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  1. Hi,

    I recently took about 25 GB of video with my smart phone, a Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket. The phone saved each video file as a:
    - MPEG-4 movie
    - 1920 × 1080
    - AAC, H.264

    The videos play fine on my Macbook Pro, which has these specs:
    - Mac OS X 10.6.8
    - 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5
    - 4 GB Memory

    I will be sharing the videos with family, however, their computer is much older and cannot handle playback of the videos. They will be watching the videos on a TV via S-Video connection to the laptop. Their computer specs are:

    - Dell Latitude D800 laptop
    - Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3
    - Intel Pentium M 2 GHz
    - 1 GB Memory

    My questions are:

    1.) I will need to convert the HD videos to SD for my family to watch them on their Dell laptop, correct?

    2.) Which software should I use for the conversion? Free/Open Source is preferred. Mac compatible required.

    3.) What video settings do you recommend for the converted files? I would prefer to retain as much of the original video quality as possible.

    Thank you
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  2. Hi

    Why not convert them to a DVD.
    If you convert them to a one hour per disc you'll be getting good quality at 720 by 480.

    Most computers and homes have a DVD player. The slowest laptop should be able to play a standard DVD.

    Good Luck
    If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
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  3. Banned
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    I'm not knocking TBoneit's suggestion, but if you want to keep more of the HD, you could convert to Divx/Xvid and downscale to 1280x720. You have to have a REALLY old PC, I'm talking like 7+ years here, for even a single core CPU to not be able to successfully play Divx/Xvid files at that resolution. The specs of that laptop should be sufficient for Divx or Xvid playback of 1280x720 video. I do not know what Mac friendly programs you can use for conversion though. Maybe ffmpeg. Don't forget to convert the audio to MP3 if converting to Divx/Xvid to further reduce the load on the CPU.
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  4. VH Wanderer Ai Haibara's Avatar
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    Handbrake might work. It outputs to MKV or MP4/M4V video containers, but their computer theoretically shouldn't have a problem with either of those at SD resolutions, as long as they have everything necessary to play the videos installed (like the necessary codecs, splitters and players... or an all-inclusive player like VLC, though I'm not sure about the 2.x versions).

    For shareware/commercial software (though both are relatively inexpensive, I believe), and outputting to different formats/codecs, there's ffmpegX ($15) and iffmpeg ($10). There are other choices, of course, but I don't do much video work on my Mac or Linux systems.
    Last edited by Ai Haibara; 10th May 2012 at 17:05.
    If cameras add ten pounds, why would people want to eat them?
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  5. The only reason I suggested DVD format was that it is for family members. If fire_water knew for sure there were no Apple computers in the mix then .wmv would also be a common to every windows PC format.
    If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
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  6. VH Wanderer Ai Haibara's Avatar
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    I could be wrong - I don't know how much or how well any of the ffmpeg/mencoder-based software (or VLC, for that matter) support output to Windows Media formats, but it may be difficult to produce Windows Media files on a Mac (without buying the Flip4Mac suite).
    If cameras add ten pounds, why would people want to eat them?
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  7. I use Aimersoft Total Media Converter to convert HD to standard DVD resolution. I have also used Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate 6 to accomplish the same task.
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  8. I used Hand Brake, free and easy, to convert my HD videos to SD. Here is a link to the thread that describes how to do it:

    https://forum.handbrake.fr/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24247

    Thank you for your help
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