HELP encoding vids to play on Chinese import MP4 player

[MajorSmith]

I'm in need of some help with an MP4 player purchased from an importer via ebay. It's a combo camera, mp3, mp4, nes game and video player. The box is labeled "Game MP4" and there is some reference to MR1, which might be a model number. It is a lso a 1GB model (actually about 950MB of free storage). It looks like the one in the photo below.

My problem is that while it plays mp3s and nes roms just fine, I haven't been able to get any videos that I've encoded to play. The sample movie trailer that came on the device plays fine and videos shot with the built in camera also play. However, I've tried encoding movies in avi, 3gp and MP4 formats for 320x240 screen size using multiple encoding packages and have gotten nothing but an error box that says "Exceptional file, please play other file!"

Any suggestions would be VERY much appreciated. Thanks!

[jman98]

MP4 capability is usually an outright lie on these devices. Usually what they support is something called AMV. Take a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMV_video_format
These players usually have very strict requirements on resolution. Encode to AMV format and if it still doesn't play, keep encoding at smaller resolutions until you find one that works.

[MajorSmith]

Thanks jman98! I'll give AMV encoding a try this evening.

Any recommendations for encoding software that handles AMV well?

Regards,

[drjtech]

Try running the sample movie through GSpot to see the CODEC, resolution, frame rate, etc..

-drjtech

[Midzuki]

I have found this, don't know if it will be helpful:

http://code.google.com/p/amv-codec-tools/

P.S.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_MP4/MTV_Player