I have been trying all the different methods user have been posting on how to push a dvd movie into a PocketPC. I have to say most of the software out there really doesn't work very well. I have tried 5 methods and only one has actually worked so far. All others either can't handle the WM10 player, or don't play correctly. I di make some headway into WME9 but the quailty of the wmv was so poor, I could't believe it.

Care to elaborate? Which methods/products have you used so far?

Don't Panic!
Bobby

Don't Panic!
Bobby
42
Soft-reset is our Friend :

    

Lets see. I have tried the following so far:

PocketDVD. Works everytime without flaw. Only real issue, I can't get it to fill the whole screen(landscape mode) when playing. I starting playing with other methods, becuase of others sayign they were getting it to play in full 640X480 mode in WM10.

DVD-To-PocketPC(newest version) Appears to work, but every movie played in WM10 is all screwed up, showing green lines, distortions, and everytime I try to put WM10 into full screen mode, I end up and to do a soft reset.

DVDDecrypter Saved into a vob file. Finally got WME9 to encode into a wmv file, but the paying quailty was so bad. I changed the resolution to 640X480 with the max size of 256megs. Basic same results with DVDShrink.

My goal as everyone else is to get the best quality in the smallest size. It's funny that even using the PocketDVD if played on a e805 it goes into full screen no problem, but on the x50v it doesn't.

I certainly am open to suggestions from someone that has had betterluck. I keep hearign the the dvddecrypt or dvdshrink in combination with WME9 make smaller files at the end. However is there aproblem with the fact that x50v has wm10 instead of wm9? which the WME9 has as it max way to make the movie??

Michael

Some people like my guides on my website. Everything you need including the links to the programs you need is there and its all free. Step by Step with pictures. Click link in my Sig.

Apple iPhone
iPod Nano 8 Gig (Red)
iPod 30 Gig (Video)
Axim X30 High
DSI Aluminum Case
Lexar Secure Digital 256MB
Kingston 512MB My Encoding Guides

I tried your guides while very informative. here is my results.
I did the the steps you outlined. The last step I did was fire up WME9 and converted the mpeg file into a wmv file for PocketPC.

I copied the 285 meg wmv file accross, and I get nothing but garbage playing it through WM10. What I mean by garbage is lines, like snow, no visable pictures, the sound plays fine. If I go to full screen, it locks the PDA up tighter than anything. I have even done a hard reset and install nothing and done it. Any more clues hints??

Michael

Unless you dont mind carrying around a 1 GB movie on a 1 GB SD card (yea I know the movie would have to be a little less than 1 GB) then you are going to have to sacrifice quality. A 256MB movie is going to have to give up a lot of quality to squeeze down to that size. Animated movies are a little different (can get good quality on the south park the movie in under 200mb). A 25min animated show like the Family Guy can get excellent quality in a 65mb file. A 1.5-2 hr movie like XXX or Top Gun is going to require 400+ mb to get good quality. Most of the time how you encode the movie with regards to the audio and video bitrate is going to make a difference. I use a video bitrate of 200 when encoding animated movies and a video bitrate of 300-400 when using regular movies (like those mentioned above). Obviously I cant cram too many on a 1GB SD card but I'll take 1 or 2 with me at any one time. (If you are wondering, a use an audio bitrate of 96).

Ive been "making" PPC movies manually for a while and have just started to play around with Pocket DVD Studio (they have a new version now that supports VGA devices). Allows you to crop the screen and a bunch of other neat features. The resulting file is an AVI file that I play back using Betaplayer (EXCELLENT program by the way).

There are a bunch of guides out there that will help you if you want to take the manual route of doing it...but be patient, experiment, and learn what is happening during the conversion process so that if you run into problems or have mistakes you will know how to fix them the next time.

I understand Quality, vs size. That is not the problem. The movie file it almost all white, scrambled and such. It's not a quality vs size issue at all. I am just trying to play a movie period out of the WM10 that is all. But really the bottem line is I want to put somemovies on the PocketPC and watch them. Size and quility come into play then. The best quality I can get in the smallest size. So I am looking for a program or sequance of steps that do produce the movie file correctly.

Michael

Do the movies you encode play correctly on WMP for the desktop?

Yes they play perfectly fine on the desktop.

Thats odd...what is the resulting file type of the movies after encoding? also, what player are you using again to view the movies? Dont use WMP...try using a 3rd party software life Betaplayer or PocketMVP (depending on the file type encoded).

I use SmartRipper and PocketDivXEncoder (both free) using 2 pass encoding at 15 frames per second to produce AVI files small enough to fit on a 256 Mb CF card. I view them using the superb BetaPlayer on my Axim X5 Advanced 400 Mhz and the results are amazingly good both video and sound (not stereo)even for a two and a half hour movie.

mAXIMum Addiction

  

Thats weird...You say it plays fine on your PC but you get lines and such playing in PPC...You might want to try and run your mpeg through VirtualDub and make a divx video and use BetaPlayer to play it or BetaPlayer can play wmv with the asf plugin...You might give that a try with the video you have created.

Apple iPhone
iPod Nano 8 Gig (Red)
iPod 30 Gig (Video)
Axim X30 High
DSI Aluminum Case
Lexar Secure Digital 256MB
Kingston 512MB My Encoding Guides