[Paladine]

I want to convert some of my DVDs to play on my Nokia n97 and was looking for some advice.

Am I correct in believing that RealPlayer has access to Hardware decoding?

I currently own SmartMovie but playback is poor (very jerky) and the converter recently stopped working with a memory access violation.

I need to know if it is better to encode for the default player (realplayer) or to encode for SmartMovie and also which settings to use for each.  So far I have zero luck in converting files to play in RealPlayer (I have been using SmartMovie converter to convert to xvid using the avi container).

Any help appreciated - I am very disappointed with the lack of formats supported by the n97 it seems to make it very difficult to get decent video playback which is a shame since the device is supposed to play video well.

[Paladine]

Hmmm I answered my own questions so I thought I would update here to advise people who might have similar questions.

My first piece of advice is -do not- spend money on 3rd party video players for your phone because they don't have access to hardware decoding so they are choppy.  The built in RealPlayer plays movies far far better than any of the alternative 3rd party apps out there.

Conversion is a piece of cake too.

Download MediaCoder (it is completely free and works as a GUI to several very mature Open Source tools) it is very easy to use.

Under the Generic Tab:

Set video format to MPEG4

Set Mode to Bitrate-based

Set Bitrate to 1024kbps (gives very good quality and doesn't make the player struggle)

Leave Source as MEncoder

Set Encoder to FFmpeg

No need to change anything in the Audio Tab

Under Container Tab:

Set container to MP4

Under Picture Tab:

Either use the 624x352 setting from the dropdown list (next to resize) -or- click the resize button and manually enter width 640 and height 360

They are the only settings I needed to play with and the conversions are very good and play in the realmedia player provided with the n97.

The conversion is also very fast (far quicker than SmartMovie Converter) I managed to convert a 1.6GB .avi xvid video in 37 minutes last night - SmartMovie Convertor would take almost 2 hours to do the same.

Once you have copied them over to your phone simply use the File Manager to go to the relevant directory and open the movie - realmedia player will open it and play it fine and no damn stuttering.

The above works flawlessly for me but your mileage may vary - you can play around with other settings if you like but just the simple settings above will produce excellent quality movies for your phone.

[korngear]

@ paladine, good and informative post.

IMHO, I am quite happy with the realplayer built in my N79. It can play the H.264/AVC encoded videos with *decent* amount of bitrates fine. No chopped, or stuttered videos. Since then I do not use any 3rd party video players. Though Smartmovie, core player, divx player etc is used if someone needs to play avi videos. Personally, I am happy with H.264/AVC ones, taht is just my opinion.

[brainlessmn]

Nokia PC Suite 7.1 has a Video converter that seems to work well. I haven't tried the Ovi's.

Connect the phone

Click on the "Transfer Video" icon

include the video you want to transfer

Done.

I think the trick is that you need the codec of the original. Using that tool, it will convert it to the proper supported format for your NSeries

Worked for my N95-NAM V20 and my current N97-US V20.