I love the SonyEricsson K750 phone, it is a great device. From the first time I played video demo file on K750 in a shop I knew I’m gonna buy it because the video looked really good, despite the small screen. Now I have K750 over a year and I figured out it is time that I play around with watching video on it. My excuse for not doing it before was the amount of storage memory (64Mb), but 1GB sony memory stick card fixed that.

First thing I had to find out is what kind of video does it play. It can play two file formats (or file containers to be more precise) and they are .3gp and .mp4

Both containers can contain H.263 or Mpeg4 for video and AMR or AAC for audio.
For low-end and low-bandwidth use H.263 and AMR but if you want high quality then use Mpeg4 and AAC combination because it produces better quality video.

So I will use Mpeg4 as video codec and AAC for audio codec and 3gp as a file container.

Video resolution has to be 176×144. K750 has a screen resolution of  220×176 pixels but it doesn’t support video larger than 176×144 :(

Framerate can be up to 30 fps but it consumes a lot of the file size and quality for video podcast isn’t noticeably better so I use 15 fps.

Setting bitrate was a bit difficult because ffmpeg man page isn’t updated with the changes made in the parameters. So if you want 200kbits video bitrate by the ffmpeg help page you need to set the parameter “-b 200″ but they changed it without updating the help or man page so now you need to set it to “-b 200k” – for me this is a bug.

Combined audio and video bitrate should be below 264kbps or the finished video will stutter during playback.

For video podcasts I set audio to 32000 Hz, mono, 32 kb/s – you can set lower or higher audio quality but remember the maximum combined bitrate should be below 264kbps. If you are conversing something more audio intensive than speech, like music videos, than use audio bitrate of 64 kb/s.

Now for the part you are all waiting for. For converting diggnation to my K750 I used this command:

ffmpeg -i diggnation--0093--2007-04-11--large.xvid.avi -vcodec mpeg4 -s 176x144 -r 15 -b 200k -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 32000 -ab 32 -f 3gp diggnation--0093--2007-04-11.3gp

UPDATE (for newer ffmpeg):
Last year (2007) ffmpeg has renamed codecs – so that all codec names that use external library are renamed to libfoo.
On Fedora (and other distros) if you have installed newer ffmpeg from Livna or RPMFusion repositories the command is a little different. Instead of “-acodec aac” you need to use “-acodec libfaac”. So on Fedor it should be like this:

ffmpeg -i diggnation--0093--2007-04-11--large.xvid.avi -vcodec mpeg4 -s 176x144 -r 15 -b 200k -acodec libfaac -ac 1 -ar 32000 -ab 32 -f 3gp diggnation--0093--2007-04-11.3gp

I found out that variable bitrate works better and produces smaller file and higher quality file!
ffmpeg -i diggnation--0093--2007-04-11--large.xvid.avi -vcodec mpeg4 -s 176x144 -r 15 -qscale 4 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 32000 -ab 32 -f 3gp diggnation--0093--2007-04-11.3gp

UPDATE (for newer ffmpeg):
ffmpeg -i diggnation--0093--2007-04-11--large.xvid.avi -vcodec mpeg4 -s 176x144 -r 15 -qscale 4 -acodec libfaac -ac 1 -ar 32000 -ab 32 -f 3gp diggnation--0093--2007-04-11.3gp

I used here “-qscale 4″ instead “-b 200k” for video bitrate. With this parameter you define the quality you want and not the rigid video bitrate. This is better for dynamic content – so when the video is dynamic more bitrate is given to maintain the quality but when video is less dynamic then it uses significantly less bandwidth and produces smaller files.
You need to be careful because using VBR method combined bitrate can over 264kbit/s because you are giving the encoder the option to give rise to the bitrate when it calculates it is necessary and that can cause a bit of video playback stuttering. If this happens a lot during video playback then lower the quality and bitrate by setting qscale to a higher number.

If you are using windows please try reading Converting vids for K750 using NERO recode.

Parameters for you to tweak are these:

-i # this it the name of the input file
-vcodec # set this to mpeg4 or h263, depending which codec you want to use
-s # this is the video size. don’t change it – has to be 176×144
-r # video frame rate – experiment with this in the sane range of 10-30 fps
-b # set video bitrate (in bits/s) – use the range from 100k to 200k
-acodec # set “aac” older ffmpeg or “libfaac” for newer ffmpeg as the audio codec
-ac # set number of audio channels; 1 for mono, 2 for stereo
-ar # set audio sampling rate (in Hz)
-ab # set audio bitrate (in kbit/s)
-f # choose file container; 3gp or mp4
-qscale # use fixed video quantizer scale (VBR)

• ffmpeg bitrate bug
• Converting vids for K750 using NERO recode

Izašao je Ubuntu 7.04 – Feisty Fawn… i svi su poludili za njime. Danas ću ga i ja instalirati jer me zanima što su napravili. Nisam pratio što se događa, beta verzije nisam testirao pa će ovo biti moj prvi dodir s novim Ubuntuom.

Našao sam i prigodan wallpaper

Možda ću i neku recenziju napisati.

Digg

Donwnload linkovi:
http link u hrvatskoj
torrent download

I install a fresh Fedora7 (test 3) then run web browser and go to fedora magazine page – from there I download some video ogg files from it.

Why is it that when I click on the file I can’t view the video? Player just crashes! And the default player is kamboodle! Why is that?!? That is the worst video player I have seen ever! On any platform! Opensource or not there is no excuse to put that player as the default one!

Fedora 7 experience was a bit better than FC6 one – because in FC6 when I tried the same experiment I got an error message that ogg is a unknown format and system doesn’t know how to open it!

Great! And that was an OGG file with 0% proprietary fibers in it :)
How do you expect to get people to use linux as a destop when the MOST simple multimedia desktop scenario doesn’t work!?!

If you can’t play “official” video form redhat pages then this is a serious case of TERRIBLE multimedia desktop usability!

I know about all the great effort that has gone into fedora releases, and I love it. It is the best linux distro for me, but I know how to set it up, iron out the quirks that mess up the destop experience and configure it for optimal work/play flow.

But please, please make it a lot easier on non-geek people so that they can also use this great stuff called fedora. And belive me there are people wanting to do so, but they can’t because we don’t let them. They need some features to be enabled by default or else they won’t know how that they even exist.

So please change the default video player to totem or something else, just NOT kamboodle because it just doesn’t work and it sucks GUI vise.

Regarding proprietary video codecs RedHad developers just say something like this: “We talked with out lawyers and they said no.” Ok? And? Where can we see this discussion? I know that you can’t put MP3 support in fedora, but that you can’t even put an link for some European server that has all the codecs? Lawyers say that RedHat can be sued even for puting links that enable multimedia. Ok, maybe I believe it but it is maybe possible that some one would sue, but hardly win that case.

But there are legal ways around that, you can put a text saying that it is legal to enable multimedia codecs only if you live in a country that doesn’t have software patents – like I do.

It is possible if you want it – Ubuntu has shown that because they will be doing just that, and even a step beyond that. Ubuntu will have a Ubuntu for European market and other countries that don’t have software patents (my country doesn’t!) with all multimedia codecs embedded within the distro!

So please let’s start the discussion because believe me there is a great need for this because there are lot’s media files that are every where (internet, youtube, divx rips of dvds, etc…) that people have a need to watch and listen.

Hope to hear from Fedora/RedHat developers and Desktop usability experts what are their opinions.

I send this message to three Fedora mailing-lists:
fedora-devel-list
fedora-desktop-list
fedora-list
so you can also join the discussion there.

Valent
- fiber optics and networking engineer from Croatia.

Neki kažu da je ovaj komad softvera čudo nad čudima. Može prekonvertirati iz svega u sve ostalo :)

Čak možete pogledati i ovaj youtube vide clip koji ga jako hvali.

Na njivom siteu su stavili neke zanimljive linkove pa ih ovdje kopiram, neka se nađu:

• Windows Media 9 Decoder (for decoding WMV9 if latest WMP not installed)
• Extra Decoders (for decoding WMV9, VP6/7/8, Indeo etc.)
• Windows Media Encoder (needed for transcoding to WMA/WMV)
• Helix Producer
• Unicode Layer for Windows 95/98/ME (needed for APE encoding on Win9x)

linkovi:

• MediaCoder

• CNET TV – MediaCoder (YouTube clip)

Bok svima, u zadnje vrijeme sam počeo dodavati više multimedije na blog u obliku video i zvučnih zapisa. Primjer za to je post Distro Independence na čijem se kraju nalazi pjesma koju možete pokrenuti. Drugi primjer je post o wikipedia autoru wikipedia@net@nite, u tom postu sam uspio ubaciti podcast player koji sam ukrao s www.netvibes.com. Problem je što podcast player odmah kreće s reprodukcijom podcasta a to mi nije bila namjera. Ako netko skuži kako da ga ušutkam pri učitavanju posta bio bih vam JAKO zahvalan.

Zanima me vaše mišljenje o blogu te da li vam se više sviđa multimedija ili biste radije vidjeli više tekstova a manje multimedije. Također ako imate bilo kakav drugi prijedlog vezano za sadržaj ili za sam blog slobodno mi javite u komentaru ovog posta.

Sve svojem prijedloge i komentare ostavite na blogu ili ako želite možete mi direktno odgovoriti na e-mail: valent.turkovic@gmail.com

Hvala svima unaprijed.

Često sam slušao i čitao u raznim, uglavnom američkim, medijima o Net Neutrality Act-u. Moram priznati da nisam shvatio previše jer je bilo toliko FUD-a da su čak i mene zbunili, ali pretpostavio sam da se radio o tipičnom pokušaju od strane “starih” medija i raznih korporacija da obuzdaju internet iza kojega stoje velike pare.
Najbolji video na ovu temu sam našao na google videos pa ako vam nije do sada bilo jasno o čemu je riječ samo ga pogledajte.

Video na koji sam se lijepo nasmijao a na ovu temu je “Internet Is a Series of Tubes”:

Da nije smiješno bilo bi tužno ili tako nešto :)

Čak postoji i wikipedia članak na ovu temu, obavezno pročitati.