Hi

I just watched a 56min TV program on my N80, exported from a recording I'd done a few weeks ago on my Elgato EyeTV 2.2. File size was 144Mb. There was a lot of trial and error geting the settings right, but I ended up with something that was perfectly watchable (even if it did use up three quaters of my battery). I used info from this thread (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46555) and from here (http://blogs.s60.com/s60multimedia/2006/04/how_to_convert_ipod_video_for.html), but had to tweak some of those settings it working.

Video Format: H264
Data Rate: 256 kits/sec (elsewhere I have seen that up to 512 will work)
Image Size: 352x288 CIF
Frame Rate: 10 (elsewhere I had seen that 15 or maybe more would work. However, I found that anything higher that 10 would give me dropped frames).
Key Frame: Automatic
Restrict Profile(s) to: Just checked "Baseline" only
Audio Format: AAC-LC
Data Rate: 96kbps
Channels: Mono
Output Sample Rate: 32.000kHz

Any other settings I left to "default".

The same settings also work for me with exporting any unportected movie from QuickTime Pro 7.1 on the Macintosh (I presume they share the same Mpeg4 export module).

OK, so I don't know what a lot of these settings mean, so I don't know which ones I can get away increasing to make for better audio/video quality. However, because I wanted to keep the file as small as possible, I erred on the side of caution with some of the settings (particularly the audio ones).

It's pretty cool being able to watch your recorded TV programmes on your phone. Hope this is useful to someone. And if anyone who know what they are talking about can refine or explain these settings, then that would be cool to.

Now... must buy that spare battery....

Regds
SL

Might also want to investigate something called ORB (www.orb.com). It lets you watch stuff from your PC etc OTA without the need for transferring it to the device. You can do this over WiFi of 3G.

Basically a remote access client for PC which lets you stream music and video to your phone.

A 56 minute program ate how much battery???????? That is shocking. Maybe your data rates are too high and are caning the CPU, although with 10 fps you should be fine, or the file format you were using needs heavy decoding? Anyone know the best codec to use with an N80. My SPV C500 (over 2 years old!!!), can play out divx coded movies at 25fps no problems, with no dropped frames, and I could probably squeeze a whole installment of lord of the rings if I tried. The performance sounds way below what I would want. Has anyone tried optimising the settings? Can you set screen brightness at all?

A 56 minute program ate how much battery???????? That is shocking.
OK. I didn't scientifically measure the charge in the battery before and after I'd watched the movie. It was at the end a day where I'd been using it a bit and it had been sat on the car charger but it wasn't fully charged. There were about 5 or 6 bars showing on the battery meter (out of 7) when I started watching, and I had 1 or 2 left at the end. I'd also been pausing the movie quite a bit and going off to do other things with the phone like check email via WLAN. Screen brightness was on the second-highest setting.

So, maybe not quite three quaters of a battery, but probably not a long way off.

As for quality, I was surprised to find 10fps perfectly pleasant to watch, with no dropped frames at all. As I think I mentioned, I tried it with 15fps but I with that I was lucky to get any undropped frames.

SL

I am not at all au fait with symbian software, but are there likely to be any DivX players released for the N80, or does anyone know which codec requires the least overhead?