There seems to be a few threads floating right now on issues with video playback on the N800. Videos that played fine on the 770 will stop playing part way through on the N800, and some streaming videos won't play at all.

I'm starting this thread to hear from people who have successfully encoded and played > 30 minute video files all the way through on the N800. Please post what the source format was, what you used to encode the video, what the settings were, and what application (include version #) you used to play it with.

I know I'll appreciate figuring this out (as will my kids), and I'm guessing a few others around here might too.

Thanks!

This thread is very much needed. I am surprised to see no responses. I wish I could provide insight - but after spending hours trying to figure out what file format, video encoding, audio encoding and resolution to try to convert to - I almost always got error messages.

Did Nokia really intend video to be played on the N800? If so - don't you think they would have summarized suggested formats, encoding codecs and resolutions?

I hope people that are watching viedoes - post there findings.

Thanks

770-encode.pl with 'best' preset produces very good quality videos playable by N800's built-in Media Player (I watched videos ~ 45 min long). Granted, the Media Player is a little flaky - for example, if you try to fast forward to some random position you may get occasional 'Media codec not supported error' - but generally it works well enough on these video files...

I would use mplayer for video playback. I have that installed and I am able to play many files that use codecs that the internal player cannot play. There is also much optimization going into mplayer at the moment. The optimization is mainly for the 770 but I'm sure it will help the 800 as well. I can almost watch full movie 700mb xvid files with mplayer as is.

At least, I've noticed problems when running less than 64 MB virtual memory.

Anyway, here's latest media converter. 1.30. Released today.
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=26
Supports ultra-cool 400x480 resolution for video.

Doesn't work for me
I wrote a bug report this morning in garage, but didn't get an answer.

mplayer on my N800 shows some kind of pixelated (greenish tinted) in the upper-left quadrant of the screen; it's entirely unusable. Any suggestions what needs to be done to get it working.

I have tried both MediaConverter and 770-encode.pl

Both are able to produce a file yet none can read them properly (vlc xine mplayer kafeine)... all I get when playing them is sound, no video.

Does anyone have a sample video they have been able to convert (with options used to convert) and view so I can test conversion on my Linux PC and see what is going wrong or not for me...

Thanks a bunch

Here is a 400x480 video. It's just 2.1 MB, so you can easily test it straight on your N800.

http://www.helsinki.fi/~konttori/Med...ter/fan4hq.avi

Converted with MediaConverter.

Random YouTube video converted with VidConvert (powered by 770-encode)

http://www.bleb.org/services/vidconv...lts/amuazo.avi (~500KB)

The first two minutes of Good Night and Good Luck converted on the "best" preset of 770-encode. It's black and white but really stunning quality, IMHO:

http://www.bleb.org/software/770/gnAgl.avi (6.5MB)

Given that both 770-encode and Media Converter are powered by mencoder, the output for the same settings should be identical.

Unfortunately, until the video halting bug is fixed, the N800 is a bit of a PITA to use for video.