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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Symbian phones > is there a freeware for creating mp4 videos for p800? Bookmark topic

please one of you who successfully created mp4 compatible videos for p800 respond and provide us with the software that is required and the step by step procedure.
i have read lots of comments, responses, but none of these seem clear. i continue to get an error message "video dimension too large". have tried to create a tiny, 1 inch by 1 inch mpeg-4 clips, but these do not work!
please note that the video that came with p800 plays fine on p800 but will not play on a pc using realone. this indicates that p800 requires modified mpeg-4 format...
please help. thanks
alek
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Posted: 2003-09-14 00:25:01
Edit : Quote


what program are you using?

what video player are you using on your handset?

Dont make Vids larger than 200 * 160
bit rate 96kbps

If your smart you would encode in .3gp and use the phillips player.

one more thing

The software that will be used in the conversion process will be Mpegable X4 Live available from http://www.mpegable.com. The software comes with a free 30 day trial so you can follow this guide without spending a penny, cool eh.

I will also mention TMPGEnc, briefly, available from http://www.tmpgenc.net. I won’t be going over how to use this since this a guide to convert to MP4 not to convert other files to different formats. I may write a quick guide on this in the future, I will keep you posted.

A Sony Ericsson P800 and plenty of free memory. Although MP4’s are really small compared there bigger brothers MPEG2 and AVI, they do take up some room on your memory stick, especially when you find out how easy it is to convert movies heh heh, anyway back to what I was talking about, I would recommend removing any files and documents off of your external memory stick so you can add more MP4’s.

Well I think that’s just about everything, let me think …hmmmmmm…. Yep that’s it, lets get started.

Oops, before I forget, if any crazy shit happens to your pc or P800 as result of doing anything mentioned in this guide I am not responsible, you follow this guide at your own risk. There, don’t say I didn’t tell you.

Right, enough of the terms crap lets get started.

Samples For Guide:

You can download the files I have created for this guide here. Please don't take credit for these samples since I have gone to the trouble of creating these so I can show people how to convert movies.

Sample 1 - 96kbs, 32kps 22050Hz 16bit Mono, Variable Bitrate
Sample 2 - 96kbs, 32kps 22050Hz 16bit Mono, Near Constant Bitrate
Sample 3 - 96kbs, 32kps 22050Hz 16bit Mono, Constant Bitrate
Sample 4 - 96kbs, 32kps 22050Hz 16bit Mono, Variable Bitrate With B-Frames 2
Sample 5 - 96kbs, 32kps 22050Hz 16bit Mono, Variable Bitrate With B-Frames 50

If you have quicktime installed then Right Click > Save Target As to download.

Installation and Preparation:

You need to install Mpegable from the link above then reboot your pc; it will tell you to do this anyway. When your pc comes back up you need to decide what you want to convert. I would recommend something small to start with, maybe a music video like I will be using in this guide or maybe a commercial. I say use something small because it may take a considerable amount of time to convert a film and I haven’t got all day to wait for you so please be sensible.

When you are familiar with the ways of the force you can convert what the hell you like but since this may be your first attempt I will keep it simple.

Converting:

When you run Mpegable for the first time it will ask you to either evaluate the product or buy it. To save arsing around just select ‘Evaluate The Product’ and click finish.

What the hell do I do now? I hear you cry, fear not I am here to show you way. The two little screens at the top are where the movie you are converting and the MP4 will be displayed, the options at the bottom are the basic conversion settings which I will get on to next.

Before we do anything you need to open the movie file you want to convert. To do this click the select button next to the input file edit box, this will bring up a standard windows open dialog box where you can locate your movie. When you have found your file click open, this will load a preview in to the screens at the top.

You may have noticed that the screens go black; this is probably because the start of your chosen movie starts off black and fades in or it could be that movie you opened is knackered. To tell which it is just drag the time scale bar to the right a little and you should see the movie playing back, cool eh. If there is nothing happening try another movie file.

The next thing to do is to choose an output path. You can either leave the path as it is, this will save the MP4 to the same directory as the original file you opened, or you can click select and save it somewhere else, the choice is yours. But don’t think too long about it, ok. If you chose another location just scroll to the end of the new path and make sure at the end it says .mp4, sometimes it will miss it off, don’t know why.

The options at the bottom control the overall quality of the picture and the quality of the audio. The higher you set these values the higher quality the movie will be but subsequently the file size will increase also.
To get to grips with the basics drag the time scale of the movie to a bit where you may notice some degrading in movie if it were compressed too much. I recommend close-up shots such as faces or action shots.

Ok brace yourself; we are actually going to do something now, ooooooooohhhhhhhh.
I asked you to select a certain area because I am going to show you how to set the picture quality, and the best way to do this is by doing what I have just told you to do.

You will have noticed that the Total Bitrate is set at 800kbs, this is far too high for the P800, and the file size would be massive. Instead set it to 28kbs, you will notice that on the output preview the quality has dropped slightly, this is because we have told mpegable to make the MP4 small enough to stream over an Internet connection. 28kbs is small enough to stream over GPRS and a dial-up, though I wouldn’t recommend it because of the costs involved, unless your loaded then go for it.

Ok, click the Show Advanced button; this will bring up a load more options. The one we need to change is the Image Resolution on the Preprocessing tab. This is the overall dimension of the MP4.

You need to downscale the movie by adjusting the Factor in the Downscaling section. Select x2 to start with, if the size is roughly 176x144, 160x120 or something like that then it should be ok, out over that then try x4.

It is important to select a smaller size that the original, only if it is bigger than the above sizes, because the P800 will only scale the picture anyway, the size of the MP4 will be bigger and you movie play back jerky.

Now you have changed the size of the movie you may have noticed that the output preview has got even worse. This is what it will look like on the P800, not good is it? If you are planning on streaming the movies on the Internet, which I won’t be covering then this would be the sort of picture quality you would expect. To see some examples, look in your bookmarks in the default browser on the P800. You will see a link to live cameras. To view them for free, dock your P800 in the cradle and use your pc’s Internet connection.

Lets change the quality so that it is bearable. Change the bitrate to 96kbs or 128kbs, I have found these to be the best levels for quality and size, though it is no good for streaming over the Internet unless you have a fast connection. You will have noticed that the quality has increased to a decent level. Don’t worry if haven’t seen that much of a change, remember that it will be bigger when played back so the poor quality will show on 28kbs whereas it will be improved on 96kbs.

Ideally if memory sticks were cheaper you could use a bitrate of 160 or higher, but since many of you including myself have blown all your money on the P800 and haven’t saved up enough pocket money yet to buy a 64mb stick we will have to do with 96-128kbs. Remember size is the key factor here.

Ok, lets talk about audio. If any of you are familiar with mp3 conversion you will know that 128kbs seems to be the standard because it sounds good and the size of the mp3 is about 1/10th the original size. Well the audio on MP4’s is the same, the lower the kbs the smaller the size, but too low and it sounds crap.
Now lets be honest, unless you are really adamant about having stereo there is no point in actually encoding the MP4 with it. You are probably going to convert every porno you have got and lay in bed on a night and… Well I won’t even go there.

Anyway…

Believe it or not but you can get a really high quality mono sound track on your MP4 and it actually sounds better than stereo when played through the main speaker on the P800, so here’s how to do it.

Set the audio at 32kbs, this may sound low but it sounds pretty good. Obviously anything higher and it will sound better but that much, and remember size is the issue here, too high and the file size will start to increase which we don’t want.
The next thing to do is to select the Audio tab on the advanced options, you will see more audio options to play around with.

The first thing to do is to select mono for the channels, then 16bit as the precision (8 bit will sound like a bad mp3, you know the types, sounds like you are underwater). Next select 22050Hz as the sample rate, any lower and high frequencies will sound distorted and screwed up especially if you are converting music, treble notes will really piss you off.

Next we need to set the key frames in the video. What the hell are key frames I hear you cry? Well a key frame is a frame of video that isn’t compressed, all the frames between are. To set this go to the Encoding tab and enter 100 in the key frame period area. This means that every 100 frames of video there will be a full frame image. The less you make this the more full frames you get and therefore increase the size of the MP4 and it can also make it run jerky.

B-Frames, well you can leave this as 0, but incase you are wondering what it does here goes. It will take a previous frame and the next frame and work out the best compression rate to use. This can give better quality but can also result in jerky motion and an increase in file size, in the long run its not worth messing with. Setting the rate too low will result in smooth motion but lower quality and too high will be better quality but more jerky in certain places. But hey, remember this is only a guide so mess around with it if you like.

Leave the Image quality as Smooth Motion and leave Compression Quality as Fast Encoding for now.

Bitrate Control, what is this? Well the bitrate control will determine how the MP4 is compressed.
Setting it at Variable Rate will compress each frame differently depending on the information on the frame. This can result in small sizes, higher quality MP4’s and smoother motion, I would recommend this one where lots of motion shots are in the movie e.g. Music video, sports event.
Near Constant Bitrate will sharpen the picture up slightly but will also become jerky when there is a lot of motion taking place. It will also remove some of the blockyness (if that is a word, but you know what I mean), from around people and objects in the picture. The file size also increases.
Constant Bitrate will give you a pretty sharp image but again, when motion takes place it will become jerky. Again the file size increases.

I would recommend converting your movie using all three formats to see which one works best for you. I cannot recommend the best because it all depends on what you are converting. I can only tell you what to expect so just play around with them.

Ok, now I think we are ready to convert, just hit the little red circle at the top and it will start converting to MP4.
Now, depending on the length of your movie this may take some time, full movies can actually take the length of the movie to convert, so, go put the kettle on and fire up the PS2 for an hour, smaller files usually take a few minutes thats why I recommended a small file to go through this guide with. You can easily make changes without having to wait an hour between each run.

Well, if all has gone well you can preview the file in the mpegable viewer which should have installed with mpegable or you can just dump the file on the P800 and view it on there.
Please note that viewing the movie in the pc viewer may result in slightly lower quality than you expected, remember that you converted this for the P800 and it will actually look better on there than on the pc.

Conclusion:

Well, if you followed this guide correctly and you can understand what the hell I have wrote then you should have successfully converted a movie in to MP4 and put it on your P800. Well done if you have accomplished this. If you have had problems in any part of this see the FAQ below.

You may have noticed that the samples I have uploaded are actually smaller that an mp3, which means you not only have audio on the move but with a little effort you can add video with no extra size taken up.

Extras:

Here are explanations of some of the things I skipped over.

1: Crop, this will crop the movie. Ideal for removing the borders on wide screen movies.
2: Target Frame Rate, this will set the ideal frame rate. The movie may not always play back in the frame rate you specify so it is best to leave it the same as the input movie.
3: In/Out Point, this will set the start point and end point of the movie you want to convert. E.g. if you only want the first 2000 frames then set start to 0 and end to 2000.
4: Image Quality, does what it says in the options available. Sorry for the short explanation but it does.
5: Compression Quality, same again but setting it to higher quality and you get a bigger file size and occasional jitter.
6: Interoperability, are like templates, they set the guidelines for audio and picture quality.


Converting AVI, Divx and Xvid:

This is where TMPGEnc comes in handy. It is a piece of software for converting avi to mpeg. Although you can just convert your movies in to MP4 directly through Mpegable you can occasionally get video/audio sync problems and I don’t know about you but it really pisses me off when you see some one say something then a few seconds later you hear them say it. You can also get audio problems, meaning that no audio plays back at all, this can be due to the film you are converting mainly divx and xvid and films with ac3 audio.
So I recommend converting any films to mpeg first, it’s a ball ache but worth it.

FAQ:

No Audio: Convert to mpeg first. If the movie is already an mpeg then try altering the audio options, it may be that the conversion from one type to another isn’t compatible.

No Video Preview: There was a problem opening the video file, I have had this problem before. Just keep trying, sometimes it will appear, if not, tough. You will have to try another file, sorry.

Poor Audio: Can result in too lower quality settings. Try increasing the audio quality. I would recommend staying away from 8bit it sounds crap. Also out under 22050Hz will start to sound poor.

Poor Video: Try increasing the kbs to 128 or higher. 96kbs is about right for the P800. This gives you a small file size and good quality but if your video has come out poor then increase this option. But remember, too high and the file size will increase.

If you have any more questions relating to MP4 conversion then email me at aouncup@hotmail.com

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Posted: 2003-09-14 01:04:24
Edit : Quote


Go to www.makayama.com

Pay $10 and get a very good .avi/mpeg-1 to mp4 converter. I play files created by it on my P800
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Posted: 2003-09-14 01:25:56
Edit : Quote

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