I am new to the Zaurus but I love it already. I picked up a 5500 from Amazon for $160 with an extra battery. I think thats an amazing deal.
I messed around with a couple of different roms but found that the Sharp rom 3.1 seemed to run the best. The email client and opera browser also make it very worthwhile.
Of course this limits my options in terms of software, but almost all the things I needed worked on the Sharp Rom.
Video was the holy grail and of course I was not going to use the sharp media player which is simply a joke.
I spent literally about 20 hours trying to get video playing on my sharp.
Now it works (really well). So here follows an idiot\'s and unix newbie\'s guide to playing video.
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What you need for PC.
1) VirtualDub 1.5.10
2) DivX ;- ) MPEG-4 Low-Motion codec (driver name DivXc32.dll)
3) an MPEG Layer-3 codec
After installing a bunch of random video software I had this stuff pre installed. My advice is go to
http://www.doom9.org/ and dl all the codecs you can. Watch out with DivX that you dl the free one and not the adware one.
What you need for Sharp.
1) A terminal I suggest dl the embeddedkonsole as it has more features than sharps default terminal
http://www.handango.com/sharp/PlatformProd...Id=0&catalog=80 2) mplayer [ mplayer_0.90pre10_arm.ipk ] dl it from the download section on this site.
3) A big CF card I have a lexar 512mb 4x. sd could work too but haven\'t checked
OK cool.
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INSTALL SHARP APPS
Now install both konsole and mplayer on the sharp into internal memory. mplayer has to run for the konsole but it is not to hard to do I will post the exact commands to make it work.
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ON PC
Find a movie file you want to use. I have only tested this with AVI files.
I had a problem with some mpegs.
I was using a funsubbed anime that was originally 190MB. The processed size after VirtualDub was 40MB which should give you a rough idea of the compression amount. For that file it took about 20 mins for a 24 min epsiode.
1) OPEN VIRTUALDUB
2) FILE - OPEN VIDEO FILE
3) Video - Filters... Then click Add..
Select the New Width to be 320 and height to be 240 (assuming your original file is 640 X 480 ). Select Bicubic for Filter Mode. Click OK
4) Video - Compression. Choose DiVX ;- ) MPEG-4 Low-Motion. Choose Configure. Put the top slider (compression control) to 75 and the bottom slider (Data Rate) to 500 and click OK OK till you get back to main window
5) Make sure in Video menu \'full processing mode\' is checked.
6) Audio - Compression... Select MPEG Layer-3. On the right choose 24,000 HZ mono. Click OK
7) Make sure Source Audio and \'full processing mode\' is checked.
8 ) File - Save As AVI... Save it somewhere
KEEP THE FILE NAME SHORT. as you will have to type it in later by hand.
9) Watch and wait. If you would rather not see the video when processing hit F9 and F10.
10) Make a folder called \'movies\' on your CF card. Transfer the compressed avi to that folder.
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On the Zaurus
Make sure your screen is set not to power down if on battery otherwise you have to keep touching it to keep it on.
For my example I am opening a file called moviename.avi in the movies folder of my cf card.
Open Konsole (or terminal)
In the Konsole type
\"su\" This makes you root- you need to be root to run this.
\"cd /\" Takes you to the top level directory (cd means change directory)
\"cd /mnt/cf/movies\"
\"ls\" if you want to see the movie names in the folder.
\"mplayer -framedrop -really-quiet movename.avi\"
(after every command hit return)
Now you should see a bunch of text and the movie should start playing fullscreen.
-framedrop makes sure that the video and audio stay synced by dropping frames.
-really-quiet is essential as it makes sure you don\'t see any of the stuff running in the konsole. occasionally you will see a flash of code or the time but it is not often.
to pause hit space
to fast forward a minute up on the d pad, back a minute down, forward 10 sec right and back 10 sec left
There is no way I have found to end it well. I usually hit OK a couple times and then it leaves the video on the screen so I just hit where the close konsole button is and you should see everything normally again. I think this is coz mplayer draws directly to the framebuffer.
The video quality is really nice and the audio is pretty good.
Doesn\'t work great for action packed scenes
DISCLAIMER
The low motion codec might not be suited for action movies I suggest you experiment with maybe the high motion codec and other mpeg 4 ones. I am also not a unix wiz so my reasoning or explanations might not be great.
But I hope this helps someone get the most out of the zaurus.
If anyone has any suggestions to make this easier or better please post!!!
