04.27.07
Converting Video for the N800 with HandBrake
I’ve dabbled with a few tools to convert video for the N800 (and 770 actually) and have a few solutions to offer those of you looking to enhance the mobile multimedia experience, but today I am just going to address one - HandBrake. Handbrake is a cross-platform conversion tool and was recently updated after a very long time. It’s ability to compress beautiful video is seriously good!
What I really like about Handbrake is that I can take a DVD and in a single click export what I want — a whole movie or a single episode from a TV show disc. I tried a bunch of different settings, but what has worked best for me is the following:
Once you copy this video over to your memory card, you can enjoy right within the Media Player. I have not tested this yet today, but I believe that streaming through a UPnP server via Canola would also work if you like on your home network… a topic for another day.
The nice thing about this MP4 video output is that it also works in iTunes, on your iPod and (if I had one here to test I believe) the AppleTV! One format to rule them all!
Disclaimer: We are all adults here. Ripping a DVD is technically illegal. I am in the camp that believes I actually own the media and can choose to enjoy the content across devices for my own personal use.
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Nokia N800 Blog said,
April 28, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Nseries WOM World » Blog Archive » Converting video for your N800 said,
April 30, 2007 at 8:56 am
[…] Jonathan Greene, from the Meamoapps blog, found a really cool application that allows you to quickly and easily convert video for your N800. […]
Lets talk video - Internet Tablet Talk Forums said,
June 7, 2007 at 12:14 am
N800 : Videokodierung said,
June 21, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Andrew Logan said,
June 24, 2007 at 2:24 am
I’m new to the N800, but an avid Mac user, I’ve tried AVIs and MP4s that are similarly encoded (I understand that H.264 probably won’t work) but the playback is horrible, are you using the built in player or mplayer or Canola?
Jonathan Greene said,
June 24, 2007 at 6:15 am
Once it’s been converted as above I can play it in the built in media player and MPlayer.
Andrew Logan said,
June 29, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I tried a dvd today with the exact settings used here and it does not play in media player, it says unsupported resolution. It errors in Canola.
BobFox said,
July 7, 2007 at 8:43 am
I am pretty sure that you want the Picture Size Output to be 400×224, and not the default shown here. This is the only way I could get this to work…
Andrew Logan said,
July 7, 2007 at 3:05 pm
This article gives some hardware limitations of the n800, which helped me tweak the settings to make it work.
http://maemo.org/community/wiki/VideoEncoding
Jonathan Greene said,
July 7, 2007 at 7:48 pm
That screenshot was my working demo … the output file worked just fine.
Matthew Miller (aka palmsolo) said,
July 8, 2007 at 12:12 am
Jonathan,
I used the exact same settings shown in your screenshot and keep getting an unsupported resolution error. I may try MPlayer to see if that works. I REALLY want to find a conversion tool that works reliably so I can buy larger capacity SD cards and watch movies with the N800.
BTW, what is your typical file size of a standard movie? Thanks.
Jonathan Greene said,
July 8, 2007 at 12:19 am
I was using the main media player to playback and think I also used canola. I’d think MPlayer would also be able to handle it as it can do more typically.
The file from above is 154MB… a single episode from a TV Season DVD.
I hear you on the larger cards… especially now with the firmware - we can get 16GB running!
Andrew Logan said,
July 8, 2007 at 2:09 am
The article above states:
“cannot decode videos with high bitrates and/or high frame sizes. The limits are at about 800 kbps or 352×288
“cannot decode both a high frame rate and a high frame size so if you want to keep the natural frame rate of your video (25 or 30 fps) you have to keep the frame size below 288×160″
So the goal should be to balance the resolution (which must have hor. and ver. multiples of 16…weird!) with frame rate to make the video as good looking as possible and keep file sizes resonable.
..: Fausse Piste [kit de développement SDK pour la N800] :.. said,
August 18, 2007 at 5:04 am
F B said,
August 24, 2007 at 8:15 am
What worked for me was to create an .avi file with Handbrake, and drop this file into Mediaconverter that created a file that plays on my n800.
Jonathan Greene said,
August 24, 2007 at 8:20 am
Ideally the right setting in handbrake can get this going with one step… in a single app.
F B said,
August 26, 2007 at 8:17 am
Have you tried to convert a full movie with sub-titles?
Jonathan Greene said,
August 26, 2007 at 8:19 am
I have not … sorry