Linux Multimedia Hacks

Create Archos-Compatible Video

Use transcode to convert video files so that they work with the Archos line of video players.

The company Archos (http://www.archos.com ) has released a number of portable media players over the past few years that play not only audio but also video files. The main problem with the video playback is that these video players can be rather choosy when it comes to which video formats they accept. The video must be within a certain resolution, have CBR MP3 audio, and use the MPEG4 video codec. Archos includes a Windows utility with the player that you can use to convert video files to a compatible format, but that isn’t much help under Linux. In this hack I will describe how to use transcode to convert a video into a format compatible with the Archos line of video players.

I use transcode for this conversion because I’ve found that many of its default settings work well with Archos players. [Hack #63] provides an introduction to installing and using transcode.

While you can pass a number of options to transcode to specify input and output formats for videos, I’ve found in the case of the XviD video output format that transcode creates Archos-compatible videos without any tweaking. Even though the codec works, Archos video players can play back video only up to a certain resolution at a certain rate of frames per second, which varies for each player, but the AV400 series and the PMA400 series can play back up to 704 x 480 at 30 fps, and the AV300 series ...