Movie Formats

[GeminiDomino]

It'd still be nice to get some other formats in, at least something like OGM, since they have OGG files out. MKV would be nice to, but o well wishful thinking

It's possible. There's an MKV codec available for mplayer. The biggest problems on this front are that we don't have mplayer source, and that the menu is only configured to show .avi extensions so files with compatible codecs may still not be playable, depending on the containers (ogg, mpeg, etc.)

 

[Bluebullets]

180 mb? are you joking?

no because when u make the resolution drastically smaller just to fit ur gp2x screen which i believe is 320 by 280 the quality does not change all that much. just the only thing is i am guessing it will look like crap when u use tv out

 

[PokeParadox]

Scaling will be used to fit the TV-Resolution. But if you are planning on only watching video on the GP2X screen, you may as well resize the video to 320x240, and use lower bit-rates. It will help your batteries last longer too.

 

[lintsniffer]

no because when u make the resolution drastically smaller just to fit ur gp2x screen which i believe is 320 by 280 the quality does not change all that much. just the only thing is i am guessing it will look like crap when u use tv out

Yeah I didn't think of that. That's why my GBA looks so pritteh!

 

[yanman]

hmm.. for some reason i thought the gp2x could play xvid's without having to reencode them just got mine today and tried an episode of futurama.. no glory, was slideshow video but sound was ok

 

[yanman]

just did some initial tsets on my new toy

1. Futurama S1E1 .avi XVid 512x384, Ogg/Vorbis 48khz 80kbit
= video is a slideshow... maybe 1 frame every 30 seconds, sound is fine

2. Lost S1E1 .avi Xvid 624x352, MP3 48khz 128kbit
= perfect

 

[NinjaFae]

hmm.. for some reason i thought the gp2x could play xvid's without having to reencode them just got mine today and tried an episode of futurama.. no glory, was slideshow video but sound was ok

I've experimented with this quite a bit.

The two codecs I've found to work are: DivX5 and 3ivX, which both work fairly well for me.
I've founds out that .avi seems to be the preferred container, not just a rename, but the actual container format. Also, the resolution seems to be highly critical. The gbax.com site sugests it'll play anything 720px wide, or less by scaling it, in practise it seems to work well, only for xvid with MP3 audio encoded. If the size is larger, the cpu seems to choke on my device, quite badly, also seems to choke badly at the bitrate, but this isn't a flaw of the console. The memory card you use is just as critical an element. if you buy a cheap and nasty PNY card for example, the throughput may not be high enough for your encode, so check the limits of your card from the manufacturers site, and remember, you want the nominal range, not the burst range, some of the 'pro cards' only work that fast in short bursts, usually only in supported hardware, or in digital cameras.

Ideal video specs:
DivX 5
320x240 maximum resolution
High quality setting on the codec
Less than 2000kbps bit rate on video, though this tends to vary, keep below 1000kbps for smooth playback
MP3 audio encode, 128kbps ideal
AVI container format, not just the extension of the file, though the .divx container is suitable too, after a rename to .avi, since it obeys the avi rules.

Follow those rules, and you'll be fine. As for actual software for doing the encode, I am at a loss to help, when it comes to PCs, however FFMpegX is open source for mac, and will do a good job, I'm pretty sure they have a windows alternative, all you need then, is to get the extra components it asks for, to encode pretty much any video into any video.

Word to the wise, many avi's on bittorrent sites use VP62 video encodes, lord only knows why, probably a Tivo Thing, but, get a copy of mplayer for your OS, and test it plays in there first, if it does, there's a 50-60% chance your GP2x will play it.

 

[neilos]

Just in case any one out there is using Linux and wondering how it all goes together...

Use "Avidemux" available for Debian along with other goodies at http://www.debian-multimedia.org/
Scroll down for instructions on how to add it to your apt repository list so all dependancies can be neatly resolved.

It's working fine here using xvid video and lame audio encoding.
Xvid - 2 pass, 180kB average, 320x240
Lame - 96k CBR
Just use the video filter option to resize your video (remember to set multiples of 16 true).
Higher resolutions will need a higher average video bitrate. And yes, you can stack jobs in a joblist then leave it running overnight. So far it's munched avi, wmv, mpeg and mov files quite happily.

Any other Linux encode freaks out there?

UPDATE
After a little script hacking, I've come up with the following little shell script that should be easy enough to tweak for your own setup on Linux. I use Debian, but other flavours should have few problems provided you can get mencoder installed. It does fail to sync audio on some source files with VBR audio containers, for those I go back to Avidemux.

#Settings to tweak
#Video Bitrate - Lower == Less filesize and less quality
VBR="180"
#Audio Bitrate - Multiples of 16
ABR="96"
#Note: -ofps 25 forces PAL framerate video files

if [ -z $1 ]; then
	   echo "Usage: $0 <inputfile> <width (Eg 320 or 720)>"
		echo "Eg $0 fred.avi 320"
		echo "Would produce a 320 wide scaled version of fred.avi"
	   exit 1
fi

if [ -z $2 ]; then
	   echo "Usage: $0 <inputfile> <width (Eg 320 or 720)>"
		echo "Eg $0 fred.avi 320"
		echo "Would produce a 320 wide scaled version of fred.avi"
	   exit 1
fi

if [ -f divx2pass.log ]; then
	   rm -f divx2pass.log 2>/dev/null
fi

MENCODER=`which mencoder`
#First pass
nice \
	   $MENCODER \
				-of avi \
				-oac copy \
				-ovc xvid \
				-ofps 25 \
				-srate 22050 \
				-lameopts cbr:br=$ABR \
				-xvidencopts bitrate=$VBR:pass=1:turbo \
				-vf scale=$2:-2,harddup \
				"$1" -o /dev/null

#Second pass
nice \
	   $MENCODER \
				-of avi \
				-oac mp3lame \
				-ovc xvid \
				-ofps 25 \
				-srate 22050 \
				-lameopts cbr:br=$ABR \
				-xvidencopts bitrate=$VBR:pass=2:turbo \
				-vf scale=$2:-2,harddup \
				"$1" -o "$1.$2.gp2x.avi"

Save it as a text file "togp2x" then run "chmod +x togp2x" to make it executable.
You can then run it with something like...
find ~/video -iname "*.wmv" -exec ./togp2x "{}" 320 ;
Which would batch process all the .wmv (or .WMV) files in the video directory and its subdirectory's. So "fred.wmv" encodes to "fred.320.gp2x.avi"
Oh and for those of you looking for a linux one step DVD to avi file ripper, try acidrip.
k. I'm done!