Robert Beal (Bealer)

I watch quite a few movies on my Samsung YP-P2, so am always having to covert the AVI’s I currently have to SVI’s. An SVI is still an AVI, just a different extension name and a few key points, which include not having any b-frames, the video being 480×272 in resolution, and a few other things.

Anyway…I firstly started encoding my videos using Avidemux. Which is an excellent an easy to use GUI for converting videos into whatever format/specifics you need. However, it’s still a pain to have to open it up, load a video, check all the settings etc…

So I’ve now installed mencoder, and convert videos using command parameters. Firstly, install mencoder

sudo apt-get install mencoder

Once installed, you can use the following script in a Terminal window to convert a file.

mencoder -noodml ${InputFile} -o ${OutputFile} -ofps 25 -vf-add crop=0:0:-1:-1 -vf-add scale=480:272 -vf-add expand=480:272:-1:-1:1 -srate 44100 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=128 -oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=0 -lameopts br=128 -lameopts vol=0 -lameopts mode=0 -lameopts aq=7 -lameopts padding=3 -af volnorm -xvidencopts max_bframes=0:nogmc:noqpel -mc 0

In the above you’ll need to replace ${InputFile} with a file path (e.g. /media/Movies/Rambo.avi) and ${OutputFile} with the output path (e.g. /media/P2/Video/Rambo.svi). I’ve also highlighted “25″ which is the framerate, and “128″ which is the mp3 bitrate. I never bother changing those though.

Now, this is still quite a pain to use, so next I implemented it into Nautilus Actions Configuration. If you haven’t got this installed, install it by running the following in the Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions

If you go to System > Preferences > Nautilus Actions Configuration, you’ll be presented with a new Window. There should be an import/export button. Click that and import the file attached at the bottom of this article.

This will basically give you “right-click” functionality. If you right-click on any AVI file, there’ll be a “Send to YP-P2″ option. If you select that, it’ll convert the file you clicked on, and copy it to the YP-P2. Now I can copy movies to my YP-P2 in two clicks.

• yp-p2.schemas