Hi All -

I have MacBook running Tiger, and I haven't been able to find a thread that explains how to convert/compress videos to optimize for the n800. Does anyone have any suggestions on this? I'm not particularly tech-savvy, so I'd be appreciate the most user-friendly method, but I'm open to anything that would help.

Thanks!

handbrake works for converting DVDs, quicktime pro works for converting downloaded videos.

For the output file, choose avi or mp4, h263 codec (mp4 basic) or h264 simple profile, 400x240 resolution or smaller (320x240) and 12 or 15 frames per second. Data rate 350-400Kb/s.

No, no, no.

MPEG4 video (not h.264) at no more than 400x240 (fit whatever aspect ratio the source is), at the source's framerate, running no more than 1200Kbps with MP3 audio.

Quicktime Pro's MPEG4 encoder is . . . underwhelming. If you can figure out how to get mencoder up and running and use aflegg's mediautils, you're pretty much guaranteed perfect results every time (just edit tablet-encode to up the bitrate on the "best" setting, as aflegg went just a touch conservative). If not, Handbrake works well for converting DVDs and something like ffmpegx or VisualHub will work well for converting other stuff (though I really heartily recommend mediautils).

As a reminder, the Nokia Internet Tablet VIdeo Converter will be available for the Mac in the next month or so. Don't hold me to that date, but we're trying hard to get it out as quick as we can

Yes, yes, yes. If you stay within the limits I wrote, h.264 plays reasonably well. Try simple (baseline) profile or main profile.

And 1200Kbps is way too much. Encoding video is a compromise between quality (which in the end depends on what you can see on a given screen size) and size (even if flash memory price have fallen, size remains a constraint).

The question was: "how do I do that on a mac?". I encode videos on the mac regularly. What I wrote is what I use. What I wrote works. What I wrote encodes a typical movie (1h40+) to about 400 MB. What I wrote plays on the built-in media player. So why "no, no, no"?

But a lot worse than regular MPEG4 at lower quality for very little space-saving and a big increase in encoding time.

If the OP wants to save space, they can certainly reduce quality, but deciding for them that they need to save space at the expense of quality (and, in my opinion in this particular case) view-ability is a tad unhelpful. Honestly, the quality reduction you're recommending for a limited space-saving (and a big increase in CPU-usage) is quite severe. Changing framerate from source is almost always a bad idea, and h.264 doesn't play well enough on the tablet to make up for it's size:quality improvements (as we can see from your low-bitrate and ridiculous halving of the framerate).

OP, if flash-space is a major issue for you, yes Jerome's method will provide some reduction in size but at the expense of a lot of quality. My method is a little heavier on the size, but you will get much, much better quality (in a format the tablets are much better equipped to handle) if you really want to reduce size, halving the bitrate of my recommendation is the better method.

So, in summary: framerate changes are bad, and h.264 doesn't play well at reasonable sizes and bitrates.