Converting Video Formats

[ddrueding]

I have a bunch of video in different formats, and I just bought a Creative Zen 16GB. I also have a phone that supports playback of specific video types.

I've been trying a bunch of different conversion programs. The most promising looked like WinFF. It seems to support most of the different formats, and will accept just about anything. The only drawback that I can see is that it isn't multithreaded (but I can run 4 of them at once ). Unfortunatly, when I try to copy the files to the Zen, it says they aren't the right file type.

Another program, M2Convert for Zen, does work and does use all 4 cores. But I costs money. Is there some tool to look at the file format of one it plays and figure out all the details? The windows explorer "summary" tab is a bit short of details.

Thanks,
David

 

[udaman]

I have a bunch of video in different formats, and I just bought a Creative Zen 16GB. I also have a phone that supports playback of specific video types.

I've been trying a bunch of different conversion programs. The most promising looked like WinFF. It seems to support most of the different formats, and will accept just about anything. The only drawback that I can see is that it isn't multithreaded (but I can run 4 of them at once ). Unfortunatly, when I try to copy the files to the Zen, it says they aren't the right file type.

Another program, M2Convert for Zen, does work and does use all 4 cores. But I(t) costs money. Is there some tool to look at the file format of one it plays and figure out all the details? The windows explorer "summary" tab is a bit short of details.

Thanks,
David

so I take it you want something free, not shareware or anything, with octo core capability ?

I take it you also want file compatibility for the phone in question, so probably good idea to specify what file formats you are referring to, ty.

Probably something on Linux that will do this, Chewy might know. I'm sure Merc would know, if he weren't MIA .

Creative Zen, uggh, isn't that what FutureShock bought some years ago, instead of an iPod?

Honestly, you should take a walk on the wide side, get uber hip/geeky, and just buy an iPhone/iTouch.

Then you could associate with all those liberal Apple misfits, and enjoy :

How to hide porn on an iPod touch/iPhone
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=370793

that ish is hilarious. a lot of work to hide the pr0n. just rename the video to something else and then change the album artwork.then rub one out in the bathroom. they need a 3rd party lotion dispenser attachment on the iphone

Hiding video/pics
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=366286

 

[Fushigi]

Kinoma has made multimedia apps for Palm for years. Looks like their Producer will do conversions for you. Not sure of the formats, but they do concentrate on conversions for portable devices. $30.

 

[Deadwood]

mplayer

I too have been trying to convert videos recently. I found that mplayer (common on linux, available on windows) works well for a lot of things. mplayer --identify <filename> should tell you a lot about an existing file. The command-line options for mencoder (an encoder that comes with mplayer) are a little bit cryptic, but it supports a lot of formats. I've been trying to decode with mencoder, and encode with x264, and recombine audio and video with MP4Box from the gpac software package. All of the mentioned software is free/open source. I realize your destination format may be different than h.264, but at least mplayer/mencoder might be useful, and possibly even gpac.

 

[ddrueding]

I ended up just buying the program M2Convert for Zen. it works quite well.