n00b Friendly MPEG Conversion For Rockbox MPEG Player

[Vahkiti]

http://www.mux.am/power/

n00b friendly MPEG conversion, just enter a url to the video you want, Set the output format to MPEG 1/2, The dimentions to 220x166, video bitrate to 720, and the framerate to anywhere from 22 to 24. Enable MPEG frameskip and limit fps in the player and your done! Just wait for it to convert, download it and your set! MPEGs for n00bs by Vahkiti!

[Llorean]

220x176 is the actual resolution of the player. And 720kbps is way too high of a bitrate unless they have their settings really messed up. At 220x176 you should be able to get decent quality video in the 200-500kbps range depending on the source material.

[Vahkiti]

720 was the suggested rate for YouTube videos with the SUPER converter. But that's besides the point, N00B FRIENDLY CONVERSION!!!!

[dfkt]

220x165 is a correct 4:3 (1:1.33) aspect ratio... so the 166px setting should look less stretched/distorted than 220x176 (1:1.25) for standard fullscreen material. Not that it matters much on a tiny screen like that.

For 16:9 widescreen material (1:1.77, or 220x124) the screen is way too small in any case, I believe.

[Llorean]

Well whoever suggested 720 with SUPER probably wasn't setting other quality affecting settings properly. Just picking the right macroblock decision algorithm and similar settings can make a really big difference on quality. It's pretty easy to both lower the filesize *and* increase the quality compared to a baseline run of an mpeg 2 encoder with bad defaults (as many/most have).

As to the resolution, yes, 220x166 is right for 4:3 content bound by the screen edges. Some people prefer to encode slightly bigger than the screen instead of slightly smaller since this will have a trivial effect on performance and size, but may look nicer to them. As well as you've noted it's completely wrong for anything widescreen. My point was merely that the screen size is actually 220x176, which is what I said. I made no attempt to claim that it was the right resolution for encoding either sort of video at.

I offered the screen size because I don't want to see bug reports of people saying "the player is shrinking my video" when a "noob" guide doesn't tell them they're making their video smaller than the screen. It's fine to tell them 220x166 is a good size for 4:3 content, but be clear it'll be slightly smaller than the screen.

And I offered the bitrate information because people frequently claim Rockbox videos are too big, and I certainly don't find that the case (I encode 320x180 content for my Gigabeat and even with very, very few noticeable artifacts it's rarely over 480kbps for the video).

[Vahkiti]

Ok, all besides the point, it is easy unlike most recomended, it's free and softwre free so you can do it on a public computer unlike the SMC, and 220x166 is just for the Sansa e200. I do not endorse that size setting for any other player Sandisk or not. Also, 220x166 is the aspect ratio that Rockpaint saves it's images as well.

[Llorean]

I think "making sure people realize that it's supposed to work this way and not a bug" is never beside the point.