The first thing you're going to want is Microsoft's Windows Media Encoder. This utility makes it easy to set up optimal settings to get the maximum from your wmv files. However the encoder is only good for one file at a time, which can be trouble when you're trying to convert the entire season of a show like Firefly or The Office.
For converting more files at once you'll need the Windows Media Encoder SDK (available at the same place). Generally speaking this is not for public use, but it does contain a batch encoder. You'll need to open up your hard drive and manually look for batchencoder.exe. This program isn't complete in any way, but it does effectively do what we're looking for. You may want to make a shortcut somewhere so you can find this program later. Batchencoder.exe wants a profile. Here's one that I've set up that'll do the trick. Save it in My Documents for easy access.
But then there's another problem. Fast Forwarding on the npower fusion doesn't cooperate for me. It seems that after Fast Forwarding 5 minutes the thing breaks. So my solution was to break the videos up into 5 minute segements. And for that I found ASFBin (thanks to the folks at the doom9.org forums). Okay, bear with me because I can't host the files myself, so you'll need to do this manually.
- Download ASFBin and unzip it c:\asfbin
- Open up c:\asfbin
- Replace the segments.lst file in c:\asfbin with this segments.lst file.
- Download Splitfile.bat and save it anywhere you want. (use c:\asfbin if you can't think of anywhere else.)
At this point all you have to do is open up Windows Media Player, click the sync tab, and drag and drop all the movie files you want to watch later and click the sync button. Movie's on the go.
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Thanks for this info. So . . . when you break a movie up into 5 minute sections, you have to play each piece separately??? Is there anyway to make a .wmv playlist so that you can watch each segment back-to-back without interruption?
Ah, good question.
All you have to do is sync all the parts (which can be done at the same time) and they'll play in order, back to back.
The only thing to be careful of is if you have more than 9 parts, then you need to go back and renumber the first 9 with a zero (0) in front of them before syncing.
You can actually set up the encoder to number them properly if you do it by hand, but not with the batch file that I provide.
Thanks! After reading your conversion/split method, i did some searching. And, I've found another solution.
I'm converting the movies from avi/dvd to wmv using Pocket DVD Wizard. They've built in a profile for our device. It's a slow process to convert a full movie (a couple of hours). But, it does it & allows you to pick the size of your final output file. There is a $24 cost, unless you can find it online ;-). . . .
THEN, I'm splitting the files using MOVICA, which is a gui running asfbin. They've built in a "Split" tab that lets you secify splitting the file by duration (5:02), by number of segments you want, or by file size. You just plug in which one you want & press the button. It creates the segments input right there!
I'm manually loading them on the card, in separate folders for each movie. So, from the device, you go to MOVIES --> MEMORY CARD --> Movie Folder --> Movie Segments. Voila!
Thanks for the thought starters & help!
I tried the trial version of PocketDVD wizard and was incredibly unimpressed with the quality. for some reason Microsoft's own tool make a video that you can actually still read words on signs, where as PocketDVD made the principal faces look like paper white masks of evil.
But that's for pointing out movieca, tho I should mention that now I'm only splitting them into 5:01 sections.
Hello...I just left a comment on the original post....Any new info on video conversion...just bought a 2gb fast SD card, figure I can keep the kids occupied with some star wars..yes the geek factor does move through the gens...will try the existing instructions unless something easier available...tried clone wars with pocket DVD and did not work but was a while ago....just want to use my "legal purchased!" DVDS to keep the kids happy. Thanks.
Hey Joe:
I got the DVD Robots into a wmv file, which plays fine on windows media, but when I try to sync it gives me an error. Next I tried to load the WMV file directly into the video folder of the npower, which worked for pocket dvd files, but the quality sucked. after loading the wmv file to the folder the npower gives me the message file format not supported. any suggestions?
Did you encode the media file using the NPower.prx that I provided. If you're video isn't already 512kbps it won't work. I don't know what exactly will happen because I never failed to have a successful transfer.
Great tutorials, but I have still not been able to get a single movie file playing on my daughters Fusion.
I tried WME using the profile you supplied, but the Fusion still said "File Not Supported". But I didn;t split the file into smaller parts, would that make a difference?
The only thing that has worked so far is the free trial of Pocket DVD, and I can't find anything special about the outputted format from that program.
HELP!
I'll tell you the truth, I've been having trouble with the free tools lately. Specifically, the batch processor just stopped working. Had to process the entire series of The Prisoner by hand, one by one.
Now, I like free tools because, well, they're free. But if you find a pay tool that works for you, go for it. PocketDVD is, what, less than 30 bucks? Seems worth it to me considering you probably only paid $20 for a $100 portable media player.
I'm having no luck either with a small file, using Windows Encoder and the Npower.prx.
I'm guessing that it needs some time of DRM setting in the Securtiy tab under properties.
Any thoughts?
Also, Amazon Unbox files used to work directly -- but then they changes the format so they stopped working as well.
When I load the profile, it says the total bitrate is 510k. I thought it was pretty strict about the 512k. Could this 2k be causing that much difference?
Being below the bitrate shouldn't be a bad thing, that's why I kept it below. Going over is what'll cause problems.
Hmm. I still can't get it to encode. I can encode it, and it just seems to lock the player, requiring a reset.
I had encoded some back in August, and now we are going on a trip. I wanted some new videos for the kids. I found my old HD, plugged it into a USB enclosure and saw that my old conversion profile was exactly 512kbps. That must be the key, because those files sync just fine, no conversion done by media center.
I tried using the .prx file provided and it almost worked. I had to change the decoder complexity to SIMPLE (it was on Auto). After I did that it worked.
Can you repost the segments.lst file for ASFbin? The Google page is no longer up. I have not figured out how to get ASFbin to split files into 5 min segments with out the segments.lst file. I have also tried Movica, and it does great until it gets to the 10th segment, then stops working. That's fine if the movie is under 50 min (10 x 5 min), but not so great for longer movies.
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