QVGA Video Encoding

[Guest gladel]

Hi. Any suggestions for optimized parameters in encoding video to Smartphones with 240 x 320 screens (portrait mode)?

[Guest jrdas]

I use to use pqdvd, but i dont anymore... im trying to find a better one now aswell..

with pqdvd you can resize the video and change the size of the file etc

[Guest osiris8]

I use pocketdivxencoder. It has a lot of pre-made profiles etc. but also allows a lot of manual settings (like cropping etc.) http://divx.ppccool.com/. The author has started making a commercial version as well, called Lathe, which I haven't tried yet.

The encoding profile I'm currently using started by selecting a regular PPC, the iPAQ icon (240 x 320), setting it to maximum quality for audio (6) and video (20), selecting very high quality, two passes, XVID, and rotate 90 degrees (since i watch my vids i landscape mode and rotating in the player during playback introduces a lot of tearing). I also upped brightness and saturation a little bit, but that's just a matter of taste.

For 4:3 I usually leave the video as it is, for 1:1.78 (fullscreen on a widescreen TV, very common for TV series) I usually crop the sides to make it 320 x 210, for 1:2.35 (standard movie format) I usually crop to 320 x 180.

This gives excellent viewing quality and file sizes of about 80-100 MB for 25 minutes shows and 150-190 MB for 42 minutes.

[Guest gladel]

Thanks people.

I'm planning to use Windows Media Encoder 9. Any advice?

Edited January 23, 2007 by gladel

[Guest Christopher Woods]

Thanks people.

I'm planning to use Windows Media Encoder 9. Any advice?

Oof, that's a bit of overkill. Why not just use something a (little) smaller like Gordian Knot? Personally for all my encoding stuff I use Vegas, which is hefty in itself, but it can handle just about anything and export to loads of formats, including WMV if I want to, but it is flexible.

VirtualDubMod would fulfil this need very nicely though, just get your codecs installed and bam: off you go. Why not encode to a format like MP4 for your phone, or just do MPEG2? It looks alright in low-resolutions... I encoded Star Wars Ep. 3 to MPEG2, even at low bitrates it looked great at 320x240 on my screen - and this was on my old Alpine! :)

[Guest gladel]

Oof, that's a bit of overkill... :)

You're right.

Any idea for the correct aspect ratio in encoding a movie with a 240x320 (portrait) smartphone resolution and not the 320x240 landscape mode?