have video- at least at the moment. Mp3's sound decent at 128Kbps which is 1MB/Min

[windex]

Stupid question, but kind of in the same area...

I have d/l'd kinoma player, and a couple of the demo movies (love that boxter) but I can't get kinoma to find them if I have them on my sd card - it just says that there are no movies installed... if I transfer the movie to the palm resident ram, then all is good, and kinoma finds the clip. Is there a specific directory that the clip has to be in on the SD card?

[Pride Of Lions]

windex: My video content on my SD card is in the "/PALM/Launcher" directory. Kinoma reads them just fine from there. There's another optional directory (I think it's "/PALM/Programs/Kinoma"), but it didn't work for me.

iiiCRules: I have yet to receive a reply from Kinoma regarding our needs. Perhaps I should take it as though they're too busy addressing our needs to reply. Either that or they're swamped with e-mails from us Palm Blvd-ers and they're floored on their a$$es shocked that so many of us aren't supremely pleased with their product.

Until then...
POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

I'm having a devil of a time converting a certain file type. I downloaded some little vignettes from I Love Egg (http://www.iloveegg.com) and they're kinda cute, right?

They downloaded as "Quick Time Flash" files with a ".swf" file extension. I converted them on Kinoma Producer with the default T|T settings, but kept getting an error message stating that the audio track wasn't converted.

I tried changing the file extension to other proven endings, like .mov and such. No dice.

Is what I'm trying possible? What file format should I download them in where Kinoma Producer will recognize my wishes and comply?

Trudging the road to happy destiny...
POL9A

[mmmkay]

swf is Flash. Hmm.. there isn't really an audio track in flash.. sort of I guess.. you can put audio in all sorts of events.. I'm not really a flash expert.. but I don't think you can convert those to kinoma format directly. Try converting it to some sort of rendered video first.

[LoungeActor]

If you have Macromedia FLASH, you can export a the file in to a .mov or an .avi file.

[pdcparamedic]

I know nothing of codecs (?) and the like, but would like to know, will we ever be able to get full length movies for our palm tt? I mean with an sd card of 250 or 512 mb will it be possible?

I guess battery life could be a problem? But aside from that with it plugged into my charger in the car, could I look forward to movies on my tt?

pdc

[nightwing]

yes...it should be possible. i watch different mpeg tv series episodes (ie West Wing) on my T|T...a 1 hr episode usually get to about 200mb once Kinoma Producer has converted it.

as for full length movies, i normally get them as avi (divx codecs/dvdripped) which i havent successfully converted with the Producer. <i cant seem to find a good divx-->mpg converter, if there is any>

i guess the sum of it is...if you get any movie/video as mpg or mov or any known codec of Producer, your set...

[windex]

Ok, Here I go Dredging up this thread again...

I have D/l'ed kinoma player and producer, finally found the correct directory for the kinoma clips to be stored on the SD card, and purchased a sd card reader (an hour to sync a 5 minute video clip is just plain silly...)

It all seems to work really well, BUT:

1: after d/ling various Simps*ns episodes and watching them on my pc with no issues, I have yet to have Kinoma sucessfully convert a single episode (I have tried eight so far... still trying... going to give up soon...)

2: When converting and watching some more "mainstream" video content (Two Towers, Hulk, and Daredevil trailers), I find that the finished kinoma video on the TT is "chunky" meaing that it looks like a 160x160 movie that has been stretched to 320x320, with the expected loss of clarity. This seems to happen sporadically throughout the video clip, but some parts are noticeably clearer, as if kinoma switches from 160x160 to 320x320 and back throughout the clip... anyone else seen this?

[windex]

Here's an example - this is a screen shot of the DareDevil Trailer disclaimer that appears at the end of the clip. It's not entirely clear, but the text is blurry in the middle, and clear at beginning and end. It's as if Kinoma will revert back and forth from 160x160 - very annoying...

[mmmkay]

you can fix that by changing to 320x240 instead.. but you get two bars at the top and bottom just like you do when you watch widescreen dvds on a normal TV.

If you change the background colour to black its not so noticable than if you had white...

[nightwing]

windex...

if you use the default settings of Kinoma Producer for T|T...its video bitrate is only at 640kbps. i've tried increasing to the higher rates and i've found 720kbps to be a whole lot better quality that 640kbps. but then 1000kbps is not that much of a gain compared to 720kbps. so i stuck with 720kbps have been happy with it...

also for the audio bit rate...it might be possible to get better quality by increasing the bit rate but i havent tried playing with it after i got the Audio patch from Palm. will have to make a point to try it out one of these days...

friendly reminder...increasing bitrates increases file sizes. hope it works for you...

[Pride Of Lions]

Anyways,
I looked into it and yes and no, one can and cannot convert .swf (Flash) files using Kinoma Producer.

One can convert said files into Kinoma Playability, but whatever audio tracks therein remain unconverted, as well as any Flash interactivity. Ah well...

And yes, mmmkay, I did try to convert the said files into some sort of rendered videos first, to no avail.

The fine Kinoma Support Team declined to comment on my query regarding the whole "codecs that = smaller file sizes" mentioned earlier.

Life goes on.

Waiting for technology to catch up to my dreams,
POL9A

[Green Eggs]

I seem to be having a problem converting. I'm (using Kinoma Producer) converting a MPEG-1 file of about 2.3MB. I select Palm Tungsten T in the device window and it says it will convert to 320 x 240, and it seems to convert ok, but when I load it on to my TT the file shows as only 320 x 148 and is about 1/2 height. Am I doing something wrong?:confused:

Green Eggs


UPDATE: It looks like the video converter I used, an ADS USB Instant DVD, converts to 320 x 148 when making MPEG-1 VCD format files. I tried using SVCD, but Kinoma Producer doesn't know how to convert this type of file. Anyone have any ideas I could try?

UPDATE: I got it! I converted the MPEG-1 file the ADS USB Instant DVD made with Ulead Video Studio to Quick Time format and then converted it thru Kinoma Producer and it comes out 320 x 240.:D

[mmmkay]

you could always use something else to edit your video

[Pride Of Lions]

Here's hoping that somewhere out there is a slew of Kinoma produced content for our viewing pleasure.

A Google search of "Kinoma" doesn't turn up the hits like it used to.

ClieFLIX is undergoing some restoration and may not return as the wonderful site we all knew and loved.

I cannot figure out how that newsgroup on Yahoo! works so that we could share our produced content with each other.


Even a search on my gnutella client turns up empty because my keywords don't match the titles of anything that might be Kinoma material.

<sigh>

If anyone out there knows of a site where we can get new material, let us know.
POL9A

[Kasia]

The only new stuff I know about is a site with a lot of trailers of recent movies:

http://www.kinoma.stupbi.de/


I think the reason we don't see more Kinoma stuff is because of the copyright issues & the amount of time it takes to convert a video to Kinoma.

I had an 8 minute video from a friend of mine & it took a couple of hours to first convert it to a format that Kinoma Producer would accept & then do the Kinoma conversion.

I am hoping that one day MMPlayer develops into something more viable - it is improving all the time & you don't have the conversion issues.

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by Kasia
I am hoping that one day MMPlayer develops into something more viable - it is improving all the time & you don't have the conversion issues.

Well, I hear good things about MMPlayer. I love it's potential, especially the whole DivX thing (small file sizes.) I don't have a DivX converter on my Mac (OS X) just yet otherwise I'd have checked it out.

I tried your link, and while movie trailers are cool and all (especially nowadays where they show you the whole movie in the trailers), they lack the ooomph of new content.

Which brings the question...have you tried Mazingo? (http://www.mazingo.net/palm/) It looks good to me, but they don't seem to support Macs.

<sigh> So close and yet so far...
POL9A

[SoS]

Originally posted by Pride Of Lions


Well, I hear good things about MMPlayer. I love it's potential, especially the whole DivX thing (small file sizes.) I don't have a DivX converter on my Mac (OS X) just yet otherwise I'd have checked it out.


POL9A

PoL,
I have been vainly trying to find a straighforward way to produce DivX content for MMplayer. Have you (or any other Mac'ites) researched this and found a way? I have QT but the DivX (and MPEG4) conversion doesnt allow inc orporation of an MP3 audio stream.

Any ideas??

[SoS]

PS. I know about Dr DivX etc but i was rahte hoping not to have to pay too much cash for this.....maybe PC's arent so bad....naaahh

[Pride Of Lions]

Dr. DivX (http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/) is the only one I know of for Mac's.

SoS: Maybe I'll consider getting it if MMPlayer turns out to be our messiah program. I wouldn't mind the price so much if I could get those small file sizes (with the lossy/loss-less codecs or whatever). That would save me money on the back-end in SD-card-to-carry-my-movies costs. Then I wouldn't covet that 1GB SD card (or even the 512MB card) so much because I could get by with my 256 card ($65 @ Costco!)

And as we all know, Mac's are the truth. We'll just forgive your momentary lapse into dementia. :D

POL9A

[nightwing]

SoS: if its any help, i use virtualdub thats part of the divx bundle you can download from their website.

[ALMS]

Nice topic you've got going on here. For anyone who wants to know where to find Kinoma movies, the best places are P2P sites like winmx. That's were I share all my Kinoma and Teal Movie Player movies. I believe the reason Kinoma and Teal (I've e-mailed them about this also, with no reply) wont give you what you want is because os6 will have what you want for free. You'll encode your movies like they do with MMPlayer or PPC. Hopefully Palm will allow T/T T2 and T/C owners to upgrade to os6. After that you wont want Kinoma or Teal. I've got a Z71 right now, but I'm holding off for the T3. Adobe Premiere 6.0 is great at encoding videos.

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by ALMS
For anyone who wants to know where to find Kinoma movies, the best places are P2P sites like winmx. That's were I share all my Kinoma and Teal Movie Player movies.

Is there some keyword that will let one differentiate which content is Kinoma-playable? I've tried many searches on my P2P client with different keywords, to no avail. WinMX currently is a PC only operation, so as a Mac guy I'm S.O.L. ClieFLIX was so cool. They had this library of downloadables and updated it and all was good with the world. But times have changed. :(

Originally posted by SoS
.....maybe PC's arent so bad....naaahh

SoS: You know, my GF just got a new tablet PC with the wireless keyboard, and I was playing around with it...I have to admit that it's kinda cool. I found myself wishing Apple made such a device. Or that I could run Mac OS on it. <sigh> The burdens we must carry. :D

As for Palm OS 6, we'll just have to see. It doesn't appear that the next hardware release will carry it (see this thread. (http://www.pdastreet.com/forums//showthread.php?s=&threadid=23001)) Sincerely I hope that we'll be able to upgrade to OS 6 when it comes out as I'm planning on getting the T|3 and I'd like to keep it for a while.

I guess time will tell.
POL9A

[ALMS]

Just type in Kinoma or Palm in the search box. The ones I share are labled either Kinoma or Teal. If someone has Kinoma movies I'm sure they have them listed as such.

[Pride Of Lions]

...has anyone noticed how the recent version of Kinoma Producer won't let us save the converted file to anything but the handheld's RAM or the SD card?

I miss the ability to save the converted .pdb to the desktop.

Until such time that we...

1) ...have the ability to watch unconverted video on our handheld's and cut this third-party stranglehold, and...

2) ...have affordable access to 512MB and 1GB SD cards,...

...I fear that we'll just have to rely on each other to trudge the road to happy destiny.
POL9A

[mmmkay]

Well there's always MMPlayer... Plays DivX, etc

I've almost given up on the Tungsten T for anything more than iSilo and a small PDA I can carry around with me.

I bought an iPAQ 3635 the other day for a very reasonable price, and although it's "huge" compared with the T, I can play videos on it, email, icq, msn on it. And all at the same time :)

And I hate to say it, but the audio quality on the T (while good) pales in comparison with the iPAQ. The audio on the iPAQ has a greater range. For example on the T, the audio will sound tinny, and very soft, but on the iPAQ, it's loud, and the audio is more "full". My only complaint with the iPAQ is that it's TOO LOUD.

If I ever do get tired of Pocket PC 2002, I can always switch over to Linux on the PDA. It seems promising.

The included sleeve for the iPAQ has Bluetooth, so I don't really lose any functionality there. I think I'll be picking up a PC Card sleeve with the external battery so I can put in a wifi card and the larger and cheaper CF cards in at the same time.

CF cards are much cheaper than SD now. It's much more economical to use those to store movies, etc.

[Pride Of Lions]

...on the dark side.
I bought an iPAQ 3635 the other day for a very reasonable price, and although it's "huge" compared with the T, I can play videos on it, email, icq, msn on it. And all at the same time

(As vehemently pro-Palm as I've been, I admit to being tempted by the "Dark Side." But I'm a Mac guy and that's been keeping me safe. ;) )

Well there's always MMPlayer...

And for me, MMPlayer is still too buggy and unreliable. The "promise" of MMPlayer remains intriguing.

Sorry to see you go, mmmkay. Thanks again for introducing me to iSilo (http://www.isilo.com) and MobileRead (http://www.mobileread.com)
Hope to see you back with Cobalt!

Tempted by the fruit of another.
POL9A

[scottoldford13]

I will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever buy a pocket pc and that is truth it would have to be almost like Palm OS for me to buy it !!!:confused:

[iiicRules]

Okay I have to hold up my hands and admit it- I too have bought a Pocket PC. Mine came last week (in fact a week ago today) and its an ipaq 4150. But it's NOT and I stress NOT a replacement for my T3.! I always slate PPC's for being rubbish and when I saw this 4150 for an absolutely amazing price I just had to try it out. Plus it has WiFi- the only way I could have wifi with a palm at the moment is the UX-50 and somehow I don't think so- I'm happy with my T3 thank you.!
I like to have an open mind, and having this PPC has really opened my mind. Before on the subject of Pda's, my mind was VERY closed. I would always say:
Pocket PC's= Big, Slow, Short Battery life, rubbish, rubbish, programs are all expensive in comparison (less freeware), rubbish, and ugly.

Well I was right on only some of those things.
Big is just no longer always true. My hp4150 with comparable specs to the T3, is smaller and lighter. It's not ugly either, in fact I think it looks nicer than the T3.
Still on the cosmetic side, it doesn' feel as nice. It's plastic, I like the metal T3 feel, and think the small bit of extra weight makes it feel more quality. I'd have preffered the 4150 to be heavier and have a metal case. Size is great though.
There is no comparison between the T3 and 4150's screens.--The T3's is WAYY better. Not just becuase it has twice the pixels either. The colours are much better. The only advantage of the 4150 is the ratio which is 4:3, easy for PAL tv encoding. T3 is 3:2 so I get black bars left and right.
I was pleasantly suprised by the variety of free software on the PPC, though I haven't looked at it in too much detail having only had it for a week. There is different software available which is another reason I wanted to try one out. Many emulators that are just not available for Palm OS yet. Or- they cost. KalemSoft do Gizmo and NesEm, but there are so many free emus for the PPC that you don't need to buy any emulators hardly if you hunt around.
Sound is uncomparible, but the other way round this time. The ipaq, as mmmkay commented, has brilliant sound. And volume as well!! SERIOUS volume! I thought my T3 was good, until I heard the ipaq. The cost is still generally more for PPCs but hunt around like I did, and you'll find hps 4150 for less than a t3:
www.expansys.com and www.globalpositioningsystems.co.uk both have it for around £250 at time of writing (uk of course tho expansys operate in USA too).
Slow, yes. my ipaq is much slower than my t3, and flipping mutiltasking, oh how i HATE mulititasking!! To close an app i have to use some special program. If I click x on the program it dissappears but is still open and there's no taskbar for quick switching. It faster, by far, to quickly switch between apps on a Palm.
Battery life- well we all know how bad the T's battery life is. My ipaq lasts significantly longer than any TT's and the battery meter seems much more accurate.

Now onto my main point- video playback. I'm sorry that this is comparing to my T3, not T1, but on the T1/2 MMPlayer really does struggle and couldn't compare to a PPC. (but as an aside you should be able to get 12fps 150Kbps, 32kbps 22050hz mp3 video playing and looking fairly good on your t1/2. Just make sure you have the latest DivX 5.1.1. The quality is much improved on it).
Anyway having tested DivX on Palm and PPC, I can say that so far, Palm is streets ahead of pocket Pc, (well mmplayer anyway.)
I found the PPC struggled sometimes with fullscreen DivX video at 25 fps. At 240x320 divx video (ppc screen size) MMPlayer is laughing! I now get MMPlayer to play me 416x312 25fps 200Kbps divx, 44,100Hz mono 16bit 64kbps mp3 on my T3 and its perfect sync and all. And thats getting on for twice as many pixels as the PPC.

Bottom Line: For video playback, currently I'd say T3 is better than PPC by miles. Maybe not easier. PPC can be easy to encode for vs Palm, but in the end with the right settings Palm MMPLayer is much better.

I still prefer my Palm. I'm a palm person and hope I always will be. Not Pocket PC.:) Its the OS and screen that does it. PPC's have their advantages, but Palm, I think, is in front.

I'm here to stay I'm afraid, like it or not!

Sorry for the long-winded post, I just kept writing. Hope it makes some sense.!

iiicRuled

[iiicRules]

P.S Just had to metion the stylus too. 4150 stylus-yuk! It feels horrible. So I use my T3s on the whole time on both pdas :)

Just want to say once again- I'm a Palm guy. I haven't gone over to the Dark Side, just had to check em out out so I could critisize them from experience in the future:D

[Pride Of Lions]

iiicrules: Like when your woman comes home and y'all have "that talk" and she's like, "No. I still love you. You're so beautiful. It's just that he's so this, and I need that now in my life and I'm not looking to replace you and I'm not even going to be with him. I need to be single for a time....Blah Blah Blah."

And the whole time you're like, "Yeah right. Just tell the truth. It's all about him now."

(I guess I've heard that more times than I thought. :( )

Anyways,...thank God I'm a Mac person. It's kept me from pulling the trigger on a PPC purchase (even though there is that Mark/Space "fix").

But, back on topic, Mazingo sounded so wonderful to me, but it only works on PC's.

And, no matter what guys say, I just cannot seem to get MMPlayer to work with my movies. Maybe I need to break down and BUY the Divx plug-in, but I don't think so. I'd rather have some sort of guarantee that there is a tried and true solution before I plunk down hard-earned cash.

Oh, Lord of the Apple, keep me safe from the PPC side. Help me to understand that PalmSource is NOT abandoning me with their future non-support of the Mac. Help me to realize that I have all the software that I NEED here.

Oh, I give up. It's a PC world. I'm just destined to be like the Mad Max minority in a world of Toe-Cutters.
POL9A

[iiicRules]

Hehehe. I'll get you a decent movie playing on your TT. As I said before PPC's are not that great for movies. It's only becuase of their low res screens.....

Okay first things first. Do you have DivX 5.1.1 installed on your Mac and some type of program that can encode? And what kind of source videos do you have? DVDs or Tv capture?
(And DivX doesn't cost anything BTW, as long as you don't mind a tad of adware. Just block gaintrickler with your firewall and the adware can't do anything anyway!)
Then check you have MMPlayer 0.2.9 and get back to me. Most important that you have MMPlayer 0.2.9 cus it's way better than older ones....

Useful URLs:
www.mmplayer.com
www.divx.com

iiicRuled

[egarc]

Hey Pride of Lions,
I haven't taken the time to read the entire tread but I read the first and last pages. As a fellow Mac user, I use ffmpegx to encode Divx. It is a combination of over 20 unix applications rolled into one interface. It has a LOT of settings and may allow you to get movies working on your Palm. It has a convoluted installation process, but follow the directions closely and the end result is worth it. If you have problems, email me.

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

Hope this helps.

[scottoldford13]

I find kinmoa the best !!!

[PalmTealLover]

Well, now that was a very cool, non-boring and informative READ!! I learned a few things -- especially the Indeo V thing -- never even heard of that.

A buddy of mine has Adobe Premiere. It will export to QuickTime format. He sizes the clips he wants (AND can adjust color balance, brightness, contrast, etc!!), and exports clip as a quicktime clip. Kinoma just EATS IT UP. Boom - 12MB film clip comes out as a compressed 4-5MB Kinoma pdb, and he's "away for slates" as they say in England.

Adobe Premiere is VERY EXPENSIVE but there may be freeware apps that do the same thing - I believe that's the secret to Kinoma -- have an external PC editor that feeds Kinoma Producer a quicktime format clip without the Codec nightmares. You can also trim and compress what you want.

Has anyone heard of a FREE (or less expensive) "movie tweaking" software? That would help all of us. Does Sonic Foundry "Vegas" handle Video? I know it does sound . . . . ?

[iiicRules]

Yes, there is some good freeware for tweaking. VirtualDubMod is what I use.
http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net
It takes a while to understand and get used to it, but it's worth I as it is VERY good. I really does have loads of settings. Note: Its note for editing, just playing with formats and things... It has a capture mode too.
Out of interest how long was the 4-5mb clip?
I will try and post video clips on this board- one for T3 and one for T1/2, for people to try out in MMPlayer. The encoding is hard for MMPlayer, but it gives stunnng results in the end, the quality and file size of which Kinoma can just not compare to.
Encoding times are probably similar, once you know how to use VirtualDub quickly etc....

[mmmkay]

LOL I still have my Palm Tungsten T. I only bought my iPAQ last week.

I considered selling it (the T), but there was no point really. I recently invested $50 CDN to buy some accessories (a case, a charging sync cable, and some screen protectors), plus I'd get nowhere near the $914 CDN I paid for it back in Nov 2002.

I mainly use the iPAQ to play MP3 and MPEG video on the bus. It's a little big, but its perfect for watching video actually. Probably better than the Tungsten T for the purpose. Plus I can have WIFI. Which is very nice. iSilo is available for PPC too, and it function exactly as on the Palm, which is really cool. Splashphoto is also available for PPC.. but I'm getting a bit OT :)

But the reason for buying an iPAQ was not for Pocket PC, but rather Linux :) I plan on putting Familiar Linux on the iPAQ in the near future.


Originally posted by Pride Of Lions

...

Sorry to see you go, mmmkay. Thanks again for introducing me to iSilo (http://www.isilo.com) and MobileRead (http://www.mobileread.com)
Hope to see you back with Cobalt!

Tempted by the fruit of another.
POL9A




EDIT: I just saw an iPAQ 4150 today.. It's so TINY! And it has built in wifi and BT.. hmm.. :p Didn't have much time to play with it though.. some sales reps in the retail shop spotted me playing with a high priced toy and headed my way :)

[iiicRules]

Now linux- that sounds like a very good idea! Please let me know your thoughts about Linux/PPC when you do install it. (i.e. how well usual linux apps run etc).. I might be tempted to do the same.... Though I'm not sure I'm brave enough!

[mmmkay]

Hopefully the media players for Linux will work better on the iPAQ than it does with the Pocket PC 2002 players (PocketTV for MPEG, PocketMVP for DivX), and better than MMPlayer on the Tungsten T ;)

The iPAQ's screen is actually a landscape display forced into a portrait orientation, which is why it's great for movies which are usually in a landscape orientation. Now if only I could rotate the screen (with a freeware utility) for daily use. The T's screen, while great, is just a square so either you will have black bars, or you're gonna crop the left and right edges of the movie clip off. Though 4096 colours is a bit of a downside. I don't know if this was mentioned before, but grab one of those Toshiba PC card hard drives and an expansion sleeve, and you've got 4GB+ of storage space for movies, at a price that's similar to a 512MB SD card.

As for other day to day stuff with Linux, if you check out OPIE and Familiar (the environment, and the linux distribution it runs on respectively) you'll notice it's pretty stable/mature already. I considered the other stable/mature linux distribution for the iPAQ (Intimate) but it would require me having the expansion sleeves plugged in at all times :\

Now if only there was a Linux dist for the Palm :)


Various interesting links:
Opie screenshots (http://opie.handhelds.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=ipaq)
VLC for Familiar (video player, screenshots, scroll to Familiar) (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/screenshots.html)
Familiar Linux Homepage (http://familiar.handhelds.org/)
Intimate Linux (Screenshots) (http://intimate.handhelds.org/screens.html)

[scottoldford13]

Do anyone know of sites with viedos for Palm ??

[Pride Of Lions]

I may be slightly molded here. When I first proposed this thread, Kinoma Producer v.1 made my files horrendously huge, at times bigger than the source file.

Now with my T|3 and it's Kinoma Producer v.2, I just realized that they themselves may have fixed some things. I'm willing to give them credit, if it's due, but I have to know that the complicated solutions that are proposed here are...

1) ...in fact doable. (Can be replicated by others following the same directions.)

2) ...worthwhile. (If Kinoma has indeed listened to our e-mails and petitions and have made strides towards our wishes, is it worth it to save 1MB on a 100MB file by jumping through a zillion hoops (and flaming hoops with spikes if you're a Mac user.))

So, in the interests if science and education, I have posted a few files on my iDisk. It's an animé (Robotech) music video. The ZIPped file (24.5MB which un-compresses to about 25.5MB (I know, "Ooooh! A whole MB!)) and the Kinoma-converted PDB (13MB).

I've downloaded the recommended files:
MMPlayer v.0.2.9 (thanks iiicrules!), 3ivx D4 4.5.1 & ffmpegX. I run Mac OS X and I have the free QuickTime and iMovie.

Now your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to tell explain how to do what with what program that will...

1) ...get someone like me to encode files into a format that the T|3 player (either Kinoma or MMPlayer) will understand and love and play.

2) ...be in a smaller file size than the 13MB Kinoma-compressed standard-bearer.

It'd be great if you could diagram your steps so that the rest of us will be able to duplicate your results.

So, of course, everyone will have solutions for the PC, but if there's a Mac solution out there, I'd love to see it.

Happy converting!! :D
POL9A

Oh yeah. The files are here. (http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=prideoflions&templatefn=FileSharing13.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.13.xml&sitefn=TKSite.2.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en)

[egarc]

DVD to Pocket PC

http://www.makayama.com/

DVD to Palm is on the way.

"Now you can convert your DVD's to your Pocket PC and watch them in great quality, with stereo sound and in full screen landscape mode. A memorycard as small as 128 Mb is sufficient to store a full length feature film, up to a hundred minutes. Take your DVD's on the plane, train or automobile, watch them on vacation, at work or at school. With only two clicks, this PC software converts the content of your DVD to a super small movie file, which will play on any Windows Mobile 2003 device, such as HP iPaq, on a postage stamp size memory card. You can use a headset or the built-in speaker to listen to the sound. Subtitled and foreign language DVD's are also supported. You wil have to see the quality to believe it, using Microsoft's supreme Windows Media 9 encoding, feature films look crisp and sharp on your Pocket PC and still fit on a relatively small Secure Digital card. On a 512 SD card, you can even crunch 4 films!"

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by egarc
DVD to Pocket PC

http://www.makayama.com/

DVD to Palm is on the way.

"Now you can convert your DVD's to your Pocket PC and watch them in great quality, with stereo sound and in full screen landscape mode. A memorycard as small as 128 Mb is sufficient to store a full length feature film, up to a hundred minutes. Take your DVD's on the plane, train or automobile, watch them on vacation, at work or at school. With only two clicks, this PC software converts the content of your DVD to a super small movie file, which will play on any Windows Mobile 2003 device, such as HP iPaq, on a postage stamp size memory card. You can use a headset or the built-in speaker to listen to the sound. Subtitled and foreign language DVD's are also supported. You wil have to see the quality to believe it, using Microsoft's supreme Windows Media 9 encoding, feature films look crisp and sharp on your Pocket PC and still fit on a relatively small Secure Digital card. On a 512 SD card, you can even crunch 4 films!"

...until I got to the fine print.

"For legal reasons this software may not be used by citizens of the U.S.A. and Malaysia to convert copyprotected DVDs. Makayama Software supports Fair Use."

OK, "fair use." They don't want to get sued, that's fine. This still sounds like a great resource to convert content from a DVD to the SD card, when I get a newer Mac, I'll check it out (providing they support the Mac.)

Also, they don't seem to mention what player this new wondefulness will play these. Probably their own proprietary player?

Still looking for ways to "switch" codecs on the computer side before sending the "new" codec-ed file to either Kinoma or MMPlayer or whatever.

It's weird. That file I posted earlier shrunk by almost half in Kinoma (25MB's to 13MB's), but another file I converted later shrunk less (25MB's to 19MB's.) Again, I think there's an answer to this on the computer side.

Kinoma seems to have listened to us and now supports DivX. Maybe I'll plunk down hard-earned scratch and try this DivX thing "sight unseen."

Leaping before looking.
POL9A

P.S. Happy 100 replies everybody!!
POL

[scottoldford13]

Can you get it for Palm OS 5 ??

[PalmTealLover]

Hate to keep coming on here and saying "I'm learning," without posting any real NEWS OR IDEAS, but this thread's great.

I too noticed POL's remark about not being able to save to a file with Kinoma. Answer to IIIC Ruled: 4-5MB clip I shaved down to 1MB flat, using 4:1 compression and 320x320. I don't use the landscape size as it nearly doubles the file size on the SD Card.

I'm considering TealMovie (never had it) because at least they have a brightness/contrast control; Kinoma doesn't do squat with "image fixing," and the slap-happy "bundled one" doesn't as POL says, "store it anywhere;" it's on the handheld but you don't have a record of it. The new one for sale does I believe allow you to put it in a file like the older version.

MMPlayer I haven't even looked at but since my few "movie clips" are already DONE with Kinoma, I think I'll hold off on "Scarface" and a 4,000 GIG SD Card to watch it on . . . I can wait til I get home to do my Pacino impression!!

What on Earth is Mazingo? How much do they want?

My God -- you know -- in 6 months the movie software will be so much better it'll be like that standup comic who jokes about being 40+ and says "No - we actually had to DIAL the phone, and WAIT FOR THE "9" to come back around . . . . I'm NOT CRAZY!!!

[mmmkay]

Wow Kinoma does DivX now eh :)
I haven't been looking for stuff to play with on the T for a while now.
Mostly Linux on the iPAQ these days. The T is still small enough to carry in my pant pocket though and I do, just for a PDA.

Well even if Kinoma doesn't "do squat with image fixing", you could easily just use tmpgenc, or virtual dub, both free tools, to prepare your video for conversion.

[PalmTealLover]

I've looked at all sorts of freeware PC sites, have seen virtual dub (links for that EVERYWHERE) but haven't seen or heard of tmpgenc. AMended - never mind - it was easy to find.

WHAT I NEED IS slight RGC Color Correction and Brightness Contrast. Cropping would be great but that's talking $$$, I believe. "Adding a little RED" and lowering Brightness, raising Contrast, would be awesome. I notice from their site it converts AVI to MPEG; Kinoma uses AVI just fine (and will also convert MPEG, but files are larger).

Before I hit "GO" on this thing, I'd like to know
1. Exactly what it does in a paragraph or less (or what it won't)
2. If there are any nag screens for adware/spyware (it states "free" right on the zip version, so you know there's a "$$$" version they'll want you to get)

Thanks so much for your informative post - hope you're reading and can give me quick "shout."

[mmmkay]

TMpgenc should handle all of what you said.
At least I think it should ;)

I just use MPEG video, since it's roughly the same size and quality is about the same on a small display anyway.

[strickjh05]

hey iiicRules, I see you in the Ipaq parts now. If you still check this out id like to tell you that iTask is a one button task switcher. If you press and hold it will switch to another program. There are also freeware apps to close programs when you tap the red X. And if you are looking for freeware, check out my thread located in my sig named best freeware. Ya might also want to look at the begginers guide I wrote.

John

[scottoldford13]

Can you get DVD to Palm for Palm OS 5 that will work on my Palm Tungsten T2 it sounds like a really cool programs you can take movies along with you on your Hoildays or on the bus ETC. That would be great !

[SoS]

Originally posted by Pride Of Lions

Kinoma seems to have listened to us and now supports DivX. Maybe I'll plunk down hard-earned scratch and try this DivX thing "sight unseen."

Leaping before looking.
POL9A

P.S. Happy 100 replies everybody!!
POL
Hi PoL,

just to be clear, Kinoma support DivX for conversion but you still end up with the standard Kinoma (Cinepak codec) movie that will be much bigger....

[iiicRules]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I've got so behind in this thread I have a million things to say now!

Firstly thanks mmmkay for the linux links.
strickjh05- thanks. yes, I relised that the button allowed you to switch between apps. Basically, to use the button to switch between apps is slower than to press and hold the home button on my T3, which then brings up the last 5 used apps and allows me to switch between apps immediately as if they were all open. So basically, using the non-existant multi-tasking on Palm OS, it's faster to switch between apps, or about the same, as to use PPC. And with PPC, everthing slows down with lots of apps open too....
There are also freeware apps to close programs when you tap the red X This I will check out. Thanks.
I think it was found in the end by who wanted it but hey:
http://www.tmpgenc.net/

Now lets get onto the movie stuff.!
Kinoma uses CinePak, MMPlayer supports DivX.
As SoS just said, Kinoma will "use" DivX, but it just converts it back to CinePak. CinePak is years old, DivX is now.
DivX is so much better than CinePak- and that is a fact not opinion!
Now it *may* be possible, to get better video playing on any given machine (i.e. higher framerate/better quality) with CinePak, because it is that much easier to decode than DivX. But when we are talking about entire movies, CinePak goes out of the window due to it's file sizes.
You may be able to decimate the size of your movie using kinoma, but that means you either had a large codec as your source, or you are encding very low quality.

I will now write a short guide to encoding for MMPlayer. I'm afraid its for Virtual Dub, so for your Mac software you'll have to find the appropriate settings in it....

Avi is a container. It holds a video and audio codec. In our case this will be Mp3 audio and DivX video.

The following methods require:
VirtualDubMod
Lame Mp3 Plugin or other mp3 codec.
DivX 5.1.1 (pre 5.1 is much lower quality).

Under "Streams", right-click on the audio track and select "Full-Processing Mode". (This is slightly different in normal virtual dub)
Then right-click on the track again to change some option.
Firstly choose "Conversion".
Make the audio MONO, then choose 22,0250Hz (T1/2) or 44,100Hz (T3) for the frequency.

Press ok.
Now from the track menu, click "Compression". On the codec list select "Lame mp3"( or equiv). Then select an approprite bitrate from the options available. If you chose 44,100Hz audio, then I'd recommend using 56 Kbps. If you chose 22,050Hz audio however, choose 32Kbps.
Press okay, then okay again to return to the main Virtual Dub screen.
Now go under the "Video Menu".
Make sure "Full Processing Mode" is selected. Then click on "Filters".

(If your video is interlaced, add a deinterlace filter. If you don't know what this is forget it beucause it most likely its not interlaced)

The second filter needed is optional. I like to use it to sqeeze a tiny bit more performance out of MMPlayer. If you wish to do this too, add a rotate filter, 90o left.

Finally you need to add a resize filter.
For T3 416x312 is the best option. This is assuming your video has a 4:3 ratio. If not adjust accordingly, but keep it less that 130,000pixels. (416x312=129792.)
For TT enter Max 320x240.
Select ok on the filters menu.

TT/2 ONLY BIT. Click frame rate (under video menu). Press decimate by two. This should make your vid 12.5Fps (Pal) or 15fps (ntsc). T3 don't need this as it can take 25fps.( though i'm not sure about 30)

On the video menu select this time "Compression". Select DivX 5.1.1 then press configure. Press "Profile". Then make sure profiles are disabled, press next and make sure just the box named B-Frames is ticked, then Finish. Enter a bitrate of 200Kbps for T3 150 for TT/2. (Personal preference, I don't require more, some may. Some may be happy with less too). Then select Multipass, 1st Pass.
Press ok twice to get back to the Virtual Dub home screen. Press file save as and type in a filename.Make sure "Don't run this job now..." is ticked. Click on the video menu and press compression. Press on the DivX configure button. Change to "Multipass Nth pass". And return to the Vdub home screen. Change NOTHING else. Press file save as again, give it the same filename as before and check that the "Don't run this job now.." box is still ticked. Press file "job control" Then press start. Come back in a while and your video will be converted.

I really needed to do a more in depth guide with pictures but for now I hope that suffices.

iiicRuled

[PalmTealLover]

Got all the way to about 2/3 finished with IIICRuled's post, and blood shot out of my nose and I passed out. I've got a lot to learn. Funnily enough, I've got VirtDub, lame, indeo -- all the "goodies;" it's the CONFIGURING of those "elements" that make the difference - 4:3 ratio and all that -- and that's what I'm apparently clueless about.

I've been picking a clip, using a friend's "Premiere" to "crop what gets shown," exporting as avi/quicktime and then dragging that in to Kinoma Player.

The Japanese freeware video converter recommended by mmmkay (TMpgenc) IS JUST TERRIFIC. It does the cropping, brightness/contrast, TWO FORMS of color balance control, and exports as an MPEG (although a strange version of it) -- Kinoma converts it, and well, but with a file size slightly larger than the avi/quicktime "version;" however, the avi/quicktime version didn't have all the CORRECTIONS involved, and so 2.8MB for a clip vs 3.6MB CORRECTED seems ok to me. I also liked the fact it didn't really "install;" I opened the zip to a folder named after the program, and just stuck it in "Programs" and made shortcut to the desktop. Works great and it is quite "tweakable."

I was looking for "one stop shop;" hit a button, drag in a file, do your thing, drag in to Kinoma and it's on the Card. I've just about got that now - but IIICRuled's technique (and it really is a technique) is FAR SUPERIOR especially if you folks are talking about an entire "short film" or movie with quality throughout.

Thanks to all for the kind advice - we've ALL LEARNED a lot here and mmmkay: you wouldn't believe how much I have looked around for something like that program which you found -- a thousand thanks. Like you, I'll stick with MPEG (you don't have a choice) - the quality ISN'T MUCH DIFFERENT, as you pointed out.

[iiicRules]

It does appear daunting but really its just a lot of button clicks, you don't actually need to know whats going on atall really, just what buttons to press!. I'll look at the mmplayer jobmaker, i think it may automate the settings.....

Does any have some webspace so everyone can download a clip I make? I'll do a 1 Minute clip so it'll be between 1 and 1.5Meg, and I'll do a T3 and T1/2 version, so if somehas around 2.5M web space please let me know, if you don't mind hosting a couple of files. Cheers.

P.S Ratio is just the size of the video. Stuff recorded of uk tv is 4:3 (640x480). DVDs are 16:9. Its when you resize you basically need to cut down the height by the same ratio as the width, so 640x480 cuts down nicely to 320x240 for TT and 416x312 for T3.

[scottoldford13]

Originally posted by iiicRules
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I've got so behind in this thread I have a million things to say now!

Firstly thanks mmmkay for the linux links.
strickjh05- thanks. yes, I relised that the button allowed you to switch between apps. Basically, to use the button to switch between apps is slower than to press and hold the home button on my T3, which then brings up the last 5 used apps and allows me to switch between apps immediately as if they were all open. So basically, using the non-existant multi-tasking on Palm OS, it's faster to switch between apps, or about the same, as to use PPC. And with PPC, everthing slows down with lots of apps open too....
This I will check out. Thanks.
I think it was found in the end by who wanted it but hey:
http://www.tmpgenc.net/

Now lets get onto the movie stuff.!
Kinoma uses CinePak, MMPlayer supports DivX.
As SoS just said, Kinoma will "use" DivX, but it just converts it back to CinePak. CinePak is years old, DivX is now.
DivX is so much better than CinePak- and that is a fact not opinion!
Now it *may* be possible, to get better video playing on any given machine (i.e. higher framerate/better quality) with CinePak, because it is that much easier to decode than DivX. But when we are talking about entire movies, CinePak goes out of the window due to it's file sizes.
You may be able to decimate the size of your movie using kinoma, but that means you either had a large codec as your source, or you are encding very low quality.

I will now write a short guide to encoding for MMPlayer. I'm afraid its for Virtual Dub, so for your Mac software you'll have to find the appropriate settings in it....

Avi is a container. It holds a video and audio codec. In our case this will be Mp3 audio and DivX video.

The following methods require:
VirtualDubMod
Lame Mp3 Plugin or other mp3 codec.
DivX 5.1.1 (pre 5.1 is much lower quality).

Under "Streams", right-click on the audio track and select "Full-Processing Mode". (This is slightly different in normal virtual dub)
Then right-click on the track again to change some option.
Firstly choose "Conversion".
Make the audio MONO, then choose 22,0250Hz (T1/2) or 44,100Hz (T3) for the frequency.

Press ok.
Now from the track menu, click "Compression". On the codec list select "Lame mp3"( or equiv). Then select an approprite bitrate from the options available. If you chose 44,100Hz audio, then I'd recommend using 56 Kbps. If you chose 22,050Hz audio however, choose 32Kbps.
Press okay, then okay again to return to the main Virtual Dub screen.
Now go under the "Video Menu".
Make sure "Full Processing Mode" is selected. Then click on "Filters".

(If your video is interlaced, add a deinterlace filter. If you don't know what this is forget it beucause it most likely its not interlaced)

The second filter needed is optional. I like to use it to sqeeze a tiny bit more performance out of MMPlayer. If you wish to do this too, add a rotate filter, 90o left.

Finally you need to add a resize filter.
For T3 416x312 is the best option. This is assuming your video has a 4:3 ratio. If not adjust accordingly, but keep it less that 130,000pixels. (416x312=129792.)
For TT enter Max 320x240.
Select ok on the filters menu.

TT/2 ONLY BIT. Click frame rate (under video menu). Press decimate by two. This should make your vid 12.5Fps (Pal) or 15fps (ntsc). T3 don't need this as it can take 25fps.( though i'm not sure about 30)

On the video menu select this time "Compression". Select DivX 5.1.1 then press configure. Press "Profile". Then make sure profiles are disabled, press next and make sure just the box named B-Frames is ticked, then Finish. Enter a bitrate of 200Kbps for T3 150 for TT/2. (Personal preference, I don't require more, some may. Some may be happy with less too). Then select Multipass, 1st Pass.
Press ok twice to get back to the Virtual Dub home screen. Press file save as and type in a filename.Make sure "Don't run this job now..." is ticked. Click on the video menu and press compression. Press on the DivX configure button. Change to "Multipass Nth pass". And return to the Vdub home screen. Change NOTHING else. Press file save as again, give it the same filename as before and check that the "Don't run this job now.." box is still ticked. Press file "job control" Then press start. Come back in a while and your video will be converted.

I really needed to do a more in depth guide with pictures but for now I hope that suffices.

iiicRuled


You Got lots to say iicrules and by the way T2 Rules not lllc lol

[scottoldford13]

Originally posted by iiicRules
It does appear daunting but really its just a lot of button clicks, you don't actually need to know whats going on atall really, just what buttons to press!. I'll look at the mmplayer jobmaker, i think it may automate the settings.....

Does any have some webspace so everyone can download a clip I make? I'll do a 1 Minute clip so it'll be between 1 and 1.5Meg, and I'll do a T3 and T1/2 version, so if somehas around 2.5M web space please let me know, if you don't mind hosting a couple of files. Cheers.

P.S Ratio is just the size of the video. Stuff recorded of uk tv is 4:3 (640x480). DVDs are 16:9. Its when you resize you basically need to cut down the height by the same ratio as the width, so 640x480 cuts down nicely to 320x240 for TT and 416x312 for T3.

Hey say this I got around 15 megs of space somewhere I got the URL and I got a GB of bandwihth that help

[mmmkay]

You're welcome :)

As for the 'weird formats' I think it's just that you can set your MPEG settings (like bitrate, which audio codec, resolution) to whatever you want with it. It's still standard, but in a not-so-common format perhaps.

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by strickjh05
hey iiicRules, I see you in the Ipaq parts now. If you still check this out id like to tell you that iTask is a one button task switcher. If you press and hold it will switch to another program. There are also freeware apps to close programs when you tap the red X. And if you are looking for freeware, check out my thread located in my sig named best freeware. Ya might also want to look at the begginers guide I wrote.

John

Threadjacker.

Originally posted by scottoldford13
Right ...

What does this have to do with anything?

Yes, I AM harshing today. I have only a limited amount of time to devote to reading this thread to fix the movies-on-Palm questions I (and other people) have, and it bugs me to have to slog through blather to get to the good stuff, on-topic stuff.

I don't mind a long-ass post like iiicrules' because it MEANT something. He took the time to explain step-by-step how to do something and it was very instructional (even though I'm a Mac guy and it was done on a PC, I may be able to use similar settings on a Mac program.)

PalmBlvd. (or PDAStreet) needs an "Off-Topic/Anything Goes" section where people can up their post count with silliness.

And "Yes." I do have other things going on right now that are coloring the way I'm responding to this, and I do apologize for the way it's coming out. I wish that I could have just spent this time writing about the topic, but...

Anyway...iiicrules: You can use space on my iDisk if you want. You know, I think it'd be cool if you tackled that music video that is ZIPped on there right now, then everyone who wants to can see the difference between a Kinoma-produced 13MB file and the iiicrules-produced 4-5MB file.

PM me if you need the details on the iDisk proposition.

See, just writing about the topic has calmed me down somewhat.

POL9A :rolleyes:

[abid786]

I agree; most other PDA websites like cliesource have off topic forums.

Abid

[iiicRules]

Or maybe an off-topic forum that doesn't affect post count?!.....

Anyways POL I will take you up on that. Good idea with the video.
Only problem is my 56K modem..... That'll take a good 2.5 hours to download! Anyway I'll start downloading in parts (use download manager to pause) and finish it when I can. I'll try to sort it by the beggining of next week.

iiicRuled

[scottoldford13]

How you gonna put it on the net one thing is that my interet modem is also a 56 Kb and my average speed is 19.2 KBs persecond so ....

[abid786]

19.2 is pretty good for 56k connection. When I had 56k back in the day, the fastest mine used to go was ~10kbps.

Average was around 6-7 kbps.

Abid

[scottoldford13]

Right now i'm 24.0 KBs the highest ever was 26.2 and that was only about 10 times so sad !!!!!!!!

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by scottoldford13
How you gonna put it on the net one thing is that my interet modem is also a 56 Kb and my average speed is 19.2 KBs persecond so ....

That's actually a good question. I'd never thought of that, I just assumed that I was the last person on Earth to get DSL (except for my mom's who could really care less.)

Well, iiicrules, the good news is that your movie will be a mercifully small file size.

So, you could download it, convert it, and then upload it right before you take your 4-week paid vacation to Thailand and by the time you get back it'll just be finishing uploading. :D

See, I'm looking out for you.

POL9A, back to normalcy.

[iiicRules]

Originally posted by scottoldford13
How you gonna put it on the net one thing is that my interet modem is also a 56 Kb and my average speed is 19.2 KBs persecond so ....
I don't really understand this exactly. But I think you're saying "How are you going to upload the file to the net, and I have a 56K modem which runs at 19.2KBs". Hmmmmm.

Please can we DO SOME MATHS HERE!
How am I gonna put it on the net? By UPLOADING it. Or e-mailing it to PrideOfLions who very kindly said he'll put it in his webspace. 56K modems do allow you to upload y'know, even if it'll take me half an hour to send the 5MBish file.
19.2Kbs is not possible. 56K modems deliver a maximum of 56Kilobits per second. 8 bit in a byte, so therefore 56/8=7. In other words the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM download speed on a 56K modem, is 7Kilobytes per second. In reality this is around 4-5.
Yes, there is compression that some downloads/browsers use, but that doesn't mean you transfer more then 7Kilobytes a second. It's just 7Kilobytes of compressed data which when upcompressed may equate to more. In the case of codecs, the files are usually just about as compressed as is possible.
The reason you may see higher rates when downloading, is that part of the file may have already been downloaded, and the downloading bar just catches up, instead of jumping to the real % that it is at. This happens when you've started and cancelled a download before, if the partially downloaded file is still there, and it also happens becuase while you locate a folder to put the download in, the file can begin downloading in the background.....

Anyway, 6Mb down, 20 to go!
iiicRuled

[scottoldford13]

I also said that I would offer web space

[iiicRules]

Yea thanks for the offer. As Pride Of Lions has the other two files though, he can put all three in the same place which will be easier.
iiicRuled

Nearly 9MB by the way!

[scottoldford13]

That's cool it would be hard anyways becasue my intret takes so long Uploading and Downloading I went to my web service today and I got something like 5 accounts all with somthing like 19 MB each werid ..... I thought I only created 2

Umm.. I wonder if someone was fooling around with my account

[Pride Of Lions]

After a few notices, it seems that I maybe did a boo-boo. In posting that ZIP file to my iDisk, it became password-protected. Through no fault of my own, I swear.

It seems that after downloading the file, and un-ZIPping it, it asked for a password. Now, I don't do this all the time (no expert, I), and I'm pretty sure that I didn't do it this time, but it happened.

Since the ZIPping of the file only saved, like, 1.8MB off of the file, I re-posted it on my iDisk uncompressed.

Sorry's to everyone who has downloaded it expecting to convert it for our Palms experiment (esp. iiicruled on that dial-up, Yikes!) but now it should be just wonderful.

Thanks again to everyone who tried it already, and I invite you all to try it again with the newer file.

The link is here. (http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=prideoflions&templatefn=FileSharing13.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.13.xml&sitefn=TKSite.2.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en)

Extra points to anyone who can explain what happened. All I did was drag the file onto "DropZip" on Mac OS X, then take that ZIPped file to my iDisk Public folder. No password entering on my part, but when it was downloaded, it asked for a password.

Too effin' weird.
POL9A

[egarc]

POL,

Open the preferences in DropZip. Uncheck Encrypt Archives with Passphrase and that should do it.

I'm currently processing your video using iicRules' parameters using ffmpegx. I'll post later with the results.

ed-

[egarc]

Here (http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=egarc&templatefn=FileSharing14.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.14.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en) is a divx3 encoded sample of the video. The divx5 encoder for Mac is not free so I used the older codec. I would assume the quality would be better with divx5 but this is not bad. I followed iiicRules' parameters using ffmpegx and am actually pretty pleased with the results. Thanks iiicRules (iiic did rule its day). I fried my SD card with the T3 fiasco and never replaced it so I can't test the video on my Palm but I'll buy one soon to satisfy my curiosity.

ed-

[egarc]

Oops, I forgot. My Quicktime Player did not play this video so I used a free Mac video player called VLC (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14738) which plays it flawlessly.

[Pride Of Lions]

Thanks for taking up the challenge.

I tried your suggestion re: the passphrase in DropZip, but the selection was greyed-out and therefore unable to be changed. It was unchecked anyways. Still really freaky.

Also, I went to download your file, but I got this error message. (http://homepage.mac.com/egarc/.cv/egarc/Public/Macross%20Plus%20-%20Dammit.avi-binhex.hqx)

So close and yet so far. My heart can't take much more of this.

Elizabeth, I'm coming to join you honey!
POL9A Foxx.

[iiicRules]

Lol. Well I'll start downloading again anyway and sort something out asap! Another 25Meg to go:(

There should be quite a large performance difference between DivX 3 and 5.1.1, as there was a huge diference just between DivX 5.05 and 5.1, but I'll be interested to look at your video sometime maybe, when I have some spare time for downloading! (grrrr to 56K.)
I have a feeling that DivX 3 video *may* not actually run in MMPlayer.......

I'll try and get a video converted and e-mailed to PrideOfLions by moday or tuesday.

iiicRuled (T3 Rules now, tho iiic does still rule an iccle bit :))

[mmmkay]

Just a comparison here,

I've used both DiVX and MPEG on the PPC, DivX was hardly playable (performance issues). Converting it to MPEG yielded very little change in quality, yet required much much much less CPU resources.

I never really got any MPEG or DivX movies playing on my Palm Tungsten T, but I would imagine MPEG would play much better.

Aside from maybe a file size difference perhaps?
A full length movie took me approximately 40 minutes to encode on one of the school's Pentium 4 2.4c labs with tmpgenc and the file size was approximately 140mb. If you squeezed it down a bit further it would fit on an empty 128mb SD card.

As for quality, it was pretty good, full motion no skipping or anything, and audio was in sync alll the way :)

[scottoldford13]

Anyway you slice it Palm is better than pocket PC. Even though Pocket PC is faster more memory Palm is still better at just about everything ain't it now.

Survey below

[egarc]

Has anyone else tried downloading my file (http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=egarc&templatefn=FileSharing14.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.14.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en)? I have tried it on both of my laptops and the file came in fine. Maybe the server was having difficulty when POL tried downloading it.

POL, your DropZip problem is a mystery to me. Have you downloaded the latest version?

OK, this thread is getting expensive. I will purchase the divx 5.1.1 codec and take another stab at it. Next week, I'll buy a new SD card and hopefully take a movie on the go. Not that I'll have time to watch it, but I can amaze my friends.:D Gladiator would be a good choice.

BTW, the file I linked to is 5.6 MB so it shouldn't take too long to download at 56K.

My wife and I are going out tonight. I could really use a beer right now. I'll check back tomorrow night and hopefully re-encode the file Sunday night or Monday. Have a great Saturday night everyone.

ed-:)

[mmmkay]

scottoldford13,

Not that I want to get into a fight with the Pocket PC vs Palm, but like you say, the hardware on the PPCs is vastly superior :) Which is why I use Linux on one.

Only recently have they more or less been equal, with the ARM processors pretty much standard on most of the devices now.

Pocket PCs aren't really targeted at the same audience. The Pocket PC user wants more than just a basic PDA, and this is pretty much where it's been since the beginning. Only recently has Palm, now PalmOne, tried to catch up in this regard.

I think we can safely say that we're all waiting for the next revision of the PalmOS.

Whichever PDA you prefer, it all comes down to personal preference. Both platforms have their up and downs, and you shouldn't say that one is better without something to back it up.

As a PDA, I prefer my Tungsten T, and for a mobile Linux workstation that's more discreet than a laptop computer, well you all know which PDA from the Other Side I'm referring to :)

So much for sticking to the topic of movies on a Palm .. lol

Does MMPlayer handle MPEG video well enough now? I'm curious to try it out on the Tungsten, just to say I've done it. Unfortunately the square screen size will always leave borders unless I crop. :\

[iiicRules]

Originally posted by egarc
Has anyone else tried downloading my file (http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=egarc&templatefn=FileSharing14.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.14.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en)? I have tried it on both of my laptops and the file came in fine. Maybe the server was having difficulty when POL tried downloading it.

POL, your DropZip problem is a mystery to me. Have you downloaded the latest version?

OK, this thread is getting expensive. I will purchase the divx 5.1.1 codec and take another stab at it. Next week, I'll buy a new SD card and hopefully take a movie on the go. Not that I'll have time to watch it, but I can amaze my friends.:D Gladiator would be a good choice.

BTW, the file I linked to is 5.6 MB so it shouldn't take too long to download at 56K.

My wife and I are going out tonight. I could really use a beer right now. I'll check back tomorrow night and hopefully re-encode the file Sunday night or Monday. Have a great Saturday night everyone.

ed-:)

egarc- I wouldn't spend any money on DivX 5.1.1 for three reasons.
A) I'll encode a version with 5.1.1 ASAP and you can then check that out before you decide to buy.
B) There is a free version of DivX 5.1.1 for Windows, and I would've thought the same for Mac. It just contains a bit of spyware.
C) If you don't like the thought of spyware, there is the open-source XviD project. XviD is MMPlayer compatible and produces arguably better results than DivX 5.1.1, just without the nice interface.

I would disagree that PPCs had better hardware than Palms. 400Mhz vs 400Mhz (T3). 240x320pixels (generally) vs 320x320 or 320x480. etc.

There have been MPEG optimisations on MMPlayer recently. Maybe I'll encode you all an MPEG alternative version too. Personally I always use DivX, but I do have a fast processor.

I'll get you the videos ASAP! Don't panic!

[ryber]

Pocket-DVD Studio (http://www.pqdvd.com/index_palm.html) looks very nice, especially for those who just want to hit a button and let the computer do the work.

[scottoldford13]

I agree man Pocket DVD looks very nice. I never got anytime to download it but it looks cool. Yes it would nice to show off to friends most of my friends. They are just amazed that I can tap the screen ! Going and looking at it right now.

[iiicRules]

Yes the pocket DVD converter looks good for those who aren't into all the ins and outs of encoding for MMPlayer. Just as a note for those readin the thread, pocket DVD is a converter, not a new movie player software for the palm. It just creates movies for MMPlayer to play back. I haven't ever tried it..
Anyways, I got POL's file downloaded and converted, and got some very nice results. I just hope that they will play ok on a TT as I didn't have a TT to test on. My t3 gave 40fps benchmark and its a 12fps video so I'd hope the TT could cope. If not i can just re-encode it with b-frames and then the TT should definately be able to play it...
I only got a 30 second file to pride of lions due to mailbox size restrictions, but hopefully he'll be able to put it on his web space soon so you can all test it out. Note the purpose of this specific clip was to make a high quality/small file size video for the TT/T2. It will play perfectly on the T3, but if I encoded it especially for the T3 then you would get even better results (i.e. better sound, more fps.) As its an Anime video, it has limited fps anyway (only 18fps ish, arranged into 25fps!). The frame arrangement was strange, as in every 4 frames, one frame was shown twice. So it went like ABBCDEEFGHHIJKKL (where two identical letters equal two identical frames....

[egarc]

Wow how the heck you know so much about this video stuff ??

Do you work with this stuff people ? I think it is a waste of time who cares about the pic quality!

Scott, this is at least the second time in two days you've posted a useless "how do you know so much" post. Maybe it's because you are 13 and are easily amazed by adult conversation. Do you ask your teachers every five minutes how they know so much?! Well, stop asking here.

As for quality, it sounds like you are saying that spending time to create quality video is a waste of time. For many of us, quality is paramount. If we wanted half-assed video, there would be no reason to seek information from the forum.

Suggestion: why don't you limit your posts to one a day and spend most of the day working on a quality post. You know, one with a clear thought and expressed with proper grammar and spelling. You could approach it like a school assignment. In fact, if you choose to accept my challenge, we would be happy to grade you on it. In time, you may get an A.

ed-

[scottoldford13]

I sure I am going to do that. I got enough problems with doing assignments in school not only out of it. I'll think about it, about the 2 useless posts, I was bored this morning. Sorry about that I went back and delted it. I got no spell checker I am on a different computer out of my house and do not have a spell checker or grammar checker. Sorry ! Yes I like adult conversation but I am sorry if I wasted your time.
Thanx for being honest.



Deleted useless post

[Pride Of Lions]

My hard drive decided to go kaput last week and I just got it back and am close to re-configuring it to my personal tastes.

Having said all that, I hope I didn't miss much in the "PDA movies" themepark where you must be "This" mature to post.

iiicrules: I'll check on that storage limit and see what we can do about it.

The rest of you: As you were!
It feels good to be back.
POL9A

[EZPalm]

Hi POL.

I hope I won't be booed for asking you an off topic question:
What happened to your HD and how it got fixed?
After all no PDA can work properly without the support of a working PC...

[armadillo]

Forget Kinoma

MM player blows it away.

Full length movies on a 256mb sd card, 480x320 widescreen on a T3 and plays standard DIVX files.

No convertion required (unless framerate and image size is too large)

Movies can only go on a card but you need the ram in the unit for other things, thats what the cards are for!

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by EZPalm
Hi POL.

I hope I won't be booed for asking you an off topic question:
What happened to your HD and how it got fixed?
After all no PDA can work properly without the support of a working PC...

Hey EZ,

Well, there are two opinions on the subject, mine and the fix-it shop's.

Mine: I think that some software I downloaded (perhaps in regards to making these movies squeeze onto the Palm) somehow corrupted (perhaps to their maybe beta nature) something somewhere and I started noticing malfeasance. That's what I think.

The Fix-it Shop's: My hard drive died due to use and normal wear-and-tear. They said it failed the "Smart Test" that shows how healthy a hard drive is. (To be fair, it did sound kinda smart to me, it is an iMac G3 400 from 2000, so it was due for a failing.) Now, it could also be a case of them just selling me on a new hard drive when it was actually some corrupted files, but either way now I have a new HD (ooooohh! 20GB's!!) and a clean system with which to make in my image.

Which brings us back around full circle. With my "new" iMac, I can resume the search and quest for Palm movies.

But even better, I just got a new 15-inch Powerbook with all kinds of bells-and-whistles so now I may be able to explore some of these other solutions. I'll check on it for the good of us all.

Hard work + clean living = shiny new Powerbook.
It's about time.
POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by egarc
Has anyone else tried downloading my file (http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=egarc&templatefn=FileSharing14.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.14.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en)? I have tried it on both of my laptops and the file came in fine. Maybe the server was having difficulty when POL tried downloading it.

Hey egarc,

I wanted you to know that I DID try your file before I was left stranded without a computer, but since the end was near, I couldn't evaluate it and report my findings.

I love it (and VLC is a nifty program, too.) Now, how do we incorporate something like this to the PDA? Will MMPlayer read this? Just a transfer from Mac to SD card and all is well?

I feel a breakthrough is on the horizon.
POL9A

[egarc]

Hey POL,
Congrats on the PowerBook! I switched to laptops last year and don't think I could ever go back to using a desktop. With a wi-fi card, the laptop can't be beat for convenience.

Yea, give it a try. I recently replaced my ailing T3 with a Clie TH55. I transfered the video to a memory stick and opened it with MMPlayer but the bitrate was too high for the TH55; it played but the video was choppy. The T3 has a much faster processor so it should play just fine.

I have also noticed several updated applications for Mac that should perform the same functions as ffmpegx but without all the hassle. Granted, they don't have the plethora of options but the goal is to get the video playing on the T3 and they should fit the bill.

One is Handbrake (http://handbrake.m0k.org/).

Yes, VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html/) is slick. It is available for just about any platform and plays darn near any video format.

Let me know how the video plays on your T3.

ed-

[iiicRules]

Egarc- I downloaded and tried your movie just now. It's encoded with the DivX 3 codec, which if I remember correctly is completely different to DivX 5. I think what happened is they completely rewrote it from scratch at version 4 becuase of certain patents etc. The video quality was not bad although I think you'll find 5.1.1 slightly better, but not a huge amount.

Strange thing is, I have no idea how you got MMPlayer to play the clip on your pdas. Mine won't play it! Theoretically, as MMPlayer supports MPEG4 incorporating DivX Xvid etc, is should be able to play this, but it might need tweaks first. Its not that my T3 can't cope, but it just won't start playing it, and my diagnosis would be because of the codec. Are you certain you played that clip on your t3?
The main differences between the clip I have done and yours were:
frame rate, sound frequency and sound channels.
Settings were fine for T3, but for TT they would be too much. (This is probably because you were encoding with a T3 in mind, whereas I was encoding for TTs). I had half the framerate of yours. Becuase of how the video is, you can't really see much difference in playback with the different framerates. Unfortuantely, TT/2 just won't cope with 25fps.
With the sound I used 22,050Hz instead of 44,100. Either would probably be ok. Finally the channels. TT can't cope with decoding stereo- it uses about twice the processing power of mono.

BTW I'm referring to TT, as Pride of Lions as far as I know has a TT or T2, not T3. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

POL- Did you try out the short clip that I sent you (the 1 minute one that fitted in your mailbox?). If so, did it play ok?

Hope eveyone's keeping well.

By the way, here's the Mac DivX codec download link:
http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/
Theres a 15 day free trial of DivX 5.1.1 pro so you may want to try it out.

[egarc]

iiicRules,
I now have a Clie TH55 instead of the T3. The frame rate was too much for the TH55 but it did play choppy in MMPlayer. Perhaps the Sony DSP chip has some compatibility for Divx 3.

[abid786]

I just read this whole thread over and took out a bunch of little things that I had missed the first time over in a notepad file:).
Needless to say, this thread is a timeless jewel.

I say to the mods that we sticky this thread, thus helping any newbie or experienced user wanting to try movies on thier Palms.
Just a suggestion from:

Abid

[iiicRules]

Originally posted by egarc
iiicRules,
I now have a Clie TH55 instead of the T3. The frame rate was too much for the TH55 but it did play choppy in MMPlayer. Perhaps the Sony DSP chip has some compatibility for Divx 3.

No I'm quite certain a DSP chip would make no difference. MMPlayer utilises only software decoding built into it as far as I know. It's a mystery to me. MMPlayer 0.2.10 (out 2 days ago) won't play it either. I'm thinking maybe it was a very old version that played it....?

Abid- No this thread wouldn't be worthy of being 'stuck'. For those of us who have followed it through I think we have all learnt things, and it is really a classic thread! But for newbies, it wouldn't be helpful. It would need to be summerised in a new thread. A lot of the earlier stuff in this thread is very outdated now. Also I'm extremely reluctant to do stickies, unless many people want it, as it can be annoying always having a thread at the top. Also, this is a Tungsten forum, not an encoding one:D

[egarc]

iiicRules,
This is very strange. To insure we are using the same file, I redownloaded it, dropped it on a memory stick, opened MMPlayer (version 0.2.9) and the video played; although it played choppy. Here is an image of my clip. (accidently removed from server when spring cleaning) There must be something about the Sony that plays the older codec. When I get a chance, I'll try it on my wife's T2.

Granted, this does nothing for advancing POL's quest to get video on the T3, but it is a mystery nonetheless.

ed-

[Pride Of Lions]

OK, boys and girls. I see that we've had some changes around here and life does go on, so in that spirit...

...so I spent some time away on other projects, and now I'm ready to try this again.

I got an error warning on MMPlayer:

"Performance warning"
"The video bitrate is too high and this device can't decode it in real time. Please re-encode the video with a lower bit-rate." on egarc's video-file. Then it won't even recognize it as a viable option nor will it play the file.

iiicruled's plays just fine, but I cannot get MMPlayer to play at fullscreen. Obviously I need to gnaw through the manual's even more thoroughly on this one. Other than that, it appears to be correct in it's settings.

Now, we seem to have the settings somewhat under control, do we even need the Pocket-DVD Studio for Palm (http://pqdvd.com/watch_dvd_on_palm.html) solution? It appears to solve some of our previous issues, but it costs $35.00 and only works on PC's (even if it does steal the Mac OS X interface.)

I'll try some of these other solutions on my new PowerBook that will read DVD's. My previous iMac cannot read DVD's so no luck with the whole conversion thing.

Oh yeah, iiicruled, I do have a T|3 (or do I need to dust off the old favorite "Life After Death" (http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37030) thread? :p )

Here we go again.
POL9A

[iiicRules]

Originally posted by Pride Of Lions
OK, boys and girls. I see that we've had some changes around here and life does go on, so in that spirit...

...so I spent some time away on other projects, and now I'm ready to try this again.

I got an error warning on MMPlayer:

"Performance warning"
"The video bitrate is too high and this device can't decode it in real time. Please re-encode the video with a lower bit-rate." on egarc's video-file. Then it won't even recognize it as a viable option nor will it play the file.

iiicruled's plays just fine, but I cannot get MMPlayer to play at fullscreen. Obviously I need to gnaw through the manual's even more thoroughly on this one. Other than that, it appears to be correct in it's settings.

Now, we seem to have the settings somewhat under control, do we even need the Pocket-DVD Studio for Palm (http://pqdvd.com/watch_dvd_on_palm.html) solution? It appears to solve some of our previous issues, but it costs $35.00 and only works on PC's (even if it does steal the Mac OS X interface.)

I'll try some of these other solutions on my new PowerBook that will read DVD's. My previous iMac cannot read DVD's so no luck with the whole conversion thing.

Oh yeah, iiicruled, I do have a T|3 (or do I need to dust off the old favorite "Life After Death" (http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37030) thread? :p )

Here we go again.
POL9A

How could I forget! Sorry about that, I'd forgotten you'd got a T3. I still can't get egarcs clip to work and i don't know why:confused: :(
Anyway to get fullscreen just tap actually on the video while its playing- simple as that. Then tap the screen to go out of fullscreen mode. :)
The clip I did is only 320x240 as I thought you only had a TT, so to get it completely fullscreen (when in fullscreen mode) you will need to zoom using the 3x2 zoom. But now I know you have a T3 I can encode you a clip for the T3! You will be amazed at the perfect quality the T3 can handle. All we need to do is sort out a way for me to e-mail you a demo clip. Either that or I can just keep the files short and under 1 meg and e-mail you them.....

I think when it comes to it, you can get pretty much perfect video/movie playback on the T3- it looks amazing. It just takes a while learning how to encode. PocketDVD just automates the encoding settings process.

I'll ask over at the MMPlayer forums to see if anyone knows of a way of automating the process on Macs. If may be possible to make a "jobmaker" for a mac encoder.

iiicRuled

[egarc]

I found this post at Daily Palm (http://palmaddicts.blogspot.com/). Some guy has found it easy to watch DVD's on his T3. here it is:

USER THOUGHT: DVDs on my T3
As a school superintendent I often find myself with some time to kill between afternoon and evening meetings. Usually the time is too short to go home, but still could be an hour or so. I also travel quite often and hate to pay the high costs of movies in hotel rooms. I recently purchased Pocket DVD Studio for Palm and MMPlayer (while technically still in beta, it is further along than many release versions of other software!). Pocket DVD Studio does amazing things with DVDs. If you have a DVD player on your computer, it will run the movie and compress it to an .AVI file that is small enough to load on SD cards. For example, The Sum of All Fears compressed to 227 mb. With MMPlayer, you can play AVI files on your T3 and in full screen landscape mode. Either use the built-in speaker or headphones (recommended) and you have a movie theater in your pocket. Now you may want to carry a Power To Go or AC adapter when travelling. I have currently transferred three full-length DVD films and each is + or - 200 mb. I rarely take a laptop anymore when I travel as I do presentations, email, report preparations, etc. all from my T3. Now I can even have entertainment on the road also.
- Kraig
Posted: Monday, April 19, 2004

Perhaps we can have similar success.:D

ed-

edit: Here is the link. (http://www.palmblvd.com/software/pc/Pocket-DVD-Studio-for-Palm-2004-3-20-palm-pc.html)

[mmmkay]

I don't know whether this is relevant to you, but I use TMPGEnc to convert various movies from DivX or DVD to MPEG and the file sizes are around the same 150 to 200mb.

As for quality though, you do get a few artifacts now and then, but the movie is still enjoyable.

This might fare better for us Tungsten T users :) Since MPEG is much much less resource demanding.

[iiicRules]

Hi again! I just found PocketDivXEncoder:
http://divx.ppccool.com/
I was looking at PocketPC encoding stuff, and downloaded it, and I have found that it has a Tungsten T3 setting too!
It doesn't support DVDs, and I don't think there a mac version (sorry), but for pcs it does look awesome. It makes the process very simple.
Try it out anyway.
Quick Guide to using it:
Once downloaded and opened, import supported file. (Output filename automatically created).
Then click on Advanced options (on the right) and click on the T3 picture. It automatically then sets some settings to be T3 friendly.
Make sure avi with mp3 audio is selected. (ogg is now supported in mmplayer, since sunday, but ogm has not yet been implemented so we need to wait a while for that.)
Most of the other settings are self-explanatory. Just closed the advanced options, add the file to the list and press encode!
BEST OF ALL- IT'S COMPLETELY FREE!
iiicRuled

[aquaholik]

Has anyone try the latest Kinoma Player version 3 EX or the latest mmplayer. I'm using Nero to recode DVD movies to mpeg4(divx) and it was pretty fast. In the interest of higher quality, I made a 90 minute movie fit on a 512MB card(yes, I could choose higher compression and use less disk space but I want to see if at the highest quality, Kinoma or mmplayer will play it and how good will it look on the 320x480 screen) I'm usin the Garmin Ique 3600.

The trial version of Kinoma version 3 EX will not play mpeg4 files.

[Pride Of Lions]

To answer your question aquaholik, I am using the current version of MMPlayer, and it seems to be doing a stand-up job. At v0.2.14, and playing this well, I wonder what will be added to finally get this thing up to v1.0.

As a Mac guy, I use ffmpegX to convert my 22 minute clips to around 40MB and they play fine. Initially I wanted a higher bitrate, but MMPlayer coughed saying that it was too high of a video bitrate and that it couldn't handle it. Also, most of my clips are animations, so I may be lucking out with regard to lip-syncing and such. Eventually, I'll get around to doing some live-action stuff, but for now "Teen Titans" and "Justice League" are it.

I broke down and bought MMPlayer because I didn't believe in Kinoma since they wouldn't do AVI. I, too, got the e-mail that the newest version will do all sorts of wonderful things, but I feel it's too little too late. As a market leader, they should've been a step ahead of all these other upstarts to maintain their base, otherwise there'd be no use for the features these other players offer.

Anyone else using the new Kinoma? I'd be interested in hearing some compare-and-contrast analysis. When you all have the time, of course.
POL9A

[aquaholik]

I want to try Kinoma for Divx(mpeg4) files but I'm afraid it might be propietory, i.e, the mpeg4 must be done by Kinoma Producer. I think I'm too optimistic about being able to get high quality video on a Palm format. Maybe the processor are not powerful enough yet.

[Pride Of Lions]

If you mean "DVD quality" then processor speed is the least of your worries. Screen size, battery life and movies-on-SD card size are also concerns.

If you mean "watchable", then movies on your PDA boils down to a personal series of compromises that you'll need to be willing to make and live with.

I'm happy with my conversion settings because I have a ton of content that I can watch in an airport, on a train or hush a restless child with. If I wanted higher quality, I might invest in one of those portable DVD players and whip that out on the plane or train. I like movies on my PDA (Zodiac2) because it's yet another thing that my PDA can do, it's kind of geeky (geeky chicks dig it), the screen size of the Z2 is nice and wide and with the Z2's dual SD slots, I can (and do) have one slot dedicated to my 1GB SD card full of video content and still have the other slot for my 512MB card full of other stuff (games and such.)

What Kinoma and others are trying to do is to approximate the settings that we customers will accept, and to charge what they feel is appropriate for their work. Some people (like me in earlier days) are happy with the simplicity of the conversion process and can accept the outcome at that price point. What I like now, in large measure to the comments posted on this thread by wonderfully geeky individuals like myself, is the ability to customize my settings (with the huge library of open-source shareware out there, even for Mac's) and do the work myself, thereby saving that money while creating video that I'm happy watching and showing to geeky chicks.

It's a personal preference, to be sure. I only hope that everyone gets the chance to experience it in this lifetime.

Drama King.
POL9A

[aquaholik]

After converting Dodgeball from it's DVD size of 4.7Gb to about 500MB using Nero Recode, I would say the resolution is probably about 320x240. It's still watchable on my 19 LCD if I don't blow it up. I would be happy if I can get that resolution on my Garmin Ique which has 320x480. I think I will just throw away $20 and try Kinoma verison 3 EX since it boast so much about the ability to play mpeg4 file. I will give you guys an update.

[Pride Of Lions]

Good luck with that, aquaholik. I know you don't have MMPlayer, but it'd still be great to hear the pros/cons of Kinoma 3, even without the comparison with MMPlayer.

At ease.
POL9A

[aquaholik]

Well I installed the trial version which supports .mov(quicktime) files. I tried it using video clips from my Kodak camera and it said something about no longer supporting this version of .mov file. My Quicktime Player on my desktop plays it fine. So that defeats one purpose of buying that software. It really makes me suspicious that the software codec is tied to Kinoma Producer and I don't want to use Kinoma Producer just to be able to view a simple clip from my SD card recorded on my camera.

[iiicRules]

.mov is a container format and can thus contain a variety of different codecs, (quite often Soreson video). By .mov support they may .mov's made with soreson codec...
I would be shocked if Kinomas new player can play DivX's etc straight off without any conversion whatsoever. I think you are likely to be correct- that it's a proprietery mpeg4 codec that can only be made using producer....
I will check it out the free bit soon, but I'm not buying it!

[aquaholik]

This is probably a hardware issue and not software. I don't think the hardware in my garmin Ique 3600 can run high quality video w/o stuttering. I test encode some 30 secs mp4 files from my .avi files as well as some movies from my DVD using the trial version of Kinoma Producer. I vary it between 200kb and 480kb compression and 15-25 frames/sec, and I could not get Kinoma EX 3 to play any of them w/o stuttering. The only files it would play without stuttering is a .pdb files using h263 format. So for me, trying to get mp4 files to play on the Garmin Ique 3600 is a waste of time but a learning experience none the less.

[Pride Of Lions]

OK Boys and Girls, Ladies and Gentlemen! I am happy to announce some movie-on-Palm OS PDA happiness.

I've experimented with a few softwares and settings (Thanks much to everyone who's suggestions and solutions have helped this come about) and I've come to some sort of wonderful conclusion. Much trial-and-error commenced, but finally something that works well is do-able.

My set-up: Mac OS X v. 10.3.8, TapWave Zodiac2 (http://www.tapwave.com/zodiac.html), ffmpegX (http://homepage.mac.com/major4/index.html) and plenty of Teen Titans, Justice League, and various other films and clips. Oh yeah, MMPlayer (http://www.mmplayer.com/) for the player. And another MMPlayer offering, videosize (http://www.mmplayer.com/videosize.zip) for conversion approximations.

My settings on ffmpegX:

Video Codec: Xvid [.AVI] (ffmpeg) (check "Encode Video")
Video Bitrate: 200 kbit/s, and with videosize's help, I put the episode of Teen Titans at 22 min. and the target size at 30 MB (even though it eventually comes to about 42 MB.)

Video Parameters:
Video Size: 320 x 240
Autosize: 3:2
Framerate: 15


Audio Codec: .MP3 (check "Encode Audio")

Audio Parameters:
Audio Bitrate: 64 kbit/s
Sampling: 22050 Hz
Channels: Mono

Options:
I check to enable: "High Quality", "Use B-frames", and "Two-pass encoding".

I leave the "Filters" and "Tools" tabs alone in ffmepgX because I haven't gotten the video-resizing stones just yet to delve into playing with these, but if you guys can shed any light on the subject, then maybe I'll play with them at some point. Otherwise, I'll just go on encoding and watching wonderful content on my Zodiac2.

Then I hit "Encode" and, many minutes later, I have something ready to send over to my Zodiac2. I use the MissingSync app. to mount my SD card to the desktop, but any card reader works just as well. I send the converted video over to the SD card and then I open up MMPlayer to play with the settings.

Video Settings:
Window zoom: 1x
Fullscreen zoom: 3/2x
Rotation: Follow GUI

And after setting up a playlist of content from my 1GB SD card, I lean back and watch my content in relative peace and happiness. The landscape orientation of the Zodiac2 looks great and the zooming feature allows me to save some MB's on the conversion, but still get some good quality on the handheld. I'm having a few issues with some "bugs" (I'm not sure if they're really bugs or just me not doing the software right) in MMPlayer. I guess that I'll have to experiment more on this aspect of it, but for now I'm so happy to have gotten to this step.

So there we have it. Thanks to everyone here in this thread and in the PM's who suggested settings and softwares. And the MMPlayer forums are good, too, for other helpful hints or links to yet other threads of video re-sizing goodness. Hopefully these settings help other people, and I'm curious to know what you guys might change or further customize for yet more better video on the Palm. I haven't yet done any "live action" content, just animation so far, but I'm planning on converting some actual movies (and for added complexity, subtitles.) Any suggestions are appreciated, as always.

Gotta go back to the converting work, but I just wanted to check in. Hope you're all well.
POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

A screenshot to prove that I'm not crazy...

[Pride Of Lions]

Another screenshot to prove that I'm not crazy...

[Pride Of Lions]

Another screenshot to prove that I'm not crazy...

[Pride Of Lions]

Another screenshot to prove that I'm not crazy...

[egarc]

Uh Oh, POL has finally lost it.:D

The screenshots look good, how's the sound?

Maybe you can link to a complete video so we can, er test... My kids are partial to Teen Titans.:D

[iiicRules]

Originally posted by Pride Of Lions
at 22 min. and the target size at 30 MB (even though it eventually comes to about 42 MB.)

Video Parameters:
Video Size: 320 x 240
Autosize: 3:2
Framerate: 15


Audio Codec: .MP3 (check "Encode Audio")

Audio Parameters:
Audio Bitrate: 64 kbit/s
Sampling: 22050 Hz
Channels: Mono
[/B]

POL- Great news. Just wanted to point out why you would be getting 42mb vids, not 30.... Basically the 30 is not taking into account the audio.
200 (video) + 64 (audio) = 264Kbits/s bitrate. 264/8=33Kbytes/s. 33*60= 1.980Megabytes/minute. 1.980*22minutes= 43.560MB. So the size is pretty much bang on 2 meg/min.

Few things to try- for 64kbps audio, you could easily double that sampling from 22,050 to 44,100. Keep everything else the same, but try that- you should notice quite a difference.

Another thing to try. Try 412x316 video size (or 400x300) and then don't use the 3x2 zoom at fullscreen in mmplayer.
If you can have fullscreen zoom at 1x1 (window zoom at 1/2), then you should have MUCH better quality :) Again, all other settings can stay the same, including the 200kbps video bitrate.

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by iiicRules
POL- Great news. Just wanted to point out why you would be getting 42mb vids, not 30.... Basically the 30 is not taking into account the audio.
200 (video) + 64 (audio) = 264Kbits/s bitrate. 264/8=33Kbytes/s. 33*60= 1.980Megabytes/minute. 1.980*22minutes= 43.560MB. So the size is pretty much bang on 2 meg/min.

Goodness. Here comes all that math I said I'd never use in school. Oh well, I love flipping burgers. :p (I'm kidding. I don't flip burgers.)

OK. Knowing these types of things now is a good thing. Seeing as how I've already converted 1.1 million videos at the old settings (I'm a real go-getter) I think that I'll try these new settings on the next batch of videos and if it passes the test, then I'll re-encode the previous 1.1 million. (I exaggerate. It's really more like 1 million.)

I think that these new settings will help me when I done encooding animation and start in on the live action videos. I can live with a certain amount of pixellation in the animation, but not in "City of God." Speaking of which, have any of you gone into the realm of subtitles? I've read some posts here and there and people seem to have trouble getting the subtitles to show up, or they're out of sync, or they drop off after half the movies passed... Any tips I should watch out for before I get deep into it? Or should I just blaze the trail for our future generations?

Hope all is well.
POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

Great news if you're a Mac user and want DVD's on your PDA. HandBrake (http://handbrake.m0k.org/) 0.7.0beta1 was released on Wednesday.

New features include:

*Chapters selection
*Custom framerate
*Subtitle support
*Automatic check for update
*Custom aspect ratio
*Audio samplerate selection
*mp4/H.264 output
*Proper NTSC support
*AC3 pass-through
*Progress bar in the dock icon (OS X)
*2-pass H.264 encoding
*Constant quality encoding
*Grayscale encoding
*Up-to-date BeOS UI

This is a great boon for those of us who've felt shafted by the dearth of available software to make this process easier. Now instead of using the software cocktail I needed befre, I can just pop in the DVD and choose my preferred settings and VOILA! DVD on Zodiac2 ready for playing on MMPlayer.

Let me know how this works for you guys.
POL9A

[egarc]

Thanks POL!

I've tried Handbrake in the past but have been waiting for more "polish" and PDA specific encoding. Can't wait to give it a try!

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by egarc
Thanks POL!

I've tried Handbrake in the past but have been waiting for more "polish" and PDA specific encoding. Can't wait to give it a try!

...you were the one who pointed me in this direction initially. I'm glad that the guy finally got with the program and put out this new version. I'm encoding "The Incredibles" right now (and have been for the last 3 hours) and I'll let you know how it turned out when it finally finishes (I'm about halfway done and this is on my speedy G4 1.5GHz Powerbook!)

If this release is everything it's cracked up to be, I think it may make my future conversions with subtitles supremely easier. I was going into convulsions thinking about typing up the text and getting the proper timecode and such. Now hopefully "City of God" is just a conversion away!
POL9A

[T3gunner]

Hi,
I've decided to give movies on my palm a go and I've registered mmplayer 0.2.14. I've also downloaded this trailer on .avi format. It actually plays smoothly for about 2 seconds then it stops completely. Could somebody tell me what I did wrongly? Thanks. By the way I just downloaded it from a p2p and transferred it to the sd card through a card reader.

[Pride Of Lions]

Sometimes MMPlayer cannot handle a file that is straight from the Net. Either that or the PDA's processor isn't strong enough to handle a file that's 30 frames per second or at a huge (640x480 and above) screen size. That's why in this thread we've been talking about methods of shrinking files down to sizes that MMPlayer and our PDA's processors can handle.

If you have any of the encoding tools mentioned in the previous pages, try some of the settings we've outlined on your file.

Another thing you can try is to diagnose MMPlayer's error messages. If you go into OPTIONS-SETTINGS-PERFORMANCE WARNINGS and check on the various choices, and then play your file one of the error warnings will probably pop up and that will give you more of an idea of what the problem is.

So try those and let us know where we stand with your problem video. In case you need more specific help with the settings or error warnings, you can try the forums at MMPlayer (http://www.mmplayer.com/forums/), or those at VideoHelp.com (http://www.videohelp.com/forum/index.php). Also, a detailed step-by-step conversion manual was compiled at Brighthand (http://discussion.brighthand.com/palmhandhelds/showthread.php?threadid=64511).

All of us should be able to help you get your video going on your PDA soon.
POL9A

[T3gunner]

Hi,
I've tired downsizing the file and the trailer went without a hitch. I use pocketdivxencoder. But after, I tried to downsize a 700mb movie, I only got about 1 sec of movie. Could somebody tell me what I did wrong? Thanks.

[NickGB]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here but I've been using Pocket DVD Studio on my PC to rip DVD's and play the resulting avi files on my Palm T2 using MM Player. I have no problem converting an entire movie into a (circa) 250mb file which will run from an SD card.

The results are crystal clear with excellent sound as well. It's certainly kept me entertained on more than a few occasions.

[Pride Of Lions]

Originally posted by NickGB
I'm not sure if I'm missing something here but I've been using Pocket DVD Studio on my PC to rip DVD's and play the resulting avi files on my Palm T2 using MM Player. I have no problem converting an entire movie into a (circa) 250mb file which will run from an SD card.

When this thread was started, there was no Pocket DVD Studio, so there wasn't the all-in-one solution for users. Except Kinoma, and I was wanting a different method because I wasn't happy with the file sizes Kinoma produced.

Also, the thread seeks to encompass solutions for the Mac OS user. As we came to discover, there were many solutions for the PC user, but few for the Mac afficionado. We wanted to shorten that gap.

Finally, for the users who didn't have access to the relatively recent Pocket DVD Studio, or who just wanted to use freeware solutions or have more control over the resultant files, the thread contains valuable settings and experiences so that hopefully future seekers might have a clear indication of what to do or what not to do.

So, the thread has evolved quite nicely over the years, and I've gained much from the combined experience we've all contributed to. Hopefully there's something in here for everyone.
POL9A

[iiicRules]

Not to mention the increase in the power of hardware available these days. When this thread was started, wasn't the TT the latest and greatest machine around, with it's 144Mhz processor?!

[T3gunner]

Hi to all,

Yeah. I finally got another movie encoded and running. I guess the problem with the 700mb movie was that it was corrupted or something. Because it was the only video i can't convert. Thanks guys for helping me out. Btw do any of you have movies or videos to spare? Thanks.

[SoS]

Originally posted by Pride Of Lions
Great news if you're a Mac user and want DVD's on your PDA. HandBrake (http://handbrake.m0k.org/) 0.7.0beta1 was released on Wednesday.

New features include:

*Chapters selection
*Custom framerate
*Subtitle support
*Automatic check for update
*Custom aspect ratio
*Audio samplerate selection
*mp4/H.264 output
*Proper NTSC support
*AC3 pass-through
*Progress bar in the dock icon (OS X)
*2-pass H.264 encoding
*Constant quality encoding
*Grayscale encoding
*Up-to-date BeOS UI

This is a great boon for those of us who've felt shafted by the dearth of available software to make this process easier. Now instead of using the software cocktail I needed befre, I can just pop in the DVD and choose my preferred settings and VOILA! DVD on Zodiac2 ready for playing on MMPlayer.

Let me know how this works for you guys.
POL9A

Hi PoL..

major problem with HB is that it has no B-frame support as yet but works very well as a genarl rip/recoder..

[Pride Of Lions]

A few more items for the movies-on-Palm experience...

**
2005/03/30: 0.7.0-beta2 released


HandBrake 0.7.0-beta2 fixes a bunch of issues reported about 0.7.0-beta1:


All platforms:

Fixed AC-3 pass-through with multiple languages

Fixed issues with a few specific DVDs

Fixed audio glitches that happened sometimes



OS X

People can now disable the Check for updates on launch in the Preferences

Fixed a mem leak

...and a few other minor issues.
**

A review of the differences between MMPlayer and Kinoma 3.A review of the differences between MMPlayer and Kinoma 3. (http://zodiacgamer.emuboards.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=79)

And a new Palm OS media multi-format player that junglemike beat me in introducing to Palm Blvd. in this thread. (http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57161)

Hope your movie experiences are well.
POL9A

[Pride Of Lions]

Also, a new open-source media player is available. I've tried it on my Zodiac2, and it needs more work, but it might evolve nicely in time.

The Magic Lantern (http://sourceforge.net/projects/magiclantern/)

Good movie-ing.
POL9A

[SoS]

Originally posted by Pride Of Lions
A few more items for the movies-on-Palm experience...

**
2005/03/30: 0.7.0-beta2 released


HandBrake 0.7.0-beta2 fixes a bunch of issues reported about 0.7.0-beta1:



POL9A

no b-frame support as yet but with betaplayer, this may not be an issue...