Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

Ok... so I know there are threads out there about how to convert movies for the n900 using programs on the PC. But is there anything out there that allows you to do this directly on the n900? Being able to download a torrent, encode it, and play it on the spot would be positively bad a**

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

would me interest too.but first where you will find a torrent?i have a rapidshare account but i dont think that it works on my n900.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I have yet to try it but supposedly transmission works quite well for downloading torrents.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I'm not sure what you mean. There are at least two torrent clients for the N900.

@OP: I'm not sure of exactly what software you'd want to use, but what are you trying to do, exactly? SD video plays fine on the N900 as-is, in my experience, and while encoding/transcoding video on-device is surely possible, I don't think it would be terribly practical. If you wanted to download an HD movie and convert it to something the N900 can play, all on-device, then you may as well go home and do it there, in terms of the time and battery drain.

If you're meaning something else, please clarify.
Cheers,

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

It does, but the I/O (both flash and network) do put quite a load on the phone. You'll probably not want to be using it heavily while torrenting.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

bad a*ss? "Look time estimated for conversion 2d13h45m and best of is that i can't basically run any other app while it encodes"

Hmmm..sorry :)

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

really?niiice.soo where i can find these clients?extras devel?

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

??... what are you quoting

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I'm guessing the number was pulled out of the air, but it probably isn't a bad guess. Now, with the OMAP4, you might have a chance, although it still probably wouldn't be the best idea...

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I thought Transmission was in -testing, at least. As for the one or two others, I've never tried them, and I don't know if they work, or how well. My advice is to stick with Transmission for now.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

Yes, that is exactly what I want to do. Not really concerned about the battery drain (although it is certainly a consideration) since I have learned to always have a power source handy. Hell, I might even be at home sitting right next to my computer but I would still love to use the n900 just for the convenience.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I understand where you're coming from, but to be blunt, it will be horribly inconvenient at best. If you want to try it nonetheless, then I'd advise you look up some documentation on Linux multimedia tools. I'd expect some of the command-line transcoders could be (or might already be) ported over.
Sorry I can't be of more help.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

@jaem I appreciate the replies... I am holding out hope that someone who has specific experience in this area will weigh in.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

Converting videos is a daunting task for even the most modern desktop PCs.
It takes hours (at best) on a desktop PC on full power.

This means that if you started converting a video on the N900, it would take forever, and also it would deplete the battery very quickly.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

Hmmm... so it sounds like there is little hope even for short movies. I thought I remembered it being pretty quick when I used to covert avis and mpegs for my ipod video on Windows XP. I know this was obviously a lot more powerful than the n900 but I guess I am just surprised when the n900 can't do something :)

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

bit of offtopic here, speaking about video encoding to what desktop processor n900's arm can be roughly compared?

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

The mplayer package seems to include the mencoder binary. So there is already a very good and flexible cli-encoder avaible. I haven't tested if the mecoder is in a working state or what codecs other than ffmpeg are included. But apart from energy drain, heavy load on the hardware or maybe reading the mplayer/mencoder documentation there should be nothing to stop the first encodes on the N900.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I'm not saying that it is impossible, I'm just saying that it can take INSANELY HUGE amounts of time and battery power.

WIth 600 MHz (and overclockability beyond 1 GHz), I would suggest a Pentium III, but we all know that mega-gigahertz doesn't tell the whole story.

The N900 has a processor which is build on the ARM architecture, while most desktop processors use the x86 architecture.
These two have very different instructions and capabilities, so there is not really a point in comparing them.

Also, the N900 has dedicated specialized processors for sound/audio and video processing. (Also for encoding for GSM and other stuff.)

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I'd estimate a 7 year old PIII 500Mhz would be close, much of the conversion s/ware (like ffmpeg) has loads of x86 specific optimisations. The x86 cpus are good at this sort of thing and 600Mhz is similar to 500Mhz.

That's not to say it's that bad and I've run ffmpeg on my n900.

You can install mplayer which comes with mencoder which does exactly what you're asking. Don't know why nobody said this already.

However.

DO NOT DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm fairly sure this will decrease the life of your device. You'll be hammering the cpu for hours and probably writing a lot to flash which will decrease overall life.

mplayer can play most video types anyway so I'm not sure why you'd want to convert anyway*. But my advice to you is to scp the file from xterm, ffmpeg it on your unix desk/lap-top and scp it back or dlna/nfs it directly to the media player. It would probably even be quicker to upload to youtube and play it back from that.

*Okay actually I DO need to do some conversion, but I'm hoping this is just a VTAG change to let the Sony PS3 be happy with the n900 camera mp4s. At worse a -vcodec copy -acodec aac -ac 2 to make it a more normal mp4

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

It seems to be working.
Here is a tutorial about it.

Still, I wouldn't use it on the N900 for anything but very small videos.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

I've used ffmpeg on an older/slower system like this (500Mhz range), and can tell you that a typical 90 minute movie took well over 2 days to transcode even on an optimized P4. So even accelerated, you'd still be over a day to encode a movie on the N900. It may be quicker if you're not doing video encoding (eg just changing the audio format), but it's pretty intensive even for just that.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

you guys serious with this? I have a video converter on pc but using it pushes my core 2 duo from 1 to 5% to 100% usage. What made you think an arm processor with 600mhz could convert a video if a intel dual core processor with 2 2.13ghz and l2 cache is at its limit?

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

Of course it could. The core2duo is pushed at its limit for speed. Where a video takes 15 mins to be converted with a core2duo, it would take the N900 hours, using 100% CPU usage and making the phone unusable during that time.

So video conversion is possible. Any CPU can handle it. It's just a process. So possible: Yes; Practical: Hardly

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

If that's the case it really isn't possible for hours of processing to that extent battery drainage(Charger can't supply that much power if processor usage is at 100% even if charger is connected while charging it would still eventually drain out), hardware burn out(Overheating) & software hang up would occur resulting in failure of conversion after. So generally speaking it's 100% impossible.

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

It is very nice to see you guys actually realizing what I said on the previous page. :)

Re: Onboard Video Conversion for n900 (No PC needed)?
 

Oh sorry. I didn't realize you already posted it. I almost never read a whole thread. First posts and last posts usually.