DStwo Video Player - Video Optimisation Guide

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DStwo Video Optimisation Guide​

Making good quality, low filesize videos for use on the DStwo's video player.

Intro:
The purpose of this guide is to make the best use out of your DSTwo's video player. Do your video files fail to play properly, or at all? Do they look jagged or rough? Are the video files themselves too large for your memory card? This guide will address those issues and more.



This illustrated guide will teach you how to use a free DivX Video converter to make DivX encoded videos ideal for the DStwo. The end result here is Disney Pixar's "Up", a feature length film converted to a 360mb video, at 256x176 resolution. The original video is my own DVD rip for personal use.

Installation:
To begin with you'll need to actually install the DivX converter, this tool is free and easy to use, as well as fast and effective. EDIT: My mistake, the software is not free, it only appeared to be free since my system had it registered...
http://labs.divx.com/Converter?cid=startmenu
(Direct link to DivX Converter 6.6.1 Beta 1)

When you install this, you may be prompted to install a newer version than the install you downloaded, select No as it will try to install a different program called DivX Converter Plus, which is not what we'll be using.

Once installed, you should find a nice small interface, from here you are ready to go.

(This is the newest appearance of the converter, but this guide will be using an older converter, which worked just as well and just the same.)

Configuration:

DivX converter needs a little bit of configuration to get things ready for your DS.
First you'll want to right click the window to bring up the preferences.


In preferences, you'll want to save the converted videos to somewhere you'll remember. Since I'll be copying them straight to the DSTwo's memory card, I'll just save them to my desktop.


With that done, you can now begin adding media.
You begin by simply dragging and dropping videos onto the converter.


Once you are done adding videos, you want to click the left/right arrows to switch the profile from "Home Theatre" to "Mobile", and then click "View List". You should see something like this.


You can see the video resolution for mobile defaults to 320 pixels wide, but the Nintendo DS resolution is 256 pixels wide, so we need to change this.
Click the video you want to adjust, and click modify, to bring up this window.


Click advanced, here you can see the video aspect ratio. Now click "Use Custom resolution", then ensure aspect ratio is locked, and set the video's width to 256. (The video height will adjust automatically). For a widescreen (16:9) video, 256x176 would be good. For a non-widescreen (4:3) video, you should expect 256x192 resolution, which is the same as the DS screen.


Optionally, you can try adjusting the video bit-rate. A high bit-rate means better image quality, but also makes the file-size larger.

I recommend that you leave the audio bit-rate at 64bps, the Nintendo DS system does not have amazing sound, so added audio quality would be a waste.

Finally, with the video width set to 256px wide, and the profile quality set to mobile, we can okay everything and click convert.

Depending on how long the video is, it can take a few minutes.

Final Steps:
Finally, the video file will be converted, and the end result should be a .DivX video file.

This is the video file you want, but before you can use it on a DSTwo, you need to rename it. The DStwo does not recognise .DivX file extensions.
By Default, Windows hides file extensions for files, you need to make sure they aren't hidden. (Here's how you do it on Windows 7)
With File Extensions visible, just change "video.divx" to "video.avi", that's it, you're done! The video is ready to be copied to your DStwo's memory card.>
--->

Enjoy your high-quality video playback!

Troubleshooting:
Q: DivX converter refuses to convert my video file, what can I do about it?

A: It looks like DivX just won't handle some file formats, such as .FLV video, in that situation, you might want to look into using Oxelon media converter, to convert one video to another video that DivX converter WILL handle.
IE: Convert from youtube.FLV to youtube.AVI, then youtube.AVI to a DivX encoded Youtube video.

Q: Why don't I just use Oxelon media converter for my DStwo video needs?
A: Because Oxelon media converter cannot convert video to the DivX codec.

Q: Why should I use the DivX codec?
A: The DivX codec is high quality, well compressed and very compatible, all kinds of systems and devices are DivX compatible, including the DSTwo Player.

Q: DivX converter isn't free though, what should I do?
A: Well, that's up to you really. I do not encourage piracy, but you can still use the software free for 15 days.

Q: Why use the old DivX converter instead of DivX Converter Plus?
A: I might be wrong, but it looks like DivX Converter Plus limits the minimum resolution to 426x240, which is not ideal for the DSTwo.

Q: The video isn't playing on my DSTwo! Did I do something wrong?
A: It might be a bad conversion, try converting the video again, and make sure the file extension is .avi.

Q: Will this guide also work for my iPlayer/iSmart MM/Misc. Flashcart?
A: The guide should work for any flashcart that is capable of playing regular video formats.

Q: Will this guide work for moonshell video?
A: No, Moonshell media player can only play video in DPG format, and Moonshell does not have the added processing power of a DStwo.

Q: I converted the video to 512 pixels wide, why doesn't it look better?
A: The DS itself only has 256 x 192 pixels on its screen, so the DStwo has to discard half of those 512 pixels to make the video fit on screen. This is also a waste of file size as you can still get a good quality picture out of a low-resolution image.

Q: I want to put Youtube videos on my DStwo, will you make a guide?
A: No, there are hundreds of solutions for downloading Youtube videos on the internet, they're just a google away. Some are just webpages, others are web-browser extensions, or programs. If you download a youtube video, try to download an .MP4 video if one is available.

Q: Can you make a guide for non-windows users?
A: Sadly no, I only know how to convert video using Windows. I do not know if DivX has a video converter for Mac or Linux users.

Q: I have unanswered questions, answer them!
A: Alright alright, just post in this topic and I'll try my best to sort them out.

 

I gave that SUPER program a try, it wasn't quite so user-friendly and took longer to set up.
With SUPER it'd be too easy to mis-configure something, I ended up with a less-optimal video (500mb) and it wouldn't play back properly on the DStwo Player.

 

Strange, DivX converter should be free, shouldn't it?
At least the small program I've been using has always been free, not the DivX converter Plus, that's a different program.

 

Well whenever it froze, it'd be when the video finishes playing.
I don't recall trying to make the videos super-high quality or anything.

Still DPG is a limited format whilst DStwo can take advantage of high-quality video, so really that's what this guide is about.

 

Okay, I'll have to try installing it on my laptop, because as far as I'm aware, the converter I'm using should be free.
You should be using DivX Converter, NOT DivX converter plus, if you accidentally installed that.

Edit: Okay, it seems I've made a serious mistake.
The converter isn't free, it turns out that my version is registered for whatever reason.
Actually I seem to recall that DivX may have one time given out free installations of the converter for whatever reason...

Anyhow, my mistake, the software is not free, but the software itself is still very useful.
I know how people are like on the internet, they usually figure out how to make not-free stuff, free...

Edit: Ugh, this guide looks like one of those spam-bot guides for paid software now, not what I intended...

 

Yes, the media player is capable of playing unconverted video, but the purpose of this guide to optimise that experience.
This way you can enjoy more video on one memory card, it should look better too.