Now that I am riding the bus for 40 minutes each way to work and back, I have some spare time to watch some movies on my Zen player. It's a tiny screen but it has really nice looking video. The problem is that I haven't been able to figure out how to transcode DVD movies for it until now. So I thought I'd write about it so I don't forget.

 

Software: MPEG4 Direct Maker Advanced DVD Converter

Settings

WMV output, WM Audio 9.2 44.1KHz, 96KBPS

500KBPS

3-second key frame interval

95% video quality

Resized 320x204, 24fps

 

This seems to work well. The only thing i'd change per movie is the vertical size. The 204 is the right aspect ration for the wide screen 2.33:1 format, and I'd use 228 for the 1.85:1 format movies. If it's a 4:3 standard movie, I'd use the full 240.

 

My converter machine is running Vista ultimate, and it runs the sofware just fine at 3/4 speed (decrypted movie on the hard disk of course). It's a three year old machine (athlon 64 2.2 GHz, 2GB) but it holds up at that rate. I transcode after hours, when there's nothing else happening on the machine.

 

that should do the trick... enjoy the movies on the go...