I have been trying to come up with a simple formula for converting DVDs to a format for my N800. Now before anyone tunes me out because these questions have been answered so many times before...Please be assured that I have read many of the posts and tried many of the solutions. I have, in the wings, N800 video Converter and nokia's converter.

I am using Handbrake because I like the feature set, I have Mplayer loaded on the IT. I have tried many combinations of settings on Handbrake including simply opening it and setting

Encoder:MP4 (And Xvid, and H.264)
Audio:Mp3 (128 kbps) (sample rates 44.1 or 48)
W/H 400x224
Avg Bitrate 1500 (and many others)
Video frame rate 23.976 (and Auto, and 25 and 30)

I have tried so many combinations that I am going nuts. My result is either

1) A video that plays as if it is being fast forwarded
2) A video that is nearly stuck, it will play a frame every few seconds and a blurp comes from the speakers.

I have also tried this on multiple PC's so it is not the PC...This leaves ME or the N800 as culprits.

Advice would be appreciated.

http://mediautils.garage.maemo.org

It's all set and ready to go for the tablet (you can actually up the bitrate and resolution a touch if you want), and it handles rips from VIDEO_TS just fine.

Actually I've been assembling a Windows XP box for some work on this and other things (I've been mired in Mac, Linux, and some Vista) but...

There's a Media Converter plugin that has a "check your local laws before using" caveat: Direct transfer of DVD to Internet Tablet friendly video. Untested by me, but looks interesting.

Where do you find such a gem?

http://code.google.com/p/tutorial2tablet/

Get it now before it gets hit with a C&D order.

And here's a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI

This post has instructions for using DVD Shrink, Handbrake, and Media Converter 2. I haven't tried it yet though.

I've had a lot of luck using Handbrake, by itself, with the following settings:

Format: MP4 file
Codecs: MPEG-4 Video/AAC Audio

Framerate: 23.976 (NTSC Film)
Encoder: FFmpeg
Average bitrate: 800

Picture Output: 400 x
Anamorphic: On
Keep Aspect Ratio: On
Crop: Auto
Denoise: Off
Detelecine: No
Deinterlace: Off

It seems to give me the best video quality, even in full screen, with the least amount of skips or stutters. When I encode a 4x3 source it's usually best to lower the output resolution even more (the 400 is the width, not the height, so the Nokia seems to choke a bit on scaling the full screen image down).

Recently I tried using the new OS X media converter on the files I've created using the above settings, but the quality of the output was horrible. The Handbrake files are a bit larger, but they look great, so I'm willing to sacrifice memory space for the better quality.

Good luck!

Robb

Thanks Thoughtfix you learn something new everyday.

I haven't used Handbrake, but typically when re-encoding a NTSC DVD you'd use a inverse telecine (IVTC) filter and 23.976fps (24000/1001), or a deinterlace filter and 29.97fps (30000/1001), depending on content. Films, animation, and many TV shows would get IVTCed, while pure video would get deinterlaced.

Mixed content is problematic, but smart IVTC and variable frame rates (VFR) can partially overcome that. But VFR is probably overkill for a quick and dirty N8X0 encode.

Has anyone else tried the ITVC plugin yet? I'm having problems with Windows lately. Only Mac and Linux love me now.

I'll also be interested to know how the ITVC plugin works. I wasn't quite sure what the converter was/did when the General linked to it above, so I installed it. I only spent a minute or two with it, but it didn't seem to like VOB files. Will the plug in allow me to drop VOB files into the converter?

Also, I've just been using DVD43+DVD Shrink+ N800 Video Converter, and I've been generally happy with the result. So a question: should I not be happy with the result?