video converter

[random guy]

hey i recently bought an mp4 player (the sandisk sansa). apparently though despite it being called an mp4 player it only plays .mov files. i am a noob at video converting so would someone be able to enlighten me on what program i should try to convert my mp4 files to .mov and how to keep the file size low. thanks for the advice.

[dave_p_b]

Hi

Not sure of absolute answer but ffmpeg is a good place to start http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Convert_Video

For Example, ffmpeg -i movie.mp4 movie.mov or
ffmpeg -i movie2.avi movie2.mov

ffmpeg has so many parameters it's hugh. It's worth getting used to though because ffmpeg is what all the other GUI programs use to convert video.
I think ffmpeg/mencoder/trancode are all made by mplayer. (I could be wrong though

Hope this helps

Dave

[random guy]

sweet, seems like it will do the trick of converting. i will try it when i get home from work. i am comfortible with command line apps so there is no fear there. i actually prefer them sometimes becasue they can be faster than gui ones.

hopefully it will have switches to lower the quality so i get a smaller file. i dont know a lot about this but i htink i can keep it the same size and just decrease framerate or something to make it smaller. the windows software for it is pretty bad and files tend to end up being like x10 bigger on player than computer.

[dave_p_b]

Hi

I've found another program that is like a front end for ffmpeg.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.ph ... tent=50959

It actually installs service menus so If you right click on the movie file then you can convert it to what ever you like.

If you install it then you need to modify the ./install.sh script else it won't install. It needs to read like this:
cp src/kvm*.desktop /usr/kde/3.5/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/
cp src/kvm /usr/kde/3.5/bin/
chmod a+rx /usr/kde/3.5/bin/kvm
chmod a+r /usr/kde/3.5/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/kvm*.desktop

echo "Installation completed. Good bye."

All the best

Dave

p.s. This might be useful for figuring out how to use ffmpeg http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html

[davbeck]

awesome, I got a sansa a while ago and have been trying to get the video to work forever. even the included windows apps didn't work.

does anyone know of a similar audio converter?

[random guy]

ya the sansa is great for audio but i was really disapointed by the video, especially not being able to play mp4 or some other compressed file type. complete series of red vs blue took lik 600mb on my computer and 3.6gb on my player. good thing i got the 8 gig.

the included software converts it to .mov. i think you have to have the sansa set to mpt to use it (change it in the settings menu on the sansa under usb mode). i think in linux you would want to use the other mode (msc) so it is mounted as a drive. to put music on just copy and paste it into the music directory on hte drive. can be in folders or whatever, it is ok.i only know windows audio converters becuase the software i use to get music legally (ruckus) is only in windows. anyone know any for linux?

[dave_p_b]

Hi

If you don't mind compiling then soundkonvertor is great http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.ph ... tent=29024

Also kavenc here http://kavenc.sourceforge.net/ is a great set of konqueror service menus for video conversion, but it also lets you strip the audio out of a movie, which is useful.

Cheers

Dave

[soloingbastard]

When I converted video's from DVD's to my Creative Zen Vision. I used this absolutley amazing program called dvd::rip it may only have one : i'm not sure. Point is, it was great it ripped a dvd, allowed me to change the size (so It could fit my Zen 320x240 perfectly) and had many diffrent encoding options of my choice. So give that a shot easiest and probably best way using dvd's.