Movies for cell/PDA - How?

[tygrus2000]

How can I make movies that will display on common PDAs and the next gen. cell phones with displays? What format would they have to be in and what programs could you use?

thx.

Tygrus

[tgpo]

I read on slashdot that numerous phones will be using Apple's MPEG-4 technology. These can be created using Quicktime Pro 6

[Craig Tucker]

The new Sony Ericsson P800 will allow installation of various codecs so it will be able to play divx, xvid etc. You would simply encode using vdub as you would for any other divx, but with reduced resolution (for the small screen) and bitrate to keep the filesize down.

[tygrus2000]

What would be an appropriate resolution and bitrate for most cells or PDAs? I imagine their memory and processing power would be limited.

Tygrus

[RabidDog]

I had a fiddle with this and encoded a whole movie in mpeg1
@ 200 x 160 which I expect IS GONNA BE THE SORT OF resolution these things have. size was about 70mb. I think you would actually get better compression using mpeg4, but it was surprisingly watchable. Another thing to watch out for would be that they have a limited number of colours, but I suppose you could let thier hardware take care of that. I expect one of the companies to release an encoder tuned specially for thier product, should be fun.
N.B. It actually encoded practically in realtime using tentpeg so those other superfact encoders would do it in even faster.

[Gazorgan]

Bandwidth is not unlimited for picture phones. Some companies in the US are charging $40 US (above and beyond your regular cell phone usage) for 5 MB of data. Combine that with data rates of 19,200 bps ( oh yeah, no high speed widely available in the US yet ).

Now PDA's are another story. Especially with a wireless connection. Watching a movie could be like reading a book, just hit pause and stick your PDA in your pocket.

[RabidDog]

I personally was thinking more of the case of say xfr'ing a movie to a compact flash card (256mb) and watching it on the hoof. reusable and NO phone charges. Those sorts of cards are getting really cheap now and you can even get 1gb cards. full rate full colour divx movie easily fitted!!
At least we do lead the US in mobile phone technology.

[Craig Tucker]

Yes, the p800 that I mentioned had a slot for a sony duo memory stick, comes standard with a 16MB stick but you could of course upgrade it to be big enough to fit a movie.

[RabidDog]

crying eyes face ? sony memory stick = same capacity for x 4 money.
They really stick it to you with those!