Watching full-length movies on my Smartphone

[Guest alexander.gq]

I just got my San Disk 1Gb miniSD and I love it! Screw an iPod, I can hold 1Gb worth of songs, which is about 250 songs. Do you really need more than that? Honestly.

OR you can hold an entire movie on your SD card and watch it in widescreen on your smartphone. I just ripped Scarface and am now watching it on my SMT-5600. I'm pretty psyched about this, everyone I know is like WTF?! I dunno if this has already been done but I think its amazing.

The movies are suprisingly clean and sharp. Using a DivX encoder, you can make your movie extra sharp while making the file a little bigger. I currently have 2 full length movies and about 65 songs on my 1Gb miniSD

I'm happy to answer any questions for any "newbies" out there trying to rip movies.

Edited May 31, 2005 by alexander.gq

[Guest Pixeled]

I just got my San Disk 1Gb miniSD and I love it! Screw an iPod, I can hold 1Gb worth of songs, which is about 250 songs. Do you really need more than that? Honestly.

OR you can hold an entire movie on your SD card and watch it in widescreen on your smartphone. I just ripped Scarface and am now watching it on my SMT-5600. I'm pretty psyched about this, everyone I know is like WTF?! I dunno if this has already been done but I think its amazing.

The movies are suprisingly clean and sharp. Using a DivX encoder, you can make your movie extra sharp while making the file a little bigger. I currently have 2 full length movies and about 65 songs on my 1Gb miniSD

I'm happy to answer any questions for any "newbies" out there trying to rip movies.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes well, that's one of the powers of the smartphone ;)

Altough I must say pretty much every new phone (no matter the brand) can record/play movies and play mp3's... (so Bill's gotta think of something else, *hint!*)

Also, I wonder how large your compressed movies are? Because a movie with smartphone resolution (220x176 max) can easily be compressed to 70mb, even with stereo sound, when using the right applications :D That would mean you could stick a lot more movies/mp3's on that 1gig sd-card of yours!

[Guest alexander.gq]

Yeah... Smartphone's are fairly new here in the US, unlike Europe and Asia. My Scarface movie was almost 500mb! i used the "Pocket DivX Encoder". It is really sharp though.

What are some other programs to size down movies?

[Guest jtheodas]

Alexander,

I've read good reviews about this software.

http://www.smartphone.net/software_detail....teid=279&id=724

I also read somewhere that you can get away with reducing the fps on your movies to 15 to reduce the size of the file. There's something about keeping the kbps the same so that the quality per frame is the same and therefore the sharpness will be maintained.

Question for you about your 1GB Sandisk.

I've read that the Sandisk card is not as fast as other MiniSD cards out there.

It doesn't sound like you have any problems with the playback of movies on your phone. Do you notice any unusual read/write slowness with your card?

After reading your post, I'm just about ready to go ahead with my purchase of a Sandisk 1GB as well.

Thanks.

Jacques

[Guest James]

We have had FULL LENGTH movies on our SmartPhone phones here since the Original SPV back in 2003.

back then we used a different player (now obsolete) and VirtualDUB to encode/resize the movies.

Used to get each movie down to about 100 Meg and most of us had 256Meg SD Cards then £60-70 at the time! ;)

Have a search around on here for some old posts on the subject.

[Guest James]

P.S.

LOADS of info here for DivX, XviD, WMA's.....

http://www.modaco.com/Smartphone_Articles-f18.html

Full Guide HERE:-

http://www.modaco.com/Media_Encoding_UPDATED-t95746.html

[Guest scsi]

I am sure that you already know about this program, but it is worth to mention anyway.

PocketDivxEncoder

The program is extremly easy to use, has all the necessary options, and produces very good results.

I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere on this forum, which I find very strange.

[Guest gpcarreon (MVP)]

I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere on this forum, which I find very strange.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I mentioned it on these Articles:

http://www.modaco.com/Direct_DAT_to_AVI_Co...on-t202117.html

http://www.modaco.com/DVD_to_AVI_Conversio...de-t202817.html

...it was ignored. ;)

[Guest alexander.gq]

WOW 2003 you say? Here in the states the SMT-5600 is one of our first smartphones. I wonder why the US is so far behind in the cellphone category from Europe. I can understand that Asia is where most of them are manufactured so Asia gets all the newest cell phones. Hm..

On the question about the playback of the SanDisk 1gb miniSD... I love it. The playback on movies is great, even when the miniSD is 99% full! Playback on audio is even better. Writing although is not as quick as I hoped. Copying an Mp3 to the SD takes just as long as copying it to the storage on the actual phone (about 15 secs). Movies on the other hand take approx. 30-60 mins depending on the size. Scarface, which is almost 3 hours in length, took an hour to copy on the SD.

[Guest asphire23]

Yeah dude, we are far left behind from Europe and Asia (don't even mention Japan). I too just got my imate SP3i, all my friends that saw this phone were also had that WTF expression.

I ran some test with leaving the video running, and I stopped at 5 hours mark with 35% left on my battery. Backlight was never turned off and audio is through the earphone.

Very awesome phone indeed!

Edit: Oh yeah, don't forget that it can do GPS navigation as well!

Edited June 1, 2005 by asphire23

[Guest alexander.gq]

Edit: Oh yeah, don't forget that it can do GPS navigation as well!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah man I have never seen any smartphones in my high school nor my college classes.. All my friends are pretty impressed! Although there have been Pocket PC phones out for a while plus the wonderful Treo so...

But asphire23, when you say GPS are you talking about CellTrack?

[Guest djalienx]

To encode movies I first dvd shrink them, then use a program called Fairuse. I can choose the size I want the file and the screen size, as well as cropping the video. You can adjust the sound size. I have a sandisk 1Gb SD card with 3 128Mb movies and over 60 mp3s, plus all my programs, and games running off the card, and sad enough to say I still have room to spare, but I can wait till a bigger card comes out like say a 2Gb card ;)

[Guest asphire23]

But asphire23, when you say GPS are you talking about CellTrack?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, I mean a real GPS navigation. Go look for a bluetooth GPS.

[Guest Rob.P]

We have had FULL LENGTH movies on our SmartPhone phones here since the Original SPV back in 2003.

back then we used a different player (now obsolete) and VirtualDUB to encode/resize the movies.

Used to get each movie down to about 100 Meg and most of us had 256Meg SD Cards then £60-70 at the time! ;)

Have a search around on here for some old posts on the subject.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ah those were the days... I remember when the SPV used to get stuck in headset mode :D

Edited June 2, 2005 by Rob.P

[Guest obeel]

I have absolutely no interest in watching movies on my Smartphone. I would hate to using up my batteries for something like that.

[Guest Dr_StrangeTrick]

I would hate to using up my batteries for something like that

I have an old E200 and I have put my phone to the test with a movies playing in a loop and my battery lasted for over 5 hours ;) thats more than some of these £300+ personal media players can manage.

[Guest obeel]

I have an old E200 and I have put my phone to the test with a movies playing in a loop and my battery lasted for over 5 hours ;)  thats more than some of these £300+ personal media players can manage.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow 5 hours, thats impressive, I see you can buy an E200 for $99, I guess I'm not to smart cuz I paid $350 for my SP-i600 and that was after waiting 4 months for my mail in rebate. Looks like anyone can sell me a bill of goods :cry:

[Guest sracer]

I no longer "rip" my DVDs, but "capture" them. Using my TV tuner card (in my notebook's docking station) I hook up a DVD player to it, and on-the-fly capture the film using Windows Media Encoder directly to a wmv file formatted specifically for my SMT-5600 smartphone. My videos weigh in at about 80MB for each hour. So a 90 minute film is about 120MB.

Here's a few screenshots of playback:

The nice thing is that capture time is the length of the film itself, and audio/video sync is always perfect.

[Guest dolphinsmile]

I use the mighty BetaPlayer and have 5 movies 2 episodes of futurama and 2 albums rip at the highest bit rate on a 1gb scandisk card.

When I'm away from home this sates my need for entertainment very nicely indeed.

I never use the supplied PVP software as nothing seems to work on it.

[Guest FourFourTwo]

I have absolutely no interest in watching movies on my Smartphone. I would hate to using up my batteries for something like that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah. I used to think that. Then I tried it. - I LIKE IT!! ;)

[Guest Pondrew]

We have had FULL LENGTH movies on our SmartPhone phones here since the Original SPV back in 2003.

back then we used a different player (now obsolete) and VirtualDUB to encode/resize the movies.

Used to get each movie down to about 100 Meg and most of us had 256Meg SD Cards then £60-70 at the time! ;)

Have a search around on here for some old posts on the subject.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, I remember the good old days. Ole Clinteastwood showing the world how to encode and the original SPV wowing everyone who saw it playing movies...

I presume you mean PocketMVP with regard the outdated player?

I still remember when I shelled out over £60 for my 256meg SD card. Was well chuffed with it. Back in those days the 512meg had only just been released. Now I've still got the 256 but only use it in my SPV E200 while I've got a high speed 1gig card in my MDA III. It cost less then the 256meg card did!

[Guest jonhguth]

I wonder why the US is so far behind in the cellphone category from Europe

cause they buy phones outright and ours are free with contracts

we are also behing on text messaging services using shortcode

[Guest alexander.gq]

I use the mighty BetaPlayer and have 5 movies 2 episodes of futurama and 2 albums rip at the highest bit rate on a 1gb scandisk card.

When I'm away from home this sates my need for entertainment very nicely indeed.

I never use the supplied PVP software as nothing seems to work on it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hey what program do you use to encode your movies and size them down to Smartphone size? I have 1gb miniSD and I can fit 2 maybe 3 movies on my card using PocketDivX Encoder...

[Guest jtheodas]

Alex,

I too have a 1gb minisd for my smt 5600.

Try these settings with pocketdivxencoder.

In the advanced settings change FPS to 15 and don't use the VHQ setting.

Then on the left side, set video quality to 3 or 4.

Click on the arrow on the left to expand the audio toolbar.

On that toolbar I set my audio to 22 khz, 128kbps, stereo.

You'll give up some quality/sharpness in the sound/video like this so it's a trade off with the size of the movie file.

Play with those settings and find what you're happy with.

Jacques

[Guest sprocket87]

Okay I tried ripping one of my DVDs last night/this morning (Star Wars EP I, just a test). I used DVD Shrink to rip/backup, no problem. Then I took it into PocketDivXEncoder (awesome prog btw) and opened up the larges VOB file (there were 7 total, this one was #6 and was like 3.xx GB), and got prompted to pick an audio stream. Well, I tried the first English one (English, 6, 128 or something), set my quality stuff and started to encode it. This was before bed last night.

This morning I get up and the AVI file is done, so I open it up on my PC to test it. It plays and looks great- but I realize when the intro credits start rolling that it plays each "text" scene 3 times - once in English and twice in Spanish... EH??? I figured that that "English, 6" meant that there were 6 audio "streams" (3x 2 channels), so I ripped another this morning using the LAST audio choice, which was "English, 2, 129" or something. That was the director's commentary (doh!), and it still had Spanish credits - wth??

So before I left for work I opened DVD shrink again and re-ripped the movie, and this time set it to rip only the English channels - hopefully it did that right. I just VNCd my PC to start the AVI conversion in PocketDivXEncoder, so I'll have to wait until I get home to see if it works, but this has turned out to be rather frustrating!

The technology/software to do it is pretty easy, but these danged streams/channels/etc are very frustrating!!