Hacking Movies

[yee]

We can play movies on the EZ4 right?

But what's the best resolution for it and which format?

Do I need Moonshell to view them?

 

[KeYbLaDeXaLcHeMi]

Yes, it's possible, but you'll need moonshell and batchdpg.
Just use the default settings in batchdpg, and that should be fine.

 

[FAST6191]

You could use meteo the old GBA video player if you like but moonshell is the way to go.

Quality wise I threw some of the nastiest video I had at it and it held up well considering.
Your movies need to be in .dpg format (I think I have a demo one kicking around my site if you do not want to convert one first).

To convert either use the DPGTools or batchDPG (if used correctly BatchDPG is better (quality, usefulness, speed, abilty to open different files...) but one of the programs it uses requires .net so I do not use it).
DPGTools can be grabbed in many places (the EZ4 downloads sticky has it).
BatchDPG: http://ls5.cydonianknight.com/?About

 

[yee]

What are the recommended settings for good quality ?

I wanna watch some Family Guy and Simpsons on the go

Could you tell me about how big say a 20 minute show is?

EDIT: Could you guys also recommend a site to download skins and how to install them?

 

[Heinrisch]

Could you tell me about how big say a 20 minute show is?

Around 40 MB

 

[FAST6191]

Family Guy and the Simpsons being western style cartoons (some anime is very complex so this does not count) mean that compression is quite easy for them, Heinrisch is correct and good quality can be achieved for that kind of size, personally I like to use less compression so mine end up 50-60 megs big.

As for settings for good quality I normally prefer not to speculate about this sort of thing although I have played around with a bunch of Family Guy DVD's recently, for this sort of thing the framerate can be dropped to 18 or so and the bitrate can be 192 or slightly less.
If you are ripping a DVD I recall Family Guy ones are nicely interlaced with no mixed content so you may well want to use avisynth's reduceby2() (this will deinterlace and be far quicker and ultimately better (in this case) than a normal deinterlacing method) and then maybe a lanczosresize (DVD resolution halved I believe renders you with a video about the right size for the DS). VDub has similar features as well if you are not comfortable with AVISynth or if you like I can make you a script.
The best advice though is to take a clip that represents the video (video with lots of action is hard to compress so do not take a talking section if you want to test) and play around with different settings.

Moonshell skins (stolen off a thread by cracker):
http://www.m3wiki.com/index.php?title=Moonshell_skins
http://webpages.charter.net/braineatingali...ll%20skins.html
http://www.elotrolado.net/showthread.php?threadid=529219
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=32966
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=32971
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=32968
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=32965

EZ4 Skins: http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewforum.php?f=13
You might also want to try the ezflash.cn chinese forums as they have some stuff in as well.

 

[yee]

I can't seem to convert them.

When using DPGtools, it says cannot find total play time and it crashes.

When I use BatchDPG, it says conversion failed and for me to open the "videofile.avi.avs" in WMP and take the error code, but the file isn't even there to be opened.

EDIT: NVM, i can open it in WMP. There is only audio, no video. Pretty evident since it crashed when transcoding video, lol. Author said there should be an error message, however there is none.

 

[Triforce]

If your getting that error you need to install AviSynth 2.5, if you got anything older than that you will always get the open the "videofile.avi.avs" in WMP message. Good idea to have a recent build off ffdshow aswell.

 

[yee]

I have AviSynth 2.5.7

I am currently downloading the K-Lite Codec Pack Full and seeing if that helps.

EDIT: Okay, so far, so good. I'll keep you guys posted. GRRR, they should have told us to get other codecs beforehand so I wouldn't have gotten frustrated, lol

 

[Triforce]

Just to let you know, if you watch a couple videos you've converted, and you see slight skips in the movie from time to time
... dont bother trying to rencode it again. Just open up the global.ini in the shell folder with notepad and change these settings

Dithering=1
GOPSkip=1
AdaptiveDelayControl=1

to this

Dithering=0
GOPSkip=0
AdaptiveDelayControl=0

Now Moonshell will never skip or stutter playing a movie ever again. I have my golbal.ini like this by default.

 

[yee]

Hey, if i change the extension of Moonshell from .gba to .ds, will it still sort of lag like all the other GBA games played in DS mode?

EDIT: NVM, doesnt even load then, lol.
Is there a way to make the screen the bottom?

EDITEDIT: I tried it, didn't see much of a difference. Is there a way to make it smooth as possible like on the computer? Is there a setting I should lower? It's sort of laggy.

 

[Triforce]

If you changed the settings in the global.ini and you're using the default settings in Batchdpg, and you still get lag on movies then i dont really know what else to do. It could be that you have a slow sd card ?

After i changed the settings in the ini like i described above i never had a movie lag ever again, im using sc sd for moonshell though.
It could be that sc runs moonshell a lot smoother than ez4 i dont really know.

 

[yee]

It's only a slight lag, i.e. in the beginning of the Simpsons, perhaps it's because the DS isn't powerful enough to render everything.

I have a 66X Kingston card that works perfectly for games, so perhaps it's just that.

Thanks for the help Triforce, appreciate it.

 

[yuwing]

If you changed the settings in the global.ini and you're using the default settings in Batchdpg, and you still get lag on movies then i dont really know what else to do. It could be that you have a slow sd card ?

After i changed the settings in the ini like i described above i never had a movie lag ever again, im using sc sd for moonshell though.
It could be that sc runs moonshell a lot smoother than ez4 i dont really know.

thanks for the advice! my video plays great now!

 

[CWar]

Does the M3, or Supercard play videos any better than EZ4? M3 especially, considering it is dubbed as a media player. I heard it uses DPG as well.

 

[yee]

Here are some specs I've tried around with in BatchDPG

1. FPS: 25 / Video bitrate and Max bitrate: 256 / Profile: High / Width: 256 / Height: 192 / Audio bitrate: 128 / Samplerate = 32000

2. FPS: 20 / Video bitrate and Max bitrate: 256 / Profile: High / Width: 256 / Height: 192 / Audio bitrate: 128 / Samplerate = 32000

Using 1, audio skipped alot

Using 2 was fine, good setting.

Both had a tendency of quality dropping when there is a lot of movement in the scene.

I will try lowering the audio bitrate to 64kb/s and making the video bitrates higher.