DVD-->MPEG1 on ipaq and microdrive insurance

[warp10]

hey all,<br><br>i'm thinking of buying a 1 gb microdrive so i can watch movies on my ipaq using the howto in this site. Has anyone else done this? do the movies look clear and fluid (no jerkiness). I don't have a MPEG decoder card in my pc, so will this affect the speed or quality of the encoding? also, I have a habit of losing my expensive gadgets, so I buy insurance for everything. Does anyone know of any way i can insure the microdrive?<br><br>thanks<br><br>warp10

[Moose or Chuck]

I have a microdrive for my E-125 and never take it out of the CF Slot. It has 3 full length movies on it, not to mention the full version of Quake plus 12+ other full games for the PPC. I also have all of my 25+ eBooks on it. <br>Depending on how you encode it, no it's not jerky. Sometimes it will jerk if there's a lot of movement on the screen or if the sound is become taxing for the device. But Gone in 60 Seconds plays almost flawlessly on my E-125, it would be even better on an iPaq. Each movie takes up about 300 MB on my MicroDrive, but I encode in extremely high quality (I'm a stickler for quality). <br>I have not heard much about insurance for a MicroDrive. Warranties are available, of course, but You'll have to ask MicroTech or IBM (or the store you buy it from) about any kind of insurance.

[Epicure]

Just received my microdrive this past week.  It works great playing movies from filmspeed.com. I'm in the process of encoding DVDs now, can't wait!<br><br>

[Jaybot]

yeah Microdrive insurance would be nice, I already argued with pdaslostorstolen.com about it and they said they wouldn't cover it because they had no way of telling if you physically own the device.. what a load of bs

[rlefranc]

What settings do you use that make your movies a higher quality than what's recommended in the 'How To'?

[Matt Keys]

The highest quality settings in the how-to will yeild you a very nice movie. For most movies anything more would be a waste of space. If you are encoding a movie with alot of "action" meaning that the screen is always changing very rapidly, then it can get pixaly. So in that case you could use a higher quality setting. But keep in mind that the 50 mark on the quality slider is default.

[Moose or Chuck]

LOL, matt you set it at 50? Mine is always at 100 quality! And it runs just as fast, albiet it is a littler bigger. My average movie is 300 MB.

[Matt Keys]

moose you are really just wasting space, I encoded the same movie twice, once at 100 quality and the second time at 65. There was no difference in quality between the two movies. The only difference was I saved myself a hefty chunk of storage.

[Moose or Chuck]

Alright, I'll look into it, next time I have 12 free hours.