Converting for the X20 with Mencoder

[icandyman]

I just this morning worked out how to encode video using MeWiG (a frontend for mencoder) for the X20, so I thought I'd share this guide with you folks.

You'll need to download MeWig as well as Mplayer.

Open MeWiG.exe. On first opening it will prompt you to set up the config file.



Enter the locations of mplayer.exe and mencoder.exe.

MeWiG will open on the Files tab. Enter the location of the file you want to convert and the intended location of the finished, encoded file.



Click Next.

At the Sound Settings tab, select Encode as MP3 (using Lame), change the bitrate to 128kbps, then tick the Resample box and change the value to 44100.



Click Next.

At the Video Settings tab, select "Encode using ffmpeg", and under FourCC tick "Force FourCC" and select XV[D. Then go to Options for ffmpeg and select mpeg4 from the codec drop-down list, select Single Pass - Match Bitrate, and enter 512 as the Average Bitrate value.



Click Next.

At the Video Filters tab, tick the "Scale Image" box and enter Width: 320 and Height: 240. Tick the "Align by" and make sure it's at 16. If you're adapting a widescreen image for the X20 you might have to play with the Crop settings too. You can click Preview to get an idea of what your output video should look like.



Click Next

On the Encode tab, select your priority and whether you want it to shut down after encoding or not. Then click on encode. It shouldn't take too long, and it isn't quite as flaky as iriverter.



If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave a response here.

[jackerbes]

I'm trying to get started on using the process described above for converting videos for use on the X20.

I've downloaded MeWIG and Mplayer and extracted those to folders. Neither has a setup.exe file so I assume they ready to run as extracted.

In the example above of the MeWIG SettingsForm, it shows paths being set to mplayer.exe and mencoder.exe. But I don't have either of those files.

Mplayer extracted a gmplayer.exe file and that works to play videos.

MeWIG extracted a MeWIG.exe file.

But I don't have a mencoder.exe, where is that program from?

I had the iriver movie converter installed for a while (installed from MovieConverterSetup. exe on the distribution CD) but I uninstalled Movie Converter when I could not get it to run. It also caused iriver plus 3 to hang during startup and not run. After I uninstalled Movie Converter, iriver plus 3 started working normally again.

Thanks for any help,

Jack

iriver X20 V1.04
XP Pro
Fujitsu LifeBook S7110

[icandyman]

I'm pretty sure the version of mplayer I downloaded had mencoder.exe bundled with it. In fact, I didn't think mplayer would actually work without mencoder. I've had a look and I can't really see anywhere you can download mencoder.exe on its own, so I've uploaded it here.

Mencoder.exe

I've had problems with Movie Converter too - and even when it's at the top of its game it's still pretty slow. It seems that frontends that use mencoder - like Iriverter and CloneDVD Mobile - are a lot better for the job, although you generally have to fiddle about with the settings to get things just right.

Hope this works for you. If not, let me know.

[jackerbes]

Thanks for the upload on mencoder.exe, maybe that will get me moving again on this. I've sort of gotten side tracked from converting videos for now.

Jack

[jackerbes]

Just thought I'd let you know how this all played out.

I used the mencoder from your link (thanks again for that) and got that all set up as per the above. The only difference was that the MPlayer *.exe file is now named gmplayer.exe instead of mplayer.exe as in the tutorial.

So I ran a video clip through it and it converted a 36.8 MB clip to a 19.8 MB *.avi file. I transferred that to the x20 using iriver plus 3 and it played fine. The clip was not of the best quality but I saw the same things on the converted clip that I did on the original.

When I started iriver plus 3 to do the transfer, it spent quite a bit of time downloading and installing an update. When that finished, it reported the version as 3.4.2.5, up from the 3.3.something that it had been running. That sort of surprised me. I noticed that the About screen now credits the use of ffdshow, mencoder, and mplayer so I assume that results from my use of those to convert the video.

But then it went downhill from there. I started MeWig again later to convert some more clips and could not get it working again.

When I started MeWig it failed on the first attempt to convert. I then noticed that it appeared to have not saved all the configuration settings I had entered the first time I ran it as they were blank or missing.

I tried to re-enter the configuration details as per the tutorial above but was unable to. The problem is that the Audio Conversion settings on the Sound Settings tab are grayed out and cannot be entered and the Options for MP3 menus are different. It also does not report any available audio streams.

In checking all that I noted that I had spaces in the paths to gmplayer.exe and mencoder.exe and that it says those cannot be used. I re-installed all the files to a new folder off the root with no spaces in any of the paths but I'm still getting all the same issues.

I did another install on another machine (Windows 2000 Pro) and when I ran MeWig there and went to configure it, I had the same problems with the grayed out choices and other issues on the Sound Settings tab.

So I'm stalled again. And, quite frankly, sort of losing interest in converting videos for use on the x20.

Is there another software, commercial or shareware, that will do these kinds of conversions? I might be at the point where I want to try something different.

Thanks for any help,

Jack

[icandyman]

The only thing I can suggest re: Mewig is that if you go from 'Files' to 'Sound Settings' by clicking on the 'Sound Settings' tab, the options are always greyed out. You have to click the 'next' button, (if you're converting from DVD you'll notice the DVD drive reading the information on your disc at this point). I have no idea as to why it can't read your mplayer/mencoder files anymore.

The only other applications I've used for conversion are Cowon Jet Audio (you have to set the conversion to the Cowon D2 profile), and Virtualdub. Virtualdub is great (and a small download), but it takes a bit of fiddling to get the X20 profile right.

My Iriver Plus 3 did the same updating process, and now every time I start it up it downloads 'basswma.dll' all over again. I hardly ever use this software, though.

Hope this was of some help.

[basil45]

my problem is that IP# won't recognise my player as plugged in and i cant transfer anything

[icandyman]

Can't you just change the storage type to MSC (Settings> Advanced> Connection Type> MSC) and use it like an external flash drive? You can also use Windows Media Player to transfer files, too.