This is designed for those just getting started with putting videos on their pdas. It may seem intimidating at first, but it's very simple. With this tutorial you'll make great videos with just a few steps. It requires very little brain power and gives great results.

Download the free Fairuse Wizard (FU) here, download the best media player, The Core, aka TCPMP, and an optional download is this AC3 plugin, then put a mug in the freezer. I'm not kidding.

Before we go any further keep in mind that there are many ways to do this and my way is just one of them. And whether you have a vga or non-vga screen I'll show you how to maximize your resolution. Let's kick it:

1. The first thing I like to do is create a folder in the My Documents of my desktop PC that will contain the movie, before I move it to the Axim.

2. Open Fairuse and you'll see this:

See my red arrow? You have to do 2 things here. Name your project, and point to where you want this project to land when finished. I named it Old School like the Will Ferrell movie, and if you can read the folder, it's myDocuments, then a folder called Old School that I created before I opened Fairuse. I then used the Browse button to point to that folder. The finished product, an AVI file, will end up in that folder. Pretty easy stuff.

3. The next screen is "Select the DVD drive". You should've already put the movie in the DVD drive, but if you haven't, then do it now and you'll see this:
Just press ok.

4. FU will now find the main movie chain. You just have to press next.

So far you haven't done too much thinking. Pretty cool, huh?

5. Now FU will index the chain. I don't know what that means and I don't care. You shouldn't care either. But this is what it looks like:
Now get that frosty mug and some Coke, Pepsi or Root Beer, and pour it slowly into the mug, without ice, about 2/3 of the way up. Then put a big scoop of ice cream in there. You just made your self a float. Things are happening for you! Sit back and enjoy it because you're indexing a chain. When you're girlfriend or wife or special someone starts yelling at you, just tell them you're multitasking. Give it a half hour or so.

6. FU now must pick the frame range. What does this mean? Who cares, because you're going to let FU do it:
Press Auto Set by the red arrow and FU will properly choose the frame range for you. Then press Next.

7. I'm not even going to explain this one. Just press auto detect by the red arrow. FU will choose IVTC most likely. Then press next.


8. We are now at the heart of the matter. This is where all your key decisions will be made. Warning: 3 easy decisions lie ahead of you. You'll see 3 arrows. Don't be intimidated by this page. There is nothing to worry about.

The top arrow is size. I always choose 474mb. I have a vga screen and a 4g cf card so I have plenty of room. Some people like to go as high as 750mb or as low as 300mb for their movies. Feel free to experiment. Arrow 2 is on the right and is the sound. I sometimes go w/Ac3, sometimes mp3 at 128. I prefer better sound b/c I have really good headphones. If you go w/Ac3 you need the plugin (see link at top). If you go with Mp3 you can save a little space by choosing 96. Basically, once you find what you like for Size and Audio then do it the same every time. We'll do Resolution, the 3rd arrow, below.

9. Resolution is a bit more involved. Vga devices include the x50v and x51v. The resolution is 640 x 480. Non vga, or qvga has a resolution of 320 x 240. Fairuse will give you many resolution options to choose from. You can choose any option where the parameters are equal or less than your device's parameters. Let's look first at my vga options:
As you can see I chose 640 x 272. I can't choose the one above it because 656 is bigger than 640. I can choose the one below it but why choose it when there is a bigger one available? As you can see there are no perfect 640 x 480 options b/c the aspect ratios are not the same between movies and your vga device.

10. Resolution for non-vga is a similar process:

Here the best choice is 320 x 128. When you're done with the resolution press next at the bottom right.

11. You will see the final screen, the Encoding screen. You can see the developer's have a sense of humor if you read this screen. This part takes a few hours. When it's done the file will be in the folder you pointed it to at the very beginning. You're now ready to watch your movie.


12. When you're done, navigate to the folder that contains your movie and you'll see the .AVI file of your movie along with several other files. Do yourself a favor and delete those other files because they're huge and take up a ton of harddrive space. A good idea is to back up the AVI file to a cd or dvd.

13. Transfer the file to your Axim not throught Active Sync but through a card reader. A 2 hour movie may take 4-5 minutes to transfer. I like to create a folder in my CF card called "movies" and put all my movies into it.

Please feel free to add your thoughts and ideas. There are many variations, but this is what works for me.

---Steve-O

Check out Stevenator65 Weblog. It's back and worse than ever!

        

Cool dude...this one easy to follow, Thanks

nice tutorial, good job!

Axim X51v
InnoPocket Magnum
8GB Seagate MD
1GB SanDisk SD
(4) 1100MAH batteries
Sennheiser CX300S

Previous PDAs: Palm M500, Toshiba e335, Axim X50v (run over by car )

Go Steve! Good job.

This has been a great software I have enjoyed using for a while. Nice of you to put this out for those just getting introduced to the software.

  

Very nice tutoral. I dont no what the "cache chain" is eather but it does cache the movie to your hd so next time if you need to rencode you dont need the dvd. If you dont need them then deleate when done because they are HUGE/ Gargantuan.

By the way if you take some cream soda and fill a cup about 2/3rdsb of the way.
Then take some coffee syrup flavering (I like rasberry, coconut & orange) put about 2-3 table spoons of the flavor you like. Then fill the rest of the glass with half&half or milk. Stir very well. Top with whipped cream.

 

My spelling needs improvement. bahh

 

Sounds good, what's that called?

---Steve-O

Check out Stevenator65 Weblog. It's back and worse than ever!

        

great tut! Thanks for the help!

My version of an Italian cream soda.

39.64497- Major Geek
I'm a NINJA.

 

I've use FairUse to convert some files for both my Creative Zen Vision:M and my x51v. It works great.

However, I'm using the free version and it takes forever. A 22 minute TV episode takes about an hour to convert. I looked at the CPU % during the conversion and it was about 15-30%.

Does anyone know if the paid for version uses more of the CPU and reduce the time? If so, I'd probably buy it.

Stevenator: Your Fairuse Tutorial is excellent and I would nominate for a sticky (and I don't take sticky status lightly) in this forum. It was well written, easy to follow, and (best of all) it works. Kudos to you for taking the time to put this together... I (and others) have been the beneficiaries. I think Fairuse is certainly the easiest way to get the job done.

This has been added to the aximsite ebooks section (with the permission of Steve of course).. you guys can download and keep it on your PPC for reference.

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Is it just me, or does it seem like way too much work to get video onto the Axim? Between the umpteen-hour decoding/encoding, then waiting for ActiveSync to decode/encode for the Axim transfer, it seems that I could just watch the show on full-size TV faster!

Robbnj welcome to Aximsite! We're happy to have you here. To answer your question, yes it takes a long time, but you can make it faster by transferring your video using a card reader instead of Active Sync. What I do is I have a folder on my CF card called Movies. I just put my CF card in the card reader and use windows explorer to transfer it. It takes 2-3 minutes to transfer a 2 hour movie this way. Let me know if you have more questions. Also, use TCPMP to watch movies.

---Steve-O

Check out Stevenator65 Weblog. It's back and worse than ever!

        

Steve,

Is there anyway we can activate the chapter that came originaly with the DVD into the conversion process?

I have this DVD music (about 30 or so clip), I would prefer to have the chapter rather than dragging the slider to find one which a bit annoying sometimes to fines the start of the clip.

TIA