Easy videos for cellphone

[DereX888]

EASY VIDEOS CREATION FOR YOUR CELLPHONE
(AVI/MPEG-1/MPEG-2/WMV/MOV/... to MP4/3GPP Guide by DereX888, v1.0)

This is easiest way I could possibly find at current time (August 2004).
However please be advised: tool involved in it is not free unfortunately.


Tools required:

1. MPEGABLE X4 LIVE
available there => http://www.mpegable.com/show/mpegablex4.html

2. Your cellphone manufacturer's software and connector cable for uploading stuff from your PC to your cell; or some very good data plan from your cell provider if you plan to download your videos wirelessly



NOTE:
Install and register mpegable tool first. Without registration you will have some logo added in the upper left corner on your output video.
There's no need to restart your computer (only if you run Win9x/ME).

1. Start mpegable, select source file.
Mpegable can videocapture live broadcast (if you have any tv tuner/videocapture card) and it is able to convert existing videos as well.
Basically it converts any video format supported by Direct Show filters (that means almost every existing format except for Real Media IIRC).

Select your source video, and select your output folder/filename if you need to. Mpegable will output converted video into the same folder as your source file automatically.




2. Set video settings
Since videos for your cell are going to be very small resolution, there is no need for any large bitrate here.
Im setting this example video to only 40kBps since it is animation, and I will decimate its frame as well. But you should try various bitrates to find one matching best the resolution of your output video (see next steps).
Setting up variable bitrate allows for achieving as small as possible file size.




3. Set audio settings
My Moto V300 phone had trouble playing videos with audio encoded with AAC or 3GPP AMR WideBandwidth codec (it uses 16kHz), but it plays without problem any videos with 3GPP AMR NarrowBandwidth (NB) audio codec (8kHz). If you have better phone than mine then it is possible your phone would play the other codecs. Give it a shot. 3GPP AMR WB at 16kHz sound way much better than 3GPP AMR NB (but it takes more space at the same bitrate ofcoz).




4. Add Info
This tab allows you to enter "movie info". You can skip it if you choose so.
But if you want to enter any info there - make sure to click on APPLY button before you go to another tab, or all info will be lost (this is one of few small 'bugs' I found in this software).




5. Interoperability tab
This should have been called 'format selection'. If you have it set to "no restrictions" it will allow you to choose any options in other tabs (video, audio) and your output file will have .mp4 extension. If you select MPEG-4 standard you will have only AAC audio available in Audio setup, and so on and on. You could set 3GPP output here and select appropiate audio codec as well, then in AUdio tab you'll have only bitrate selection for this codec.




6. Framerate and Range settings
"Video Preprocessing" tab allows you to choose different than the source's framerate in the output file, as well as it allows you to "cut" or "split" files (not exactly, but I'll explain later).


FRAMERATES
Again - since youre creating video for your cellphone, the key word here is "small size" (otherwise you would just copy your dvd's MPEG-2 to your cell, right? Well, lets hope it will be possible soon ). One of the ways to 'shrink' the video's filesize is to decimate its framerate by factor of 2 or 3. My source video file is originally 24fps, thus I changed output framerate to 12fps.
If your source video is NTSC standard 29.97fps you can go for 15fps ot 10fps output.
If your source video is PAL standard 25fps, you can go for 12fps or 10fps.
Keep in mind that most videos look bad if framerate is less than 12fps.

OUTPUT RANGE
If you want to split your source video into few files, or you just want to use a portion of your source file - use the buttons I circled with green lines. Mark your start frame ("Set in-point" button) and end frame ("set out-point" button). If youre "splitting" the source file into few output files, your second file you will create should have a start frame set where was your first file's end frame.



7. Cropping & Resizing
This is the most important part of the whole process. Except for few newer phones, most of the cells dont handle videos larger than their screen size.
IMO setting output resolution to Quarter CIF standard (QCIF 176x144) is currently the most common playable resolution. But again - if your cell is i.e. SE P900 with screen size of 320x240 then you may want to set that resolution instead.

To set cropping and resizing: uncheck "Display Dimension" mark (1), checkmark "Cropping/Resizing" (2) and click on "Setup" (3) in the same line.


then



Resizing mode is important, but Mpegable lacks in this department, and the only available options are Bilinear and Bicubic (the latter gives way better quality). Setting High Quality doesn't change much either, but I always keep it enabled.




8. Run conversion
Now you should be back to the first tab where you started. Just press the red button to start conversion.


and voila, here she goes:


SPEED:
In example conversions done on a Pentium 4 2.8GHz with 1GB of PC800 RDRAM took:
VCD>MP4 60sec long: ~40sec
CVD>3GPP 6min long: ~3min
SVCD>MP4, cropped WS, 15min long: ~10min

[Craig Tucker]

Smart Movie from lonely cat games is also worth a look.
http://www.lonelycatgames.com/

[Suntan]

PocketDivxEncoder is freeware (FYI actually uses FFMPEG for codec)

Played back on Betaplayer (Smart Phone Version) also Freeware.

Don't have a smartphone, but it works great on my IPAQ.

-Suntan

[DereX888]

why all the pictures are suddenly missing?

[Baldrick]

repost them. they dissapaered in the server move. mushkins fault!

[DereX888]

repost them. they dissapaered in the server move. mushkins fault!

wow shite happens heh

I didnt made any backups, it was just one-time for guys at another forum (and as well for guys here since the subject overlaps on both) so how about deleting this thread at all? Its useless without pics anyway.

BTW - what happened to my Teddy?! Was it lost during move as well?