Skip to main content

How to Convert AVI Video Files for Watching on the Blackberry (and other mobiles) - for FREE

It's taken a bit longer than I expected to find a free solution to conversion of video files for the Blackberry but I've finally found one.

The software to use is called;

Internet Video Converter (I used version 1.52 standard) and you can get it from this web site (http://ivcsoft.free.fr/).

The application relies on either the FFmpeg or the Mencoder files in order to do the conversions. These files are available separately but I think they're also included with the utility.


Converting the File
  1. Rip, Download or otherwise obtain your AVI file.

  2. Start the Internet Video Converter Application.

  3. Click on the Tab marked Transcoder.

  4. Click on the button marked 1. Select a Video .

  5. Choose a video file to use (there is a 1 second DOS screen that appears - don't panic about this).

  6. The Save As section will be filled in automatically. Change it if you need to.

  7. In the format list choose; Mobile QVGA 320x240 - AAC/good (.3GP).
    Note: If you have a different type of blackberry or phone, you may need to specify a different setting.
    I've got the 8800, and this setting was perfect. If you have the thin style phone, you may need to choose a rotation in the Audio/Video settings section.

  8. Click the button marked 3 >> Apply Format.
    Unless you need to do a rotation, don't worry about the Audio/Video settings, they're not critical even though they sound interesting.

    Have a look at the bottom of the screen. You will see start and end times. In my example, the duration is 48 minutes and 15 seconds (automatically calculated).

    If you decide to test your settings, you won't want to convert the whole file, so change this to 1 minute. When you do your real test, set it back by clicking the < Max button.

  9. When you're ready for conversion, click the button marked 4. >>>> CONVERT NOW <<

  10. A DOS command line screen will appear - this time, it will stay for a while.

  11. Let it finish and then have a look at your file - it should be converted.

How Long Does it Take?
As a rough guide, a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 took 10 minutes to convert a 45 minute 358 MB 640x368 AVI File to a 76 MB 3GP file.

You can now use the Blackberry Desktop Manager to copy your new file to your device.

In order to play your file, you probably need something like the Freeware XPlayer for Blackberry.



Enjoy.

One last thing... I've had a few people mention problems with the xplayer. There's a problem where you want to select a folder and if you browse down too far, you see nothing... no files, nothing. Simply go up a level and select the folder and all will be well. I've been using the xplayer pretty extensively and haven't had any real issues.
Labels:

Comments

Chris Toohey said…
Great find Gavin - thanks! Trying it now for converting a few of my movies to Zune formatting.
1:30 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Change Your Notification Options for New Lotus Notes Mail in version 8.x

Don't worry, I'm not patronizing you (my readers), I just decided to re-document this for one of our internal users and thought you might want to be able to use it in your own user documentation. WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT ABOUT? Some people who don't get a lot of mail, like to be notified when such an event occurs. Notification can be; via a sound via a pop-up box via the system tray (where the computer clock is) The pop up box looks like this; Other people, who like myself, get too much mail would rather not be notified. The aim of this document is to tell you how (and where) to turn these options on and off. CHANGING YOUR SETTINGS To change your settings from the Notes 8.x client; On the Menu, click File , then Preferences... On the left hand side , click on the little plus sign to the left of Mail to expand the options. Click on the option marked Sending and Receiving . In the middle section, under receiving, you can control your notifications. If you untick the box mark
12 comments
Read more

How to Create an Auto-Response Mail Message in Lotus Notes 8.5.3+

Why would you do this? Suppose that you have an externally accessible generic email address for your company; support@mycompany.com or info@mycompany.com. You might expose this to the web and allow people to send messages to you. Setting up an auto-response email will tell the senders that their message reached its destination and that it will be dealt with accordingly.  It's also good practice to include links to FAQs or other useful information. Why 8.5.3 The techniques we'll be using here work in older versions of Notes but some of the options seem to have moved around in 8.5.3.  I figured it was a good time to show you where they've moved to. The Procedure Start Domino Designer and open the Mail file to be modified.  A really quick way to do this is to right-click on the application tab and choose "Open in Designer". In the Left hand panel of designer, expand Code and then double-click Agents.  A new window should appear. Click the action
22 comments
Read more

How to Do a Mail Merge to Email using Lotus Notes

Why do one? In today's "green" world, it makes much better sense to send out emails than letters but you still want to personalize them. Sadly, by itself Lotus Notes doesn't support mail merge to email. Of course, we know that outlook does (but then it lets anyone and anything send emails for you - even when you don't want them to). So, how to do it in Notes? OpenNTF The first port of call is OpenNTF ( http://www.openntf.org/ ). This place is full of great things but most of them are really badly documented. Still, these guys give things away for free and they develop in their spare time, so we should be grateful for what we get. There's a great little project there called MailMerge Excel to Notes . Go there, click on releases and download the ZIP file. Getting to the Code The installation is tricky though I've noted that since I asked the author about the install, it's been updated (so maybe these steps are less necessary). Unzip the files to somewher
15 comments
Read more