[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo General] mackaby007:
I stand by my findings...

1) Divx Converter Using Divx 6.6

1) adamelphick's Divx Encoder

80% Benchmark Result

Resolution 592x448 (original was lower than default VGA 640x480 Portable Profile - so kept orig. Resolution of 592x448)

over 350 frames dropped

Only 20.xxx fps vs mine @ 23.79 out of 23.975 Original

2) I Used Any Video Converter with fallenczar's recommended resolution for widescreen movies for full screen viewing

Benchmark Result 131.28% Excellent.

Resolution 532x300 (slightly vertically stretched, but very viewable)

only 9 frames dropped out of 3842! Excellent!

Superb fps playback of 23.920 out of 23.976

3)I Used Any Video Converter xvid codec!

125.11% Benchmark Result

Resolution 480x320

only 4 frames dropped out of 5690!

Superb fps playback of 23.959 out of 23.976

4)I Used Any Video Converter Mpeg4 codec. Visually not quite as good as xvid, but still very good.

123.06% Benchmark Result but the audio sounded extremely slowed down! ?!??!?

Resolution 480x320

only 5 frames dropped out of 5938!

Superb fps playback of 24.979 out of 25.000 Mpeg4 codec would not allow me to keep NTSC format & I was forced to use 25fps.

Sorry if all that info above is a bit confusing, so here's the bottom line.

I've tested the Divx Encoder and Divx Mobile Player.....sorry, but it's still seriously lacking compared to Coreplayer or TCPMP. Handheld profile encodes at low resolution unfit for VGA device if you're a quality freak.

Portable Profile seriously looks good.:) No doubt about it and so it should as its native resolution for encoding is VGA (640x480), but then you hit the performance issues related to non accelerated Vids on VGA devices.

Verdict? No good for Athena but probably excellent for quick encodes using QVGA devices. The Player is also only capable of handling AVI vids and the encoding specs had better match its Players ability else it won't play the file.

For Fallenczar's recommended Resolution for widescreen vids, I can only say..Nice & Thanks for the tip.;)

If you don't mind the original Video/movie being slightly elongated, you won't notice a performance hit at all. You'll even get slightly Benchmark results than by using my method. But the benchmark results is not the sum of its parts and should only be used as an indicator, not a 'actual playback' performance gauge.

Verdict? Great tip! I'm definitely keeping this in mind for future encodes of wide screen movies & Vids. Thanks again.

Lastly I used an application called 'Any Video Converter', but in all honesty, there are many others that can do the job as well and better if you don't mind the complexity of some of the more advanced apps. But as a quick solution, you'll be hard pushed to beat this for casual and quick video files conversion. For DVD encoding I'd definitely stick with Handbrake...it's bloody fast too and uses MSDOS and no fancy GUI for viewing the video as it encodes, hence it encodes a 90 minute movie in a third of the time of the entire movie. i.e. 90 min video encoded in just under 30mins.

As the results show in no 3 & 4, even though my benchmark results are slightly lower than with fallenczars resolution for widescreen format vids, it's hard to beat how little frames are dropped whilst retaing a visually HQ video/movie.

Verdict? I absolutely stand by my findings until someone finds a way of encoding videos at native VGA at HQ with virtually no hit on performance.

I want HQ with great performance. Don't get me wrong people, we can easily achieve benchmarks in excess of 500 - 600kbps but the quality of sound and video isn't worthy of such high end PPC's. We paid a lot of dough for these devices and I'll be damned if I can't get slick HQ video on the Athena. I refuse to get a dell or Archos or whatever just to accelerate video and games....if that was my priority I'd buy a PSP and a get myself another compact HTC Hermes.:)

Just wait till we get some support for our Imageon devices. Let the good times roll.;)

P.S. Divx Encoder can't encode whatever you throw at it, mostly AVI files. Any Video Converter and quite a few others can handle most formats including high def files.