[MrUlukai]

B. Swift’s 10 Step Guide to Fullscreen Landscape Videos on the Pearl Flip
By Brandon Swift

Intro: So after 2 years, I’ve finally gotten rid of my nice 8100 Pearl and moved onto a wonderful 8220 Pearl Flip! On top of that I got a great 4gig miniSD card for an extra cheap 4 dollars! So I wanted to make my new pearl into my new portable entertainment center. Problem was everytime I tried to watch a video, my blackberry would play it in this itty bitty little rectangle and leave ALL this black nonsense around it… Very unattractive. So I put my college brain to work and came up with this solution. This is my 10 Step Guide to Fullscreen Landscape Videos on the Pearl Flip.

1) First download the following two *FREE* programs and install them.
• VirtualDub (a video capture/processing utility) - VirtualDub download (at SourceForge) - virtualdub.org
• FormatFactory (multifunctional media converter , supports video/audio/picture conversion) - Download FormatFactory, FormatFactory 1.85 Download

2) Next make sure your Pearl Flip is connected to your PC with “Mass Storage Support” on. Open the videos folder on your media card and leave it up for future use.

3) Run Virtual Dub (VeeDub32.exe/VeeDub64.exe.) Drag and drop the video you wish to convert onto the main window. You should now see two rectangular frames each containing the video you’re trying to convert. The frame on the right is the edited video and the frame on the left is the original.

4) In the video menu, click filters. Next click “Add” and scroll down until you find the rotate option then click OK. You will then see a radio button list of degrees to rotate your video. Keep “rotate left 90” selected and click OK.

5) Next click “Add” once again and Select the resize option. Select the “Absolute(pixels)” radio button and change the new size to 240x320. Next to Aspect Ratio selected the “Same as Source” radio button and for the filter mode, select “precise bicubic” from the drop down menu. Lastly under Codec-friendly sizing select “Do not adjust” and under framing options select “Letterbox/Crop to size” and make the dimensions 240x320. Click “Save as Default” then click OK.

6) Click on the the button which has a key with a play arrow above it to see a preview of your fullscreen landscape video.

7) Now press F7 or in the file menu click Save as Avi and wait for the conversion to finish. Once the movie is saved close Virtual Dub and Open FormatFactory.

8) In the left frame of the main FormatFactory window you will see a list of conversion methods, click All to MP4. Next drag and drop the edited avi video onto the All to MP4 window then click OK. Finally click the start button at the top of the FormatFactory main window and wait for the video to convert.

9) Once the video is converted right click on your video in the list and click “Open Output Folder.” Drag your converted video into the videos folder on your media card. Make sure you go back and delete the AVI video you’ve created with VirtualDub as it will be a very large file.

10) And that’s it, disconnect your BB and see your beautiful video in fullscreen! Feels almost like HD doesn’t it?

This process will most likely work for many other Blackberry smartphones as long as you adjust the dimensions when using VeeDub.

While you at it check out J2A Pro! Convert Nokia Games and Apps to Blackberry compatible formats! Check it at BSCreations! - Homepage and be sure to donate!

Hope this helps any lost souls,
Brandon.

[BUC]

The Roxio media program included in the BB Desktop software, from the CD that the flip brings has a converting option for this that you just explained...

Its done in like 3 steps and the size is optimized for the Flip... so you might want to try that instead...

anyway thanks for the input


The Roxio Media Manager:

- Open the software.... (if you have it in MSC as me) click on Media / Media Manager...

- Go to your folder where the original video is, in the top window

- Click "Copy Down" then select Convert for optimal display

DONE... you will have a rotated, full size video on your Flip Display...

Enjoy

[MrUlukai]

Hot Dog... And there I was thinkin Roxio was a waste of my time, thanks for telling me.

[BUC]

Roxio is a waste of time for music and picture I think....

I use the flip as MSC so I just dump (copy/paste) everything directly to my microSD card... faster than Roxio...

But for videos its another story...

you're welcome...

[IanFleming]

YOU GUYS MADE MY DAY ! ... many many thanx for the post!

[threi]

not sure if anyone still cares, but this problem bugged me as well, and I don't like downloading two programs to do one job like in the OP. Roxio is far to excessive to use solely for video converting (and the files it creates are kind of large). While googling for alternate solutions on the internet i just realized that the program i already use to get videos converted on my old phone (SE w580i) can actually flip the video sideways as well.

So just for anyone who still has this problem my method is using a program called SUPER video converter (i cant post links but just add http): erightsoft.podzone.net/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe

1. Open SUPER and drag the files you want to the encoding list

2. The top 3 drop-down menus are different formats to transcode to; im not sure what the ideal setting is for blackberries but i use mp4 for the output container, h.264/avc for the output video codec, and AAC LC for the output audio codec.

3. Make sure "directshow decode" is ticked, and click the button labeled "D" right beside it (popup will say "Video DirectShow Options"), tick "Turn Right".

4. Under the video section my settings are as follows:
- Disable video and stream copy are both unchecked
- Video scale size is 240x320 (NOT 320x240, tick "more" and type it in manually)
- Nothing is checked for Aspect
- Frames/Sec is 29.97
- Bitrate is 384
- None of the extra options are checked

5. Under the audio section my settings are as follows:
- Disable audio and stream copy are both unchecked
- Sampling freq is 44100
- 2 channels
- Bitrate is 128kbps

And just click encode (it saves somewhere, i made mine save to the same folder as the original files)

hope this helps

[threi]

just a quick edit:

1. DONT use h.264/avc, use MPEG-4 instead.
2. Using Directshow to decode will depend on what codecs you have on your computer, so if you cannot check it then try installing a codec pack (which you probably should have anyways). For Vista and Windows 7 i recommend either CCCP or Shark007.