Hacking Whats the best way to watch movies on DS Lite with Supercard 2

[karupanda4]

Hi,

So now I own a DS Lite and SUpercardDSTWO + 16gbit class 10 memorycard and I figured it would be quite fun to watch a couple of movies while taking a long ride (like 2-3 hours).

From what I gathered from this forum, there are 2 ways to watch movies on DS Lite:
1. Moonshell 2
2. iPlayer v1.1
Would someone please tell me which of these programs is better for watching movies/cartoons and why?

Also... I noticed that there are 2 different video conversion tutorials.
I would also like to know whats the best/hassle free way to convert videos?

Thank you!
And extra thanks for this great community for answering my questions about different DS carts (like dstwo) and recommending to buy DSTWO supercard

Have a good summer everyone!

 

[wafflestick]

id say iplayer since supercard 2 has a nice onboard cpu with it, thus being able to play avi videos. avi video quality is much superior in quality than dpg

also supercard 2 can play wmv which is also very nice quality

 

[Buleste]

The best way to watch video on the SCDS2 is with iPlayer in AVI of 640x480 resolution or less and as there are plenty of them about you don't need to convert them as you would probably have to with Moonshell and DPG.

 

[spinal_cord]

id say iplayer since supercard 2 has a nice onboard cpu with it, thus being able to play avi videos. avi video quality is much superior in quality than dpg

also supercard 2 can play wmv which is also very nice quality

Your reasons are misleading and wrong. I agree with your choice, but only for the fact that any format that the iplayer plugin can play can also be played on other devices.

1. DPG video can be ANY quality, all of the dpg videos that I have watched have been excellent quality.
2. Avi video can also by ANY quality, I have seem manu avi videos that were terrible quality.

Moonshell also compensates for the quality of the DS screen, so a DPG will look better than an avi of the same quality.

So, Moonshell DPG format will usually look much better if encoded right. However, if you prefer a different format, I find it helps to re-encode to a smaller resolution, remember that the DS screen is only 256x192, anything higher than that will waste CPU and battery time and may effect the frame rate.

 

[karupanda4]

I see. Thank you.

So... can anyone point me (tell me which is) to the "best" (in your opinion) plugin, format and converter for watching movies on DS?

 

[spinal_cord]

Moonshell will play dpg, it comes with a converter i think, but I used to prefer batchdpg.
If you go with the DSTwo iPlayer plugin, a lot of formats will play OK, but it's best to downsize them for the sake of SD space and processing resources. I use ffmpeg and the following command line options-

ffmpeg -i "input.avi" -f avi -s 256x192 -b 512k -bt 192k -vcodec libxvid -deinterlace -acodec libmp3lame -ar 32000 -ab 96k -ac 2 "output.avi"

 

[karupanda4]

DId a testrun with
Moonshell and used batchdpg to convert a 40 min movie to DPG.

Strangely... it seemed that playing that movie took alot of battery power. I think my ds lite can play games for like 7 hours without recharging... but it seemed that the 40 minute movie drained the battery.

Is that possible? I did convert it to lower resolution and sound... hmm...

 

[spinal_cord]

It shouldn't have drained that fast. Playing movies on the DS does take almost all of the poor things processing power, but even that shouldn't make too much difference.

I used the following settings in batchdpg --

Framerate: 24
Profile: Ultra
Width: (Do not change the input size)
Height: (Do not change the input size)
Bitrate: 384
Max Bitrate: 512
Passes: 1
Resizer: Spline16 -- can be anything, but this gives nice results

Audio
Bitrate: 128
Samplerate: 32768
Priority: 2 - Normal"
Force to 256*192: Do NOT check this box. It stretches the video and and can create audio de-sync.
Encoder Setting: Normal (Can use any framerate)

 

[karupanda4]

Thank you mr spinal_cord. I'll give it a shot with those settings.