How to compress a video for portable movie players including Zen Vision:M (Xvid encoding bit rates explained)

I got my self the excellent Creative Labs Zen Vision M and I was enjoying uploading my music using the intuitive interface very much. Well... up until I wanted to upload video that is. The supplied software is totally unacceptable. I have jagged corrupt video depending on what PC I used and it was incredibly slow. Also the compression options and codec's limited.

After testing lots of free software MediaCoder was by far the most comprehensive and fastest out there, and I was able to compress TV shows right down to a fine art so I want to share my settings with you...

Xvid is the best codec format to chose. Choose a bitrate of no more than 400kbs for you best visually impressive movies however 350kbs is perfect for less visually demanding shows. This is the maximum bit rate settings and not the average. Keep to the .AVI Container.

If you have a good processor and much more geek time you can use Two-Pass encoding over single bitrate based, however you may need to run Two-Pass encoding overnight because it is slow and your PC may become inoperable with large files until the process is over. Two-Pass will squeeze more video quality for less file size by making bitrates variable across each frame but the compression is very slow. To my eyes 350kbs 2-pass movie looks more like a 400kbs or more (depending on the visual nature of the movie and original quality).

Audio settings made a huge difference to the file size. Choose LAME MP3 VBR and to be honest do you really need stereo sound that will split the bit rate into 2? If not simple choose Mono and a sound bitrate around 80kbs and it still sounds very good to me who enjoys an audiophile sound system at home. For the more demanding stereo you really need 92kbs to 128kbs.

The Vision:M screen is 320x240 so set the output to that. Lastly do not forget to match the original frame rate to the output and Crop to fit wide screen movies to 4:3 aspect ratio of your Vision:M (This is not suitable for Vision:W becuase it is widescreen and so may need to do the opposite).

The file size from any of the above settings ends up being being under 180MB per hour.


MediaCoder (settings above) is an excellent piece of free software (interface could be better). Do consider sending them a small donation.

Compressing Cartoons into Xvid
For Cartoons I strongly recommend 2-Pass as artifacts are blatantly visible at a bitrate of 350 without it. Artifacts like dots are visible becuase cartoons like Simpson's and Futurama have lots of flat block colors and not like real life video, ideally requiring a totally different mode of compression. Even consider raising the bit rate to 400kbs for cartoons however I am happy with 350kbs as long as it is 2-Pass.

There is also a Cartoon Mode for Xvid! To do this goto Options > Drop down "Xvid" > Select "True" on "Optimize for cartoons". In practice however I can not spot the difference apart from possibly smoother motion? The file size increases by about 15MB per 20 minute episode..

What about Music and Audio?
With 30GB hard drive I do not bother being strict. The nature of music demands a bit rate between 160kbs to 192kbps MP3 using the latest LAME VBR codec. This is CD quality to the human ear. MP3 will also use much less battery than WMA (strange but true!). Comedy and audio casts can go as low as 80kbps mono.