Vidego28 - Converting avi for portable player

[jangelj]

I have this Vidego28 media player. It's a cute little mp3/avi player that works well. I am trying to automate downloading video onto it. I want to transfer video from Tivo and convert and move it to the player automatically. I have it down pat, except the video isn't playable. I am converting using ffmpeg. The player came with some cheesy software that converts to avi. It works fine, but I can't incorporate that into the automated process. So I am using ffmpeg in my automated procedure.

What I am trying to figure out is what settings I need for ffmpeg to convert the videos into the same specs as the program that came with the player. Is there an application that I can use to look at the avi's that are created with the included program (called aviconverter or something generic like that) to determine the EXACT specs. Then I can setup ffmpeg to mimic those settings. I have tried a bunch of stuff (framerate and framewidthXframeheight) but the files still aren't playable. I am missing something, but have no idea what. Maybe the way the sound is encoded? who knows. I'd like to compare a working avi and a nonworking one to see the difference.
TIA,
John

[theewizard]

get gspot and mediaInfo and check the files that work and copy down those specs

then try it with those specs

[tmh]

maybe autoGK is a converter that would work for you? It handles many different inputs and outputs. Depends on what your player can play I guess. i use it for Creative Zen player and it's been fine.

[jangelj]

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried mediainfo, and one other similiar program (may have been ginfo). The format the player needs is a weird kind of .avi file. It is a 12 bit xvid with mp2 audio. I have figured out a way 2 step process to do what I want. I have autmated the extraction from my tivo, which in turn converts the file to avi or mpeg. the second step is a command line autmated process that uses mencoder (the only encoder I have found to work) to encode to the EXACT specs this device requires. My only problem is the audio/video slowly go out of sync. After about 15 minutes of a show they are about 1 second apart. By the end they are 3-4 seconds off. It is very distracting. The videos play find on my pc, so I think the player just has trouble keeping them in sync. If you ff or rw for a second, they sync back up.

There is a pretty good forum I found for these devices (mp4) it is www.mympxplayer.org).

Thanks for the suggestions!
John