Mobile Video Assistance Required

[Australis]

I have a question for mobile video. Just bought one of them new fangled mp3/mp4 players, and it's quite nice. But when I used the AVI Converter that came with it, it won't play my videos. A couple of things about that.

One, when I compared the properties of the vids i resized to the sample one on the player, mine use Xvid compression while the sample one uses FFDS. When I search Google for formatting tools, they are almost without exception for converting FFDS to AVI. Wha?

Two, I emailed the company that supplied it, and they replied in slightly fractured English

Hi, this is not about FFDS, please make sure your video is converted into avi and with resoultion 320 x 240 as stated in the description.

Also, if your video is with new decodes which most divx / Xvid files contain, then they cannot be converted

It seems like he's telling me 2 things there: FFDS isn't a requirement, and that Xvid & DivX codecs can't be used.

So does anyone have any advice, or able to explain in further detail? Thanks.

 

[Sean Aaron]

It would probably be useful to know the make/model of your player. I encode to H.264 myself, but then if I was watching mobile video it would be on my iPhone.

 

[Australis]

This one:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/16GB-2-8...29?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item3a6a1b2835

In other words a NoName. The converter that came with it just seems to resize, but I do have another one that can convert to H.264.

 

[farmkid]

Requiring .avi isn't very helpful. .avi is simply a container, not a video format. It can be uncompressed or use any one of a large number of codecs. The way the description is written, it leads me to believe it requires uncompressed video, but that's hard to believe. I'm not sure what the reply you got means, but it might mean that their program can't convert Divx or Xvid files.

I would suggest getting VirtualDub or some conversion program and just try some different codecs. See what plays on your player and see what works as input to the conversion program they sent you. Once you get something that you can convert successfully, you can have a look at it and see what format it is.

 

[Australis]

Thanks, Sean and farmkid. I'll give this a tryout on the weekend (H.264 and not DivX), I'm really busy this week. But I wanted you to know I do appreciate your comments.

 

[Sean Aaron]

Good luck. And I would suggest that if you're buying a device to watch video on the go and it's that cheap, it's probably not going to be that great a device.