Movies on your mobile

Movies on your mobile

Shrink videos to less than one-tenth their size for any phone or portable media Player.

     Portable media players and multimedia phones are fantastic companions while you’re traveling or chilling out on the couch. Pack them with your favorite movies and songs and a fun-filled trip is guaranteed! Ripping an audio CD or converting an audio file to another format isn’t very difficult or time consuming. Also MP3 songs are easily available on the Internet or in stores. However, converting movies and other video files to a compatible format is one tedious task.

Unlike music, converting videos is relatively complex and requires lots of patience as well. Although it requires just a few clicks to transcode, videos with the software often bundled with your device, you don’t have much choice. The input video formats supported by the software are limited and features such as editing and enhancing videos are absent. For example, some support converting AVI files to the format playable on the phone or PMP, but won’t be able to convert a 4.7 GB DVD movie to a video that’s properly scaled to your device’s display resolution. You also won't be able to clip songs from a movie and convert them for your phone.

The ideal software would convert videos from any format to any other, and at the same time offer tools for editing and enhancing. MediaCoder is one such application and it works wonders. You can use it to transcode videos for any multimedia phone or portable media player under the sun!

 

Multimedia containers

Video files are identifiable by their extensions—AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP, MOV. These are containers which hold the compressed audio and video tracks. So when you play a video file, the media player decodes the compressed audio and video tracks with the help of codecs and plays them simultaneously. Multimedia containers differ from each other with respect to the types of video and audio formats they support. For example, WMA supports videos only in WMV format and audio tracks in WMA and MP3. On the other hand, AVI is more versatile and supports a multitude of audio and video formats. Any combination of video and audio formats will be playable if they are supported by the container. For example, you can transcode a DVD video (in the VOB container) to an AVI file with the video track in DivX format and the audio track in MP3 format. The process of encoding the audio and video tracks and merging them into the container is taken care of by the video transcoding software. A phone or PMP will play the resultant AVI file only if it supports the AVI container as well as the DivX video and MP3 audio contained within. So the first step is to find out the following:

 

1.Video containers supported by your phone or PMP

2.Audio and video formats supported within the container

3.Display resolution of the device

You should be able to find this information on the manufacturer’s website. If you cannot find it from any source, simply copy a sample video from your player to the PC and then use the tool GSpot to find out the audio and video format in the file. The extension of the video file is the name of the container. GSpot is free and downloadable from www.free-codecs.com/GSpot_download.htm

 

Steps for Media Encoding

Step 1: Install MediaCoder and fire it up. Click the Add button on the toolbar and specify the video that you wish to transcode. You can also drag the video onto MediaCoder’s window to load it.

Step 2: The middle section which features tabs for various parameters is where you need to be very careful. If you cannot see the tabs, you might have selected the 'Simple' user interface mode while configuring MediaCoder initially. If that’s the case go to ‘Options | User Interface Mode’ and select Normal Mode.

Step 3: Go to the first tab (Generic) and set the output folder. The end result will get saved here.

Step 4: Go to the Container tab and select the multimedia container that your device supports from the drop down list.

Step 5: Go to the Video tab and select the video format supported by your device. If your phone or PMP supports a variety of formats, make sure you select the one that’s supported by the container. A list of compatible audio and video formats supported by various popular containers is given for your reference. Set the video bit rate by dragging the slider to the right. A bit rate of 1000 kbps will deliver good results. Note that higher bit rate increases the file size. If you have selected XviD or H.264 as the video format, you can fine tune the parameters in the respective tabs to the right. You can find out the estimated size of the result by referring to the Summary section in the Picture tab.

Step 6: Go to the Audio tab and select the audio format supported by your device from the drop down list. On selecting the format, the tab related to it is displayed to the right. Set the parameters such as rate mode (VBR or constant bit rate) and the bit rate. 128 kbps should deliver good audio output. In case you want to select AAC as the audio format, select Nero Encoder from the drop down list and select the desired profile from the drop down list in the tab to the right.

Step 7: Go to the Picture tab and select the resolution of your device from the Resize drop down list. Next, click on the Crop button under the Resize tab and crop out the black bands from the top and bottom of the video if they are present. Drag the borders and move the video within the frame to achieve the desired crop. If there aren’t any black bands present, then don’t touch the cropping options. Close the window and click No when you’re prompted to change the parameters. Next, click on the Effects button and a dialog box will pop up with the video playing in the preview area. Here you can adjust the brightness, contrast and color levels of the picture. If you wish to extract a clip from the video, drag the playback slider to the position from where you want the clip to start and click the Mark In button. Then drag the slider to the place where you want the video to end and click the Mark Out button. Only the selected portion of the video will be encoded.

Step 8: Go to the Sound tab and set the number of channels to Stereo. Leaving it to 5.1 will increase the file size. If the sound volume of the video is low, check the Gain checkbox and drag the slider up a little.

Step 9: Done! Now all you have to do is hit the Start button on the toolbar and wait for MediaCoder to churn out the video. The video you transcoded will be in the output folder you set initially. Load the video onto your multimedia phone or PMP and have fun!