SMV Batch Converter Version4.0 2006
 

I went nuts looking for ANY improvement to the SMV nightmare , what i really want is a SMV CODEC for the dang thing, which might be possible to make beings the DLL for it exists? that way i can Virtual Dub it.

Then i came here, as refered from there.

then i followed a bunch of leads, and downloaded a bunch of CRAP, and i am still a bit batty from how much BS this is, when a Good MP4 codec even operated poorly would be a vast improvement over this junk.

so after following 100+ dead leads , i found the 4th version of the Sigmatel converter, and it at least batchable.

because it is hard to find, and links often die , and this stuff is found layers down in piles of junk, and sometimes even has warez spyware in it, i uploaded it to a spot so you can grab it.

http://home.comcast.net/~trivalvid/s...ion-a_v4-0.zip
it has NOT been checked for viruses, it is not Mine it is copyrighted by Sigma Tel, and if sigmatel has ANY issue with me posting it for download, i would be HAPPY that they contact me, :twisted: (the bisturds) .

Anyways get it while its hot, store it on this site and HELP somebody to get through another computer nightmare.

the added features of it:
it shows the convert picture
it converts many sizes up to 220x176
it BATCHES by allowing more than one file
there is some worthless skin junk for it

the things that STILL dont work for crap:
Only accepts certian video files, it is best to just crunch to visual size and decompress fully (in virtual dub or somthing) before converting.
IT sometimes crashes, and tosses lots of errors if you dont feed the exact correct files in.
IT has issues with Audio SYnc, which is generally an issue in the original file, AGAIN, prefer to feed it totally uncompressed checked files, Wave audio uncompressed video.

Re: SMV Batch Converter Version4.0 2006
 

I Do not visit here often, i can provide you little to no help with the program, or the download or anything, so other than saying HI! cause you needed this file, that is all there is.
hopefully somone who knows how to read chinneze can help you with your cheezeball video player, and crappy software. i am just posting a utility so sombody LIKE ME :? can find what i finnaly found.

the file name is exactally the same name it was when i found it on a trekstor site, if you search that file name you might find its source or other sources.

mabey the ADMIN guy here can put the file itself somewhere usefull, i did all i am going to do.

Re: SMV Batch Converter Version4.0 2006
 

Ok i am going to try and doccument what I do (myself) to convert a video
that is already compressed for other reasons,
try to get it within the limitations of ONE item the MP4 Watch with a 1.5" screen 128x128 video and 1gig of memory.

First Peel off the AUDIO using goldwave (free to try)
Save it out as a 44.1k wave file like a standard cd file
WHY
MP3 and other various audios just dont seem to stay in sync if you try and compress and recompress them again and again,
also any frame errors in the video will take the whole thing out of sync,
by removing the audio it can better match the video and a preview of the combination is more reliable.

In Goldwave (or other audio program) this is your oppertunity to clean up the audio.
do a little equalising or low pass filtering to hack off the highs
by killing all the audio above 4000-8000khz
the crappy low rate audio will sound better, and compress better.
then maxamise the volume in the volume maxamizer, that will fix other poor audio issues.
all this can be Batched so it can occur enmass on a set of files.
this is NOT for MP3s (music only) as they sound great, the video playback needs more help.

Drop the video into Virtual Dub.
WHY
because virtual dub can tell a lot about a video,
it will tell you if there are issues of various sorts right from the start. with it you can edit by keyframe,
and save things out without de-re-compressing them ,
although in this situation just leaving the video completly decompressed is the task.

in AUDIO add back your WAVE file you extracted with gold wave,
do not use the source audio.


In Virtual Dub, add a mess of FILTERS, here is my list

Temporal smoother - this gets rid of moving noise between frames
and makes things cleaner for compression.

Levels - expand the range of the brightness and contrast of the video as widely as possible ,
beings its going to be a postage stamp the widest range of contrast and brightness is going to be nessisary.

HSV - with this filter i increase the saturation,
while dull greys might be usefull for a large screen DVD ,
were working with a few pixels and definition of color contrasts and general contrast is nessisary.

Sharpness - Again same thing applies, the watch has a Micro picture
you want to increase the contrast between elements sharpening will accomplish that.

Resize - resize to the exact size that your intending to output,
128x128 for a square pic, or 128x96 for your average 3-4 aspect stuff.
use the bicubic 1.00 style.

Crop - crop things early by adding cropping to the top filter,
this watch is SQUARE it is so opposite 20x11aspect wide screens it is rediculous,
you need to crop out everything you possibly can to make the dancing postage stamp.


Audio Filter
i use a Lowpass audio filter , depending on the video,
4000 cutoff with 64-255 taps or a 8000 Minimum for stuff with more highs and less noise

WHY
why do all that stuff? cause your trying to get a visable picture as small as possible none of it is Nessisary,
it just is what i use to attempt to get a fair pic on a SMALL item.


In ViDEO go to FRAME RATE, and check to see if the frame rate of the video matcheds the audio.
you may or may NOT want to have it adjust the frame rate (to the audio).
some videos have a dire need for a frame rate adjustment some work fine with no adjustement.
WHY
if a video is (what i call) MIGRATING out of sync,
in virtual dubb you can fix that by adjusting the frame rate in as small an incrament as .003.
this is because some idiot (like me even) forgot about the complications of "Drop Frame" video and other stuff (29.970).
If a videos audio is MIGRATING to an audio delay reduce the frame rate.
If the videos audio is migrating to Audio comming out before the video increase the frame rate.
(migrating means changing over time, it has nothing to do with always being out of sync)

Now DECIMATE (change the frame rate) the video frame rate HERE in virtual dub,
if you LET the smv converter do the decimation, it can cause audio sync problems again.
do not Decimate by x2 or x3 but SET A SPECIFIC frame rate that is exactally what you intend to be the final output.
Set your frame rate to (about) 1/2 the original file
the original file already has some kind of frame rate or field rate
they are usually (about) 24 25 30 or 50 and 60 interlaced fields
you want to reduce this an even ammount MINUS the fractional ammounts (.997)
so for 24s set it to 12 , for 30s and 60s set to 15 for 25 pick 12 or 13 or even 25, but 25 is hard for the watch to do.
WHY
Leave nothing to chance , or that stupid program,
because given the oppertunity the SMV converter will screw up.
by setting the exact size and frame rate here ,
virtual dub will do it without messing up the audio sync.
if you decimate the frames by x2 or x3 and the framing is 23.997 then your still going to end up with audio sync issues,
you want Vdub to do the decimation and you want it Exact numbers not fractions.

in AUDIO interleave set all the stuff in there , use 250 or 500 for the PRELOAD
and use a 1 Frame interleave. you can put in miliseconds, but there is no reason for it,
you want the audio attached to each frame, and that is what will occur even if you specify miliseconds.
WHY
interleave doesnt cost much in size ever,
it insures that the audio FOR that frame plays with that frame.

in AUDIO offset the Audio track by about 30-120ms or so,
depending on how badly the video was already out of sync,
and how slowly your video updates on your watch.
WHY
the video on this watch seems to be more tossed into the side ,
take a display and make believe you can do video with it.
hey its a MP3 watch and it does that,
everything else like the actual video seems like it was a passing thought of a geek connected to marketing :-)
the video is displayed Delayed from the audio, the LARGER the video is in KB/s the slower the video will be shown,
and the larger your audio offset delay should be.

Compression - none
go to the video compression and audio compression and just select none
WHY
your only trying to aqure a video that you can compress to SMV
there is no purpose in (again) compressing it to a format it will not be in.

Now , that was fun wasnt it :-)

EDIT the video taking out all extranious trash that will serve no real purpose,
commertials credits beginning titles, whatever.
WHY
because you cant edit IN the watch, you can only view a video,
you cannot scan past anything,
so this is your opertunity to remove what you would want to scan past.

Check check check: IN Vdub Check to see that your audio all matches ,
and that it doesnt migrate over time spot-check the audio sync and picture at the beginning the middle and the end.
you DO want a small delay in the video, with the audio playing before the video,
you dont want the quantity of delay to change over time.
What you see is mostly what you get in Vdub, unless there are bad video frames.

Save out as a SEGEMENTED avi.
in virtual dub when you go to save you can ask it to segement the video out into pieces,
use the number of frames to define a segement (because how long each segment is is important , not how large each is).
i use 8000 for 24fps videos , and 4000 for 12fps , and i output in and convert to 1/2 the original frame rates.
WHY
the watch has no scanning, if you output it in seperated hunks you can jump foreward or backwards to the next hunk,
if you missed something or got distracted.
if the video is only 3-5minutes to begin with :-) well then you dont need segements do you.
there is a short break (interruption) when the watch (automatically) moves to the next video segment,
you want about 5-10 minutes at most between segments.

when your done, you should have A video with these properties
10-15Fps (decimated)
128x128 or 128x96 pixels (resized)
uncompressed video, uncompressed audio
multiple seperate avis with 00, 01, 02, 03
the videos (each of them) should be in sync at the beginning the middle and the end , or (of course) slightly delayed.

ok, having fun yet :-) now its time to convert

Re: SMV Batch Converter Version4.0 2006
 

ok, if you got through all that stuff above, you have a bunch of BIG AVIs that check out all ok.
the audio is delayed a bit, relative to your video data rate in the final conversion.

fire up the Converter (even the old one)
Add the files you want to convert.

the Full image and Letterbox image buttons dont seem to change anything?
now set the SIZE to match the size your output from Vdub 128x128 or 128x96 (smaller than that does not fill screen)
set the QUALITY to Customize
set if you want STEREO or not
set the AUDIO rate , the audio rate just changes the total size more than it effects sync, but smaller everything is better. I havent quite figured the exact paramters for audio yet

set your FRAME rate to EXACTALLY what you decimated in virtual dub
set the VIDEO rate to about 25kb
video KB/s rate is critical to the video delaying that occurs,
15kb starts looking bad as far as compression quality.
over 30Kb the watch cant handle the rate as well, and there is more video delay.

when you move the video SEGMENTS to the watch, you want them to play in SEQUENCE.
so you want them to arrive on the watch in the same sequence
the watch has no sorting (persay) whatever it sees first it plays first
so if you want an order of play you will put the videos on the watch memory in that order.
either move each video one at a time with 00 first and then 01 02 etc
or use a "select all" method, because a Shift Select method will take the first and last out of order.

Other Watch Notes:
If you ever format the watch, Format the flash memory in the watch with FAT at a 8K cluster size.
WHY
cause i tried fat32 and the file system is to slow for the poor thing.
a 8k cluster size will work for a 1Gig hunk, and might be better than 16k

Other Notes:
organise organise organise, your going to have files everywhere.
have a folder for your originals, and a folder for the Huge uncompressed, and a folder for the Finished files.
in the SMV converter you can set the output folder in SETTINGS

The Audio Format for the video (what i am getting at least) ,
which sounds so terrible is a 4bit PCM at the sampling rate you choose.
there is nothing I could figure to change it from 4 bit to 8 bit (a minimum) .
the conversion to 4bit that the program does is terrible.

its sound that is "ok" for a speaker, but not for a headset or earbuds
when wearing a headphones every flaw in a sound is more noticable.

I dont know of any alogrythms that can "smooth" out a audio enough so that it will ever sound good at the 4bit audio.
gold wave can convert an audio to 4bit slightly better than the program,
so i will attempt to send it the exact audio format that it will convert it to.

So basically 8k or 22k because of the 4bit it doesnt much matter
the sound is terrible either way.
turning off the stereo (to mono) will keep the NOISE :-) from being stereo noise.

I wonder if i am missing some MP3 codec that it could have used
i only have the open source Lame Mp3 codec installed now,
but everything seems to work that uses mp3 decoding and encoding
seems rather insane to have a MP3 player have to use uncompressed crud audio, but mabey its so it doent have to Process anything (no cpu).

somedays i wish i knew what i was doing.

More Notes:
128x96 videos have less issues, less of the screen to refresh.

making 24FPS videos is a waste, they seem to play at a lesser frame rate anyways.

i tried NVX codec, just for kicks because it is less compressed,
and because totally similarly mp4 watches used that codec, it didnt work at all

i tried AMV compressed videos from the web, crashes the watch.

Music videos didnt sound to bad at 128x96 with 22k stereo audio, not AS good as it plays mp3s
i guess a lot of the noise audio was due to the original sound

there is out there a 4.1version of this software, tried it its no different