Computer Hardware Forum

Hi group,

Just returned from my Summer holiday. Part of the journey involved a
latish crossing on a car ferry. I noticed a lot of families with
children had those portable DVD players....which made me feel rather
jealous. It occured to me during this boring part of my journey that
it would be rather cool and useful to have that facility on my
Palm...and so I did a little research.

You can save movies to your Palm. They actually work quite well. I
had a 512Mb SD card not doing very much and was amazed to discover
that with a little jiggery pokery and hopes of the wind being in the
right direction, I could fit three whole movies onto the card !

Now, I'll be honest, the process isn't all that straightforward.
You're going to need two or three pieces of software, each one doing
a different job.
1)I bought Pocket DVD studio. costs about $39.00 This copies your
DVD from your drive to your hard drive. It also reduces the size so
that it fits into your Palm....reducing memory size and geometric
size. My copy of Master and Commander ended up at about 120Mb.
2) Now, you have to get it onto your SD card. Apparently you can't
use the normal Hotsync software for this and you have to sort of get
the movie onto the card without using Hotsync. If you have a card
reader, then that probably is the best bet. Otherwise, you could try
a piece of free software called Pilot Install, although I couldn't
get any joy from it. Eventually I tried something called Card
Export, which works perfectly. It reads the Palm SD card through
your normal Hotsync lead, but permits you to use your SD card as a
normal data storage gizzmo. Transfer your movie onto your card.
3) Now, you need a piece of software on your Palm that will show the
movie. For this you need something called MM Player. Once that's
installed, Bob's Your Uncle.

Apart from that, I only hit one other snag. I've two computers, but
the one with a DVD player hasn't got an awful lot of memory and was
really struggling to transfer the movie to the Palm. Instead, I sent
the movie over my home network to my desktop computer....which
handled the transfer without problem. Problem was, I tried looking
at the movie using Windows Media Player and it told me that I didn't
have the correct codec to view the movie. Any suggestions?

In the meantime, I've a feeling that I could transfer a fair few
movies onto a CD, then download them to my Palm whenever I have a
long journey or a work related trip ahead of me.

All the best,
Phil

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On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:51:46 +0000 (UTC), "Phil"
<groeswenphil@idrathernotgetanyspam.btinternet.com> wrote:

> Hi group,
>
>Just returned from my Summer holiday. Part of the journey involved a
>latish crossing on a car ferry. I noticed a lot of families with
>children had those portable DVD players....which made me feel rather
>jealous. It occured to me during this boring part of my journey that
>it would be rather cool and useful to have that facility on my
>Palm...and so I did a little research.

Phil,

Nice write up.

Often the cheap portable DVD players that are seen around these days
have screen that are lower quality than our palm devices and not a
great deal larger.

We have the better deal as our devices are far smaller and are useful
in many many other ways.

I have a slightly different method to you to get a usable movie \ vid
onto my Clie NX or Treo 600.

The advantage of your method is that it is easy and straightforward.

The only extra advantage of mine is that you end up with the tools to
work on a larger range of source video types (DVD, downloaded, TV
capture etc..):


Installed \ Used codecs:
---------------------------------------
Xvid (Nic's Version)
MP3
AC3
DivX V3.1 (divx_311alpha.exe)


Decode DVD
----------------------
http://fairusewizard.com (Lite Version Works Great)
OR
DVDDecrypter (For encrypted DVDs)


Reduce Output Video Size
------------------------------------------
PocketDivXEncoder
OR
VirtualDub (Sometimes the Alt Version.)


Transfer Files To Palm Device Card
------------------------------------------------------

File 2 PDA (and WinCommander <Total Commander> )
OR
Card Export
OR
Data Import (Only Certain Devices)


Watch Video On PC
---------------------------------
Media Player Classic (Like MS but simpler and faster)
OR
VideoLan (For those hard to watch or problem videos)

Watch Video On PDA
--------------------------------

The Core Pocket Media Player (tcpmp) (Free and plays nearly everything
your PC can play. DivX, Xvid, MPG, MP3, OGG. etc etc...)





Pete

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Phil wrote:

>  Hi group,
>
> Just returned from my Summer holiday. Part of the journey involved a
> latish crossing on a car ferry. I noticed a lot of families with
> children had those portable DVD players....which made me feel rather
> jealous. It occured to me during this boring part of my journey that
> it would be rather cool and useful to have that facility on my
> Palm...and so I did a little research.
>
> You can save movies to your Palm. They actually work quite well. I
> had a 512Mb SD card not doing very much and was amazed to discover
> that with a little jiggery pokery and hopes of the wind being in the
> right direction, I could fit three whole movies onto the card !
>
> Now, I'll be honest, the process isn't all that straightforward.
> You're going to need two or three pieces of software, each one doing
> a different job.
> 1)I bought Pocket DVD studio. costs about $39.00 This copies your
> DVD from your drive to your hard drive. It also reduces the size so
> that it fits into your Palm....reducing memory size and geometric
> size. My copy of Master and Commander ended up at about 120Mb.
> 2) Now, you have to get it onto your SD card. Apparently you can't
> use the normal Hotsync software for this and you have to sort of get
> the movie onto the card without using Hotsync. If you have a card
> reader, then that probably is the best bet. Otherwise, you could try
> a piece of free software called Pilot Install, although I couldn't
> get any joy from it. Eventually I tried something called Card
> Export, which works perfectly. It reads the Palm SD card through
> your normal Hotsync lead, but permits you to use your SD card as a
> normal data storage gizzmo. Transfer your movie onto your card.
> 3) Now, you need a piece of software on your Palm that will show the
> movie. For this you need something called MM Player. Once that's
> installed, Bob's Your Uncle.
>
> Apart from that, I only hit one other snag. I've two computers, but
> the one with a DVD player hasn't got an awful lot of memory and was
> really struggling to transfer the movie to the Palm. Instead, I sent
> the movie over my home network to my desktop computer....which
> handled the transfer without problem. Problem was, I tried looking
> at the movie using Windows Media Player and it told me that I didn't
> have the correct codec to view the movie. Any suggestions?
>
> In the meantime, I've a feeling that I could transfer a fair few
> movies onto a CD, then download them to my Palm whenever I have a
> long journey or a work related trip ahead of me.
>

Yes! I've also just stumbled across this awesome concept. I've got a LifeDri
ve
with gigs of space, so it's easier to carry more movies or TV show episodes 
but
as they say, you can never have enough space.

I can record the F1 grands prix with my digital tuner card which saves the 2
.5
hour recording as an MPG. Then I use a Ulead product (which I bought with a 
DVD
burner) to convert the MPEG into a 700MB divx AVI. There must be a free bit 
of
software that does that step but I haven't looked.

I then play it with TCPMP - The Core Project Media Player - which is a free
movie player that supports DivX and xvid avis, and a few other formats too.

I've also got a bunch of TV episodes in AVI format, and the resolution is
slightly bigger than my screen, but they automatically scale nicely and ther
e
don't appear to be any dropped frames for the 25fps source.
--
--
Ben Thomas - Melbourne, Australia
The essentials: Kodak DX6490, Nikon D70, Canon i9950, Pioneer DVR-109,
Hitachi W37-PD2100, DGTEC 2000A, Harmon/Kardon AVR4500, Denon DVD-2800,
Whatmough Synergy, Sony Ericsson K700i, Palm LifeDrive.

Disclaimer:
Opinions, conclusions, and other information in this message that do not
relate to the official business of my employer shall be understood as neithe
r
given nor endorsed by it.

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On 2005-08-25, Phil <groeswenphil@idrathernotgetanyspam.btinternet.com> wrote:
>  Hi group,
>
> Just returned from my Summer holiday. Part of the journey involved a
> latish crossing on a car ferry. I noticed a lot of families with
> children had those portable DVD players....which made me feel rather
> jealous. It occured to me during this boring part of my journey that
> it would be rather cool and useful to have that facility on my
> Palm...and so I did a little research.

See also: Kinoma.

--
Toby.
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject
field to circumvent my email filters.
Ignore any mail delivery error.

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Toby wrote:
> On 2005-08-25, Phil <groeswenphil@idrathernotgetanyspam.btinternet.com> wr
ote:
> 
>
>
> See also: Kinoma.
>

Or not. While Kinoma was bundled with the T3 and similar devices, that
version was appallingly bad. Later versions of Kinoma support more
formats and may be better; I don't know, as the alternatives are
excellent, and free. I've compared video converted with Kinoma, and
generally the Kinoma version is noticeably degraded from the original
and also a larger file.

TCMP is free and will play just about any avi and many other formats you
throw at it, so you don't need to convert or even resample stuff you
might download off the net - check out archive.org for some material to
get you started. My T3 needs slight overclocking to cope with high
sapmle and frame rates, but even if I let it drop frames, the result is
acceptable. It is also an excellent audio player - much better quality
than Pocket Tunes, in my experience. It won't play in the background
like Pocket Tunes does, unfortunately.

If you need to convert DVDs to avi, you can use Fair Use Wizard LE
(Windows app), also free. Or try Auto Gordian Knot (AutoGK), or DVDx.

PocketDivXEncoder is still free, and I use this most often, but you'll
need something else to deal with DVDs. It is a standalone executable -
no installation required. http://divx.ppccool.com

I use a card reader to load up the SD card, it is fastest and least hassle.

People are always amazed when I demonstrate video on the T3 - the
quality is surprisingly good. Personally, I'm astounded at just how much
the abilities of Palm devices have improved over the past couple of
years, and most of the improvements have been from 3rd party developers,
not Palm.

http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about will get you started - lots of
information and links from here.

HTH

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-=rjh=- <usually@mail.com> POSTED ON Sat, 27 Aug 2005
13:12:04 +1200:

>...
>TCMP is free and will play just about any avi and many
>other formats you throw at it, so you don't need to
>convert or even resample stuff you might download off the
>net ...

Thanks for the recommendation.  I installed TCPMP (which I
presume was meant) from http://tcpmp.corecodec.org and it
works as specified.  It's a great movie displayer on my
Palm Tungsten|E.

Apparently the Tungsten|E operating system will only delete
applications, such as TCPMP, and depends upon application
programs to delete their own data files.  So far that's my
only gripe with TCPMP.  The .MPG files I "hot-synced" down
to the Palm can only be seen in the Open-Files pull-down
under TCPMP.  And TCPMP seems to contain no DELETE FILE
function.

Will -=rjh=- kindly explain how one deletes downloaded
movies so as to reuse the space?

Thanks in advance.

--Kellis
kellis@dhp.com
Stories gratis at http://www.dhp.com/~kellis

Notice: Email to Kellis must have a "Subject:" line
containing the title of a Kellis or Varkel story or a
prearranged word such as "asstr".  Otherwise no
human eye will ever see it.  SPAM is the reason for
this.  Sorry.

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On 2005-08-31, kellis <kellis@shell.dhp.com> wrote:
> -=rjh=- <usually@mail.com> POSTED ON Sat, 27 Aug 2005
> 13:12:04 +1200:
> 
>
> Thanks for the recommendation.  I installed TCPMP (which I
> presume was meant) from http://tcpmp.corecodec.org and it
> works as specified.  It's a great movie displayer on my
> Palm Tungsten|E.
>
> Apparently the Tungsten|E operating system will only delete
> applications, such as TCPMP, and depends upon application
> programs to delete their own data files.  So far that's my
> only gripe with TCPMP.  The .MPG files I "hot-synced" down
> to the Palm can only be seen in the Open-Files pull-down
> under TCPMP.  And TCPMP seems to contain no DELETE FILE
> function.
>
> Will -=rjh=- kindly explain how one deletes downloaded
> movies so as to reuse the space?

Subject to this post I also downloaded TCPMP and was very impressed
by it. No need to re-encode my *.avis, just drag them to the SD
Card and go. Some movies play back very slowly (DivX, I think) and
others play back very well indeed.

FYI you could delete them afterwards using an app like FileZ.

--
Toby.
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject
field to circumvent my email filters.
Ignore any mail delivery error.

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kellis <kellis@shell.dhp.com> wrote:

>Will -=rjh=- kindly explain how one deletes downloaded
>movies so as to reuse the space?

Try the free FileZ or FileProg file managers.
(Google to find)

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>Subject to this post I also downloaded TCPMP and was very impressed
>by it. No need to re-encode my *.avis, just drag them to the SD
>Card and go. Some movies play back very slowly (DivX, I think) and
>others play back very well indeed.

You really need to think about re-encoding your AVIs both to save
space and make them work better.

In landscape the best resolution should be no greater than 320 x 240.

From experiments I suggest (if possible) a speed of no greater than 25
FPS but for my mind 23 is the optimum speed.

I don't use divx much as I prefer Xvid (Nic's Version). In Xvid the
best bitrates (kbps) are around 300 to 400. This gives a well
compressed file and good quality video depending on the quality of the
original.

Quantise around 3 as this is generally sharp and keeps pixelisation
down.... any lower (1 or 2) and video size increases.

A major effector on size and speed (ease of playback) is audio. I
generally prefer to encode it at 32kb 16khz stereo (4KBs). This is
generally good for movies but I might increase that slightly for music
videos.

If you do re-encode and experiment until you get what you want the
difference will be pleasing. Simply put a target encoded video will
put less strain on the CPU and memory card.

Changing the dimensions will allow your screen driver to work more
efficiently.

PocketDivxEncoder does a good job all round. VirtualDub is excellent
if you need to go that little bit further or work on lower quality
originals.

If you want to encode a DVD movie I would suggest using the lite
version of 'FairUse' to give you a 700MB AVI and then put that through
PocketDivxEncoder or VirtualDub to get a 200MB (Aprox) output movie
ready for the Palm device. I'm pretty impressed with the quality you
can get with this and if re-encoded with the Palm in mind the movie
runs smoothly.

Another reason I believe it is important to re-encode is simply that a
CPU, RAM and memory card that have to work harder to plough through an
over-sized video will heat the device quicker and use far more
power... meaning your batteries are less likely to last...

Last thought: Once encoded you will be able to get upto 20 full movies
on one DVD.. Find access to a PC, take the DVD and a USB cable, file
transfer software and the Palm device with you on your 3 week holiday
and that's about 1 movie every day :)


Pete

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AaronJ wrote:
> kellis <kellis@shell.dhp.com> wrote:
>
> 
>
>
> Try the free FileZ or FileProg file managers.
> (Google to find)

As above, Filez is good and was one of my favourites, but I have
recently bought Resco Explorer. Card Export is also an alternative if
you don't have a card reader.

In fact, I almost always use an SD card and card reader; syncing large
files to a T3 is ridiculously slow.

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