Encoding to 16 bit colour

[eldo]

When I use Windows Media Encoder to encode .wmv files for iPaq using the profile I downloaded from pocketpc.com, the result seems to play in full colour on my desktop, i.e. it decompresses to 24 bit images.<br><br>When these are played back on the iPaq which I believe has a 16 bit colour screen, Windows Media Player has to convert 24 bit to 16 bit. I assume it does this by picking the nearest 16 bit colour available.<br><br>This seems to indicate that there is a lot of redundant information in the encoded file. If the encoder knew that the resulting file needed to be in 16 bit colour it could compress the data far more effectively as there would be more pixels the same (16 bit) colour. We would then be able to use the rest of the bandwidth for greater fps or picture quality.<br><br>Any thoughts? Does anyone know how to encode for 16 bit colour? Sorry if this has been covered before.

[Paul]

they dont convert to any particular colour format do they? i think it just goes on the quality settings - low quality means less colours etc... i think so anyway... <br><br>also, which ipaq do you have? the old ones only show 12bits anyway...

[Chris Edwards]

no, they do encode into a colour format. If you have and old iPAQ, your ideal would be 12bit (4096) colours. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure WMV doesn't offer anything other than 16,24,32-bit. I'll look into this and get you some instructions on encoding for 16bit colours.

[Paul]

wow, that'll be handy for me.

[Chris Edwards]

ok... divx can only do 24bit/32bit.. not sure about wmv... but it may be the same...

[eldo]

Thanks Chris,<br><br>You're right - I think my iPaq only has 12-bit colour.<br><br>It seems a shame then that WM Encoder won't let you quantize down to 12-bit before encoding. Oh well.