MP4 setting for portable player

Dan_B wrote on 12/12/2008, 11:05 AM
I'm giving my daughter a generic MP4/MP3 player for Christmas and wonder what would be the best settings to use for it - it has a native resolution of 320x240 and my thought processes tell me to render to that size and maybe at a lessor frame rate in order to conserve space in the memory.
I'm open to suggestions as I haven't done much for these devices.

Thanks in Advance!

Dan

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/12/2008, 1:21 PM
A lot of them seem to like DivX quite well, but consult the documentation to be sure.

I've got an Archos 404 which has 320x240 resolution. I render DivX 320x240 14.985fps at around 300kbsp and it looks very nice indeed. Movies only need about 140MB/hour.

The other thing you'll have to determine by trial and error is how to format widescreen material. It's safe to letterbox it in a 4:3 frame, but that wastes quite a few bits that could be better used to improve the active image area instead. Also, if you later upgrade to a player with a 16:9 display then you'll have the 4:3 frame pillarboxed in the frame so you'll end up with a tiny movie with large black borders all the way around. I found with the Archos if i render to a 320x180 frame it handles it properly without stretching. However, if i render to an academy size frame like 320x144 then the player stretches it out vertically to fill the 240 pixel height of the frame. Very annoying.
stopint wrote on 12/12/2008, 6:45 PM
i have a cheapy portable mp4 player and i just use the 320x240 ipod default setting in vegas...looks fine...i also have the verizon voyager cell phone and use the same ipod setting...