I have written a couple of previous posts about my experiences using the T-Mobile HTC G1 Android Google phone, including an in-depth look at how it handles video playback.  As a way to help other G1 users get video on to their phones, I put together this step-by-step guide to using the MeGUI application to encode video into a format that the G1 can play, while retaining as much quality as possible.  Because of the relatively low resolution of G1 compatible video, I have not focused as much on making the files as small in size as possible, but once you’ve mastered the basic steps outlined here, you should not have too much trouble tweaking the process to get smaller sizes if that is of importance to you.  With microSD cards getting cheaper and cheaper, I frankly have not found much need to really optimize encoding for size, but your needs may differ.

After basic installation of MeGUI and neroaacenc.exe, you will want to update MeGUI using the built in update function.  The application actually bundles a number of other apps, all of which are updated quite frequently, so it is always worth your while to make sure everything is as current as possible.  

After updating, also check to ensure that the neroaacenc executable is properly installed.

The key items to pay attention to for Android encodes are resize and crop. Set the first number (width) of resize to 480, and then let the program automatically set the resulting width while maintaining the proper aspect ratio. Then click the “crop” button and hit auto-crop. If there are any black borders to remove (which is very important when screen real estate is at a premium as on the Android) the program will figure it out automatically.
Once finished with resize and crop settings you will click “Save” which should pop up a preview window of what the new video will look like, and take you back to the original MeGUI interface page.

Step 1: Prepping the encode
After creating your AVS script, and assuming you have the G1-Android preset properly imported, then the only setting you need to look at now is output format, which needs to be set to “MP4.” If so, hit “Enqueue.”
At this stage you can also set up the audio encoding. Choose the original souce file for input, select the Nero AAC: NDAAC-LC 96kbps preset, make sure the audio output format is MP4-AAC, select a new name for the audio output file, and hit “Enqueue.”

Step 2: Encoding
Click the Queue tab, see that your audio and video encoding jobs are lined up properly, and hit “Start.”
One progress on both audio and video is finished, open up the Muxing/Muxing MP4 tool, and queue up the process of bringing together the audio and video streams into one MP4 file.

Once that job is finished, you should be all set to transfer the completed file to your Android phone. If you have a Video Player application installed from the Android Marketplace, you should be now watching high quality video on your Android.

MPEG-2 Sources
For MPEG-2 sources, there are additional steps. The first is the DG Indexer -> D2V creator.

Run your source file through the D2V creator. (You will have to Queue the process up and run it).

Afterwards you will have an audio stream for later encoding, while for video the AVS script creator will pop up using the D2V file you’ve created. For MPEG-2 sources you will most likely want to de-interlace the video, so that will be set at this stage as well.
Go to the Filters tab of the AVS script creator and click “Analyze.”

It will take a little while for the analysis process to complete, but at the end you if you are in need of it, the “Deinterlace button” will be automatically clicked for you. At this point you can go back to the main AVS script creator page and move ahead in the encoding process normally, as described above. When it comes time to set the encoding processes from the main MeGUI interface, choose the audio stream that was established by the D2V creation process to be encoded into AAC audio.

As a follow up to my previous posts about the G1 Android phone from T-Mobile (and Google!), and from a personal interest, I wanted to gather as much information about the phone’s video capabilities as I could.  In general, there has not been much information available about the detailed video specifications of the G1, which has proven somewhat frustrating to those people interested in using it as a portable viewing device.

An interesting bit of news from the doom9 forums.  As anyone who is testing the Windows 7 beta has discovered, and as the above photo shows, Microsoft is breaking with their tradition and including more codec support in the upcoming Windows bundle.  Previous Windows versions did not even include MPEG-2 decoding, which proved to be quite mystifying to many users trying to watch a DVD in their computers for the first time.  And, needless to say, Microsoft stayed far away from any of the more esoteric codecs, including the key MPEG-4 ASP implementations such as DivX and Xvid.  

However, the beta of Windows 7 includes the ability to play back DivX, and Xvid, and even the next generation MPEG-4 AVC, better known as h.264.  Why is this important?  A couple things.  First, if anybody needed further proof that VC-1 is essentially dead in the water, this is another nail in its coffin (to mix macabre metaphors).  Secondly, and more importantly, it appears that Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon of broad interoperability, allowing Windows users to play back a range of video formats right out of the box, something that will surely be a boon to less sophisticated users who just want to be able to watch something without having to even know what a codec is, much less a container format, audio stream, etc.

Even more intriguing is the news that Microsoft may be working on an implementation of the matroska container, or mkv for Windows 7 (according to madshi and haali on doom9).  For the file-trading community, this is quite significant.  H.264 has a ton of “legitimate” uses today, notably in higher quality Flash videos on YouTube and elsewhere.  MKV however, is almost exclusively used currently by pirates, particularly those sharing HD video.  Blu-Ray rips and high def TV captures are generally distributed as x264 encodes with AC3 audio in mkv containers (both 720p and 1080p), and while HD video content is still a small minority of what is shared relative to standard def video, it is growing and is likely to become the dominant format before long.  Maybe Microsoft is just getting back at the movie studios that went with Blu-Ray instead of the MS-backed HD-DVD formats, but regardless, it would be good news if mkv support signaled that Microsoft was thinking about their users first, and video business strategies second.