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Old 03-19-2005, 07:09 PM   #1
Bob Russell
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2 DVDs on a CD! (At almost broadcast quality)

It sounds too good to be true, but it's for real and it's free. Included here are simple instructions to create 350meg DivX files from a DVD that can be used for watching compressed movies on your home TV or Pocket PC!

Before we continue, I want to emphasize that this post is not intended to encourage piracy of any form. Please check the laws in your part of the world to make sure you stay legal, and certainly do not start circulating any of the files. In addition, note that these instructions will not produce an exact copy of a DVD, nor will they provide all the extra features on a DVD. But you will get a movie file that looks wonderful on a Pocket PC (or Palm), and is quite adequate for viewing on a TV with a DivX compatible DVD player.

My intent is mostly to help people get portable with their video. My bigger dream is all your content in the palm of your hand. We're getting close... It's now possible to get a whole library of classic books (available now on a DVD from Gutenburg), videos (using this method and the mpeg4 compression in DivX), and audio (MP3s are the popular solution there) on one hard drive which you can hold in a hand. But we're really not quite there yet. For example, I haven't figured out how to convert analog video yet. And scanning existing paper books is a nightmare. So are the format wars and the reading technology. And legal issues are probably a road block for much of that type of conversion also. Oh well, I guess there's still a ways to go before the all-digital content home. But soon, very soon!

Okay, so let me restate, once more in a bit more detail, what you will get if you follow my instructions... You will be able to convert any DVD to a file about 350meg, and it will be compatible both with DivX players for televisions like the Philips DVP642 (~$70) and Pocket PC DivX players like the excellent BetaPlayer! The movies look really awesome on BetaPlayer, even with my standard resolution Pocket PC, so I can't even imagine how great they look with BetaPlayer on a VGA PPC! On a television, some movies look great. Other movies will start to show a lot of pixelation on various scenes (often, but not always directly related to the amount of action) where these boxes start to show up and make the picture real grainy. But I have yet to come across a movie that is not watchable due to those artifacts of the compression as they are basically infrequent. Bottom line is that it's almost broadcast quality (or better) "most" of the time. It's good enough to watch at home with friends, but not nearly good enough to please a videophile. Best way to understand video quality is to try converting one.

The 350meg size means you can store either two movies on a CD-R, or about 13 movies on a single layer DVD+R, and they view just fine. Or if you have a huge closet full of dvds to store on a hard drive, you can handle about 850 movies on one 300gig USB hard drive. On the other hand, if you have invested in that kind of collection, you probably are more interested in video quality than having a video jukebox!

You do have the option to increase the bitrate and/or MP3 audio quality and/or resolution and/or do a double pass encryption, cropping, etc. to get better quality, but I'm happy with this file size because small file size is more important to me, especially so because the PDA viewer is my primary goal.


Okay, so here's the very simple trick...

1) Install FairUse Wizard.
You may have to install DivX codec also, and dvd decrypter. I have DivX v5.21 installed, but I can't tell you if it got on there as part of the FairUse Wizard, or whether I was told I needed to install DivX separately, or even if it came from another install. I've installed so much DVD->PPC related software in my experiments, it's hard to tell. But both FairUseWizard (www.fairusewizard.com/) and DivX (www.divx.com/) are free, and not very complicated. You just have to follow your nose and if something's missing you'll get a message about it.

2) Pop in a DVD and start up FairUse Wizard.

3) The settings for DivX should be set as follows. (I think it comes up when you choose DivX the first time, but you can still find it by clicking on first pass.)
* Pick the home theater certified DivX profile, and set 640x480 resolution.
Make sure Quarter pixel and GMC are off. [Edit: Choose 24 frames/sec.]
* Set encode performance to standard. I'm tempted to try fast or fastest myself, but I hate to mess with something that works and don't want bigger files and worse video quality.
* Set avg bitrate to 365 kbps. Yes, this is where you lose a lot of quality and end up with those big pixelated boxes when the action speeds up. But I had digital cable in the past and that did it a lot worse than what I see with this encoding!
* Set encode mode = 1 pass. Again, this is for speed, but you could set it up for dual pass if you like. What happens is that the bit rate is variable and you use more space when the pictures are changing rapidly as in action scenes and less space when things are simpler to compress. That improves overall quality. But since I'm not really worried about quality to that degree, and am focused on doing things quick and simple, I'll probably stick with 1 pass.

3) Set to DivX and full auto mode. Choose a filesize of 340meg and set audio to 64Kbits/sec MP3. Set subtitle to "-" unless you want subtitles. For some reason, even with these settings, it seems to end up with a filesize consistently around 347meg, which is just what I wanted.

Note: I don't use subtitles, but if you are planning to watch the movies on your PPC while listening to the built-in speaker, you might want to add subtitles so you can tell what is being said.

4) Do the conversion. You'll have to do some waiting. (About 2hrs or so.) It's very CPU intensive, so if you have a faster box it might go faster. I would run it overnight if you have a slower box. It will ask you to give a project name and a location. The filename is the end result, and the project directory keeps conversion artifacts like the index so you can re-encode again faster next time. I use the same project folder for every project, and delete the files every so often because they are big. You can also reuse the index that is generated if you are going to encode with a bunch of different settings to compare different settings.

5a) Play on a PPC by transferring it to an SD card (or CF depending on your model). Watch it with BetaPlayer (http://betaplayer.corecodec.org/).

5b) Play on your DivX compatible DVD player as follows: Burn the file to a data disk. IMPORTANT:You MUST finalize the disk or it won't play correctly in your DVD player!

I've used Nero to burn on both CD-R and DVD+R, which both turn out fine. I'm using a Sony DRU-720A dual layer DVD recorder, and blanks are cheap these days if you shop around a bit. (I got 100 DVD+R 8x for about $40 and no rebate forms. And 100 CD-R, at about 50x for about $10.)

Set it to an ISO compatible data disk, finalized. You can experiment with longer file names, but on my DVD player they are fine. They just don't show the full names on the DVD player listings.

If you have an older DVD recorder, you will probably have to update your firmware if you want to record onto an 8x blank. I don't use dual layer or 16x yet because of the costs.

If you need a free burning software, check http://www.neowin.net/forum/?showtopic=119821 (Site link via JKOnTheRun.)

That's it! Simple as that!

I hope you found this helpful. Similar information is freely available out there on the web, but I haven't found anything like this suitable for beginners, or in a form that I could understand. It just doesn't seem to have filtered down into layman's terms and technology. The experts have other goals, like better quality video and HDTV stuff, anyway. But I think this is what the "common man" has been waiting for, and this common man is certainly very excited!

Enjoy!!!!!!
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Old 03-20-2005, 05:28 AM   #2
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One of the best how-to-convert-video articles I've read so far!
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Old 03-21-2005, 05:55 PM   #3
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Another guide that is complementary to Bob's is BigDs Pocket PC Video Guides. Highly recommended. To you know links to more guides?
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Old 03-21-2005, 06:22 PM   #4
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Here is another one: http://corecodec.com/modules.php?op=...iewtopic&t=559

It is written with BetaPlayer for Pocket PC in mind.

But really, why would you need more guides? I think Bob did a great job explaining each step.
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Old 03-21-2005, 07:22 PM   #5
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Thanks guys! Of course I feel that my guide is more helpful and simpler. (I'm biased!) But I like seeing the links to the additional guides also. I like finding new ways to handle things, and my process, for example, only handles conversion straight from a DVD, not from an mpeg video file.

The more you work with this sort of thing, the more you'll realize that the various guides generally have different goals and/or different tools, and some are easier to follow than others. But that variety makes it all very interesting, and we are all just building on the great things that people have done who came before us. The developers of all that great software (often freeware) are the heros that allow the rest of us to have some fun!

I would be interested in feedback from people who give this a whirl. Especially to hear what people think about watching video on a PDA, whether it be a smart phone or a lo-res Palm, or a VGA Pocket PC. I personally found the picture quality to be more than adequate for my purposes, to the point that I'm just as happy watching a movie on my PDA with headphones as on my TV. And I only have a 240x320 Pocket PC!
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