The official Nokia converter only recognizes other computer media files - not DVD Shrink's VOB rips from DVDs.

But "Media Converter," Super, and a few others have no problem with them - and they seem much more versatile than the Nokia software.

Well, I have finally found a method that (to my eyes) produces PERFECTLY fluid, high-quality video files for my N800 from DVD sources in mplayer, and nearly perfect (but with slight micro-stuttering) in the default OS2008 video player. Maybe there is another way, but nothing else I have tried has delivered equivalent results, and I've tried a lot of stuff. I know this is a popular topic on these forums, and I've read a lot of the suggestions/guides provided with interest, and tried many of the suggestions therein. I hope this guide is a constructive addition to the discussion. It is also, in my mind, proof of concept--conceivably someone who cared enough could create a piece of software that went from DVD to final, flawless AVI in one step. How nice that would be.

Unfortunately, this method requires THREE (!) different stages, making it fairly time-consuming. This is also not a technique that creates very small files. If you're looking for that, some other technique is for you. Perhaps some variation on the following can reduce filesizes while preserving fluid playback.

What you need (for Windows XP):
* DVD Shrink (Official Homepage - No Download) (Some suggested download locations (suggestions by others))
* Handbrake (Official Homepage - Download Available)
* Media Converter 2, from MarkZ (thanks for this, by the way!) (Official Homepage) (ITT Post introducing software)

If DVD Shrink cannot read your DVD directly because of copy protection, you might need another piece of software, such as DVD Decrypter (which is pretty reliable) (I am not aware of any official homepage for this program, but Google is your friend).

Step A: Use DVD Shrink to isolate and compress the video data you want to view.
There are pretty good guides on this already, including the one posted by superstar in pdf format. For reference, at max compression, this crunched the DVD of Wild Things from ~5.4gb to ~2.33gb. Fortunately, this goes pretty quickly on a Core 2 Duo e6600.

Step B: Use Handbrake to create a good-quality mp4 file in xVid format. For reference, this got my Wild Things filesize down to ~540mb.
I tried skipping this step and using Media Converter 2 directly. Unfortunately, the Divx5 output it generated, while compact, stuttered for me, even when played on the computer. But apparently my eyes are pretty picky on this score; you might not notice the stuttering, it's subtle.

Open up the VIDEO_TS folder that DVD Shrink created, and then use the following settings:

1. Start with preset "iPod High-Rez".
2. Save as "mp4". I tried saving as AVI and mplayer freaked out.
3. Encoder: choose "Xvid". I've tried the other options, none of them seem to work for the Nokia.
4. Audio Encoder: choose "AAC". I tried MP3 without success.
5. Width/Height: choose 400 x 240, an exact multiple of the N800/N810 screen size. I tried lower screen resolutions but they did not solve the stuttering problem.
6. Picture Settings: turn "Chapter Markers" off. I read somewhere that they can cause problems in some instances. Nothing else selected under this tab.
7. Video Settings: you can choose "2-Pass Encoding" if you want to really optimize your file. I think it makes a difference, but a subtle one, and it makes your encoding time twice as long. Under Avg Bitrate, choose 512 kbps.
8. Audio & Subtitles: for bitrate, choose 128 kbps (lower rates might shrink the filesize slightly, but do not improve playback quality). For sample rate, choose 44.1 kHz for normal movie sources. I found that 48 kHz created "clipping" noises for some movies.
9. Click "Encode Video" and wait for your movie to be encoded.

IMPORTANT NOTE: at the end of the video conversion process, the progress window will say something like "Muxing: 0.00%" and appear to be stalled. This is, apparently, normal behavior for Handbrake. Leave it alone. It is actually doing the muxing, but for reasons I cannot fathom it does not actually update the % monitor as it progresses. This can take quite a while, 20 minutes or more. Just let it go, and it will finish up eventually. For a long time I assumed that the program had hung, but nope--this is a "feature" of Handbrake.

Subsidiary note: the .mp4 output files created by Handbrake look great in the default OS2008 media player, but they do stutter slightly, as reported earlier in this thread. For whatever reason, these files DO NOT play acceptably in mplayer. They typically play "speeded up" with strange pixel artifacts.

Step C: Use Media Converter to convert that xVid to Divx5 in an AVI container. For reference, Wild Things went from ~540mb in MP4 to ~548mb in AVI.
This process doesn't reduce the size of the file at all (actually it makes it a little bit bigger). As far as I can tell, it simply converts one format to another, with little quality loss. If Handbrake supported Divx5/AVI directly, perhaps we could skip this step.

Your quality settings will be generally identical to those in Handbrake:

1. Select Device: I used Nokia N800.
2. Video Resolution: N800 High Quality (400x240)
3. Video Encoder: Divx5
4. Video bitrate: 512 kbps.
5. Audio bitrate: 128 kbps.
6. I turned "Crop video to 15/9 aspect" off. Your own preferences might differ.
7. Click "Convert videos" and wait . . .

That's it! I would LOVE to know of an easier way that generates equally acceptable output. But neither Handbrake alone, nor Media Converter 2 alone, nor the "Nokia N800 Video Convert" program (all of which are great in their way, by the way) were able to do the job, no matter what settings I used.

[EDIT]Links to software packages added.[/EDIT]

abby, could you provide the links to the various software tools that you are using in your tutorial above, and I will wiki the page for the benefit of newcomers

The General has spoken. Obey his word!

I have been playing around with a lot of options in linux. Best results I found is Tablet-Encode set to -p good without double pass, I also add the o option, and the -i option to make sure it rebuilds the index. I usually use mencoder from the command line to convert my videos from dvd to avi. For that I use the command mencoder dvd://1 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts pass=1:bitrate=1100 -alang en -oac mp3lame -o NameOfAVI.avi The dvd://1 the 1 is title 1. To figure out if title 1 is the one I want I use mplayer://1 or whaterver number I am curious about or VLC and see which tile it is playing.

You can also pass the dvd://1 to tablet-encode directly. dvd: on its own will also use mplayer to figure out the longest track and rip that.

I've a small tweak to make to use LC_LANG, if set, to help specify the audio track to rip since the default on some of my DVDs seems to be German, rather than English.

Done - post edited above. Thanks, I had thought about adding this to the Wiki, but wanted to leave time for comments first. Glad to see the suggestions on linux programs and settings.

Honestly, I tried, but this advice (though much appreciated!) did not give me enough of a roadmap regarding "how to" (programs and settings). Each software package, at least for Windows, has its own quirks and limitations.

GA's overall advice about framerates, pixel dimensions, and video format (MP4 in an AVI container) seems spot on, at least for mplayer (not quite so much for the OS2008 default media player, in that I still see some stuttering). As for audio, Handbrake just seems to do better with AAC rather than MP3. That's not to say GA is wrong - maybe MP3 is in fact superior, if one can get it working.