So I have heard that it needs to be resized and be a different file type I think. How can I do this in Ubuntu?
Thanks!
(You need to enable the multiverse repository for this to work):
Avidemux is a GTK application designed to allow you to easily resize, rescale and convert videos from one format to another. For your case it sounds perfect! According to the Sony website you just need to convert the videos to the MPEG-4 format however I can't seem to find the resizing information anywhere.
sudo apt-get install avidemux
Screenshot:
The best way to convert video, as always, is ffmpeg (sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
). This works for Sony NWZ-S545 (and E453, and probably S544, etc):
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -b 567k -s 320x240 -vcodec mpeg4 -ab 220k -ar 44100 -ac 2 -acodec libfaac output.mp4
You'll need an faac encoder for this (libfaac on ubuntu); maybe it works without -acodec libfaac
as well.
ffmpeg -i inputfile -b 567k -s 320x240 -c:v mpeg4 -ab 220k -ar 44100 -ac 2 -c:a aac -strict experimental output.mp4
. You can find some more possibilities using mencoder and ffmpeg here. Btw. I didn’t want to compile ffmpeg myself, I just downloaded the static build from here.
In addition to the ones already posted, I'll recommend my personal favourite, HandBrake - but don't bother, it's pretty unintuitive to install and the others work great.
For your videos to play on this device, I think (I can't test it, obviously) you need to make sure to enter the following settings into whatever video conversion software you use:
Format: MPEG-4
Size: 320x240
Bit rate: 512 (fixed)
Frame rate: 30fps (also try 15)
I suggest you take a small video file and create a bunch with different settings, h265, h264, mpeg2 and so on and so forth. Then, put them all on the device and see if one works, use the same settings from then on. If the software you use comes with device presets, you can just try out all of them. (Pretty tedious I know, it should be your last resort)
These devices all require some relatively specific format of encoding, which is normally done by some * piece of software that is shipped with the device. Unfortunately, you will just have to somehow find out which settings are the right ones. A google search will often help, but it can also result in a lot of confusing and contradictory information.
As easy as it gets: just select the source (Font in the screenshot), and the target gadget and press the + button.