Video Encoding With Dvd::rip

[btanoue]

Hi,

I am running Cacko 1.23 (I belive that this is with the version that comes with mplayer optimized for the C1000)

I used dvd::rip to encode video at 640x352 (that was the aspect ratio that dvd::rip figured out after I said to change the witch to 640.

I've seen alot of things talk about video and hardware acceleration in this forum.  Seems like everyone has their own "magic formula" to give smooth video.

I noticed that the about video started to play much quicker then when I used a 320x252 video that I was playing before using the sofware scaling feature in kino2.  I figured that the smaller resolution would play better even if it were software scaled to 640x480'ish.  It played smoothly but I could tell the processor must be working hard and I wasn't sure if the video hardware offloading any of the work.

When I did play the video re-encoded  640x352, it was fine, but the video would skip a little every few seconds, but it was playing without  software scaling.  This is very exciting because it means that I was able to play my Xvid4 encoded video at full screen.  Was hardware acceleration now working?

So I would like to know if I forced the video to be cropped to 640x480 (not the true aspect ratio of the video) encoded in Xvid4, would it play smoother?

Perhaps we should figure out where to put a true wiki-howto on how to encode video for each of the  Zaurus family's (ie, the 860's are a little different then the cx00 series etc) with programs that can be used for each OS.  

As we speak I am re-encoding the video to 640x480 (breaking the aspect ratio a little) to see if it would play any better.  

Back in a few hours with the result.

btanoue

[btanoue]

OK, my litttle experiment showed something interesting.
All the video's had Xvid4 Compression with mp3 stereo sound, kino2 seems to show it as mad but I don't think that is the case.  The video file sizes were 600 MB for the 16x9 video and 101 MB for the 4x3 Video

Encoding at 640x480 for a video was just a tiny bit too difficult for the zaurus to play.  If you don't mind a screen skip every few seconds then that maybe fine.

The video that I was using at the 640x352 (the maintained aspect ratio) played much better.  I'm under the assumption that the black bars that the 16x9 video actually helped me a bit.  I guess that mplayer doesn't have to work as had since it knows the frames are always black?

In conclusion...

16x9 (widescreen video) maintaining the aspect ratio seemed to help.  Also I did use Turbo Mode.  Figured why not if it didn't kill my zaurus.  Also I found the I ran into problems with the 'Q' key, that had a function that I set to none so I don't accidentally press it again.  This was all done in kino2

My 4x3 video was encoded at 320x240 and using software scaling for full screen played great and looked good as well!  No fram skip or anything what so ever.  This was all done in kino2

What does this mean to you?  Well if you pick up a large CF or SD card you got yourself one heck of a video player!

I'm not exactly sure what video chipset the C1000 uses, somewhere in the forum I thought it was pointed out it was an ATI chip.  Too bad ATI is so closed about releasing source code for their drivers if that is the case.  A PDA hardly is at the top of the mountian in terms of performance to a main stream PC video card.

btanoue