pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/ps3_video.jpg" width="800" height="494" style="display:block;float:none;" /If you're here reading Gizmodo, there's a good chance you have a hard drive full of video somewhere. And you also probably have a PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii. If those two things aren't working together for you in beautiful symbiosis, allowing you to watch all of your downloaded or ripped video on your TV instead of hunched over a laptop screen, well, this is the guide for you./p pNow there are two general strategies you can take: physically copying your files to a USB drive, memory card or CD/DVD, which is pretty straightforward, or streaming your video over the network, which is where things get more fun and interesting. So let's dive in./p pFirst things first, codecs. Now that you're all learn-ed on the ways of video encoding thanks to a href="http://gizmodo.com/5093670/giz-explains-every-video-format-you-need-to-know"Matt's Giz Explains from this week/a, the issue of codecs will make a lot more sense. Thankfully, it's not something you have to worry too much about here, because all three consoles can handle a large number of the codecs you will find commonly: AVI, MPEG (1, 2 and 4), H.264, DivX/XviD, and WMV—and if a particular format you want to play isn't supported, it's often possible to convert it to work on the fly. The PS3 also supports AVCHD, a format used by many HD camcorders. Not all formats are supported with every streaming method though, especially in the 360's case, which we'll get to in a second. Now, for getting all those files on the TV./p pNote: if you need to re-encode a video in a different format because it won't play, nothing beats VLC's transcoding wizard. a href="http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/ch02.html"Here's a guide./a/p pstrongXbox 360: Streaming (PC)/strongbr img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227297019303_tversity_01.png" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="494" height="403" style="display:block;" /In typical Microsoft fashion, there are tons of different ways to pull of streaming your video to the Xbox 360—and the only one that's truly comprehensive, in our opinion, comes from a third party. a href="http://tversity.com/"TVersity/a is a free UPnP media server that can manage your video and music files anywhere on your PC and stream them out to your 360 over the network. It will also kindly transcode just about any video you can throw at it into a codec your console can definitely read. You might have to install some additional codec packs here and there for Windows but for the most part, you can forget about worrying about codecs with TVersity. This also allows TVersity to handle files not officially supported by the 360, like MKV containers./p p1. Grab a href="http://tversity.com/"TVersity here/a and install it.br 2. Click the giant plus sign in the top left corner to "Add Your Media Source" - namely, the folder on your PC with all of your videos.br 3. Under advanced options, set your transcoding preferences: "When Needed" will make sure most all of your files play.br 4. In the main TVersity menu, select "Start Sharing"br 5. On the Xbox 360, TVersity will now appear as a source in the Media blade or under My Xbox -gt; Video Library in NXE./p pThe other three options via Microsoft's own various software solutions all have their own drawbacks, which we'll cover here briefly. Our advice? Use them only if you already use the Zune software, Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center to manage all of your video./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227297041777_windowsmediaplayer_01.png" width="494" height="432" style="display:block;" /strongWindows Media Player 11/strong: WMP 11 can stream out to the Xbox 360 pretty easily. Here is an a href="http://paininthetech.com/2008/01/03/stream-video-to-xbox-360-with-windows-media-player-or-winamp-remote"in-depth guide/a. strongDrawbacks?/strong Somewhat clunky format support. In our tests we could not stream Quicktime video at all, and had inconsistent experiences with MP4 files. MPEG-4 and H.264 support are technically supported via third-party WMP codec add-ons, but even with those, we still had trouble—MP4 files tended to play fine on the WMP 11 end, but not show up as browsable on the 360. Somewhat unbelievably, the Xbox 360 team actually recommends you a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-video-playback-faq.aspx"manually rename your unsupported MPEG-4 and H.264 files/a, adding the ".avi" container extension to fool WMP into playing them. This worked occasionally, but not for every file and was generally inconsistent.br clear="all"/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227297025800_zune_01.png" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="494" height="338" style="display:block;" /strongZune Software 3.0/strong: Zune offers a much nicer interface than WMP (Settings -gt; Sharing -gt; Add is the extent of the setup), and thankfully supports MPEG4 and H.264 much more consistently. strongDrawbacks?/strong No DivX or Xvid support, which means a huge chunk of your Torrented video probably won't work.br clear="all"/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227297876080_360_MCE.jpg" width="494" height="308" style="display:block;" /strongWindows Media Center Extender/strong: If you already have a Media Center setup honking on your network, there's a good chance you won't need this guide, but the Xbox 360 can of course stream your MCE content to your TV seamlessly (a a href="http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/1392/Xbox-360-Windows-Media-Center-Setup-Guide/p1/"complete guide is here/a). The interface is really fantastic. strongDrawbacks?/strong The gimpiest codec support of the bunch: only MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and WMV are supported. So unless you're converting everything you have into those formats, you'll still need something like TVersity to play most files you'll find up for download.br clear="all"/p pSo, in the end, TVersity wins hands down as the easiest and most elegant streaming setup for the 360. But do keep in mind—if you're playing a format that your Xbox can't handle (MKV being the most common of these you'll find), TVersity will have to transcode, which means you will lose a bit of quality./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227297010629_connect360_01.png" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="494" height="378" style="display:block;" /strongXbox 360: Streaming (Mac)/strong: UPnP support—the networking standard used by both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in various flavors to play network-streamed video, music and photos—is not natively supported by OS X yet. And unfortunately, there isn't a stellar all-in-one free package like Windows' TVersity.br clear="all"/p pNullriver, however, makes an incredibly slick piece of software called a href="http://www.nullriver.com/products/connect360"Connect360/a, which easily streams all of your iLife libraries or any folder full of video on your Mac to the 360. Unfortunately, it'll cost you $20. There is a free trial version that supposedly shuts off after 30 minutes of sharing, but sometimes it seems to forget and lets you play longer. But even so, $20 isn't bad for the convenience factor here. No transcoding, but it will handle every codec the console itself can play back./p p1. Download and install the Connect360 preference pane.br 2. In System Preferences, start up Connect360 sharing. Here you can also add folders for more sharing.br 3. Access the Connect360 source on your Xbox in the usual way. Done./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227301048351_xbox_video.jpg" width="494" height="329" style="display:block;" /strongXbox 360: Physical Media/strongbr 1. If streaming isn't for you, and you don't mind hauling a storage device back and forth between your computer and Xbox, then this is super easy: Insert Flash disk/USB/CD/DVD and browse it with the Media blade or the Video Library section of NXE (under "My Xbox"). Enjoy.br clear="all"/p pstrongPlaystation 3: Streaming (PC)/strongbr strongTVersity/strong: Again, Tversity is your friend. It works just as well for the PS3 as it does for Xbox 360 (see above for setup)./p p1. With Tversity set up and sharing turned on, just browse to COMPUTERNAME: TVersity in the XMB and you'll see a listing of all your shared files./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/ps3_wmp11.png" width="500" height="371" style="display:block;" /strongWindows Media Player 11/strong: Just like for Xbox 360, you can use WMP11's built-in DLNA/UPnP serving capabilities to stream to the PS3, too—but with the same codec funkiness as noted above.br clear="all"/p p1. In the Media Sharing preference box with your PS3 powered on and connected to the network, select "Unknown Device"—that's your PS3.br 2. Your library should now show up in XMB./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/11/custom_1227297942918_Picture_26.png" width="494" height="405" style="display:block;" /strongPlaystation 3: Streaming (MAC)/strongbr Mac: Nullriver didn't just hook up 360 owners—Media Link is the version especially for PS3. It costs 20 bucks, but will give you totally seamless and painless streaming of all of your iLife libraries (photos and music too) as well as files in any folder you can access with your Mac, whether it's on a network or local.br clear="all"/p p1. Operation is just like Connect360—with sharing enabled in the Media Link preference pane, just browse through all your files under the "Media Link" source in XMB./p pstrongPlaystation 3: Physical Media/strongbr 1. Easy as pie. If you're using a USB flash or hard disc or an SD or CF card, just dump all of your videos into a folder named VIDEO on the root of the drive and they'll show up automatically in the XMB.br 2. You can also browse the entire drive or disc by pressing triangle and choosing "Display All" to find videos that aren't in the VIDEO folder./p pstrongWii: Physical Media/strongbr img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/10/wiihomebrew6.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" style="display:block;" /For playing video on your Wii, physical media is the way to go, which is easy to pull off with some a href="http://gizmodo.com/5096150/a-complete-guide-to-playing-video-files-on-your-ps3-xbox-360-or-wii-/?op=postpreviewrefId=5096150"homebrew hacking/a. There are lots of services that will transcode your video and ouput it in a Flash player that you can view through the Wii's Opera browser (like a href="http://orb.com"Orb/a), but you'll take a hit quality-wise and it's not as easy as just playing the source files directly with Mplayer.br clear="all"/p p1. Install the Homebrew Channel and Mplayer on your Wii. We've got you covered here with our a href="http://gizmodo.com/5096150/a-complete-guide-to-playing-video-files-on-your-ps3-xbox-360-or-wii-/?op=postpreviewrefId=5096150"complete Wii homebrew guide/a—but hopefully you haven't installed the latest System Menu update. In that case, you'll have to wait for a workaround, but it probably won't be long./p p2. Install Mplayer via the Homebrew Browser (also a href="http://gizmodo.com/5096150/a-complete-guide-to-playing-video-files-on-your-ps3-xbox-360-or-wii-/?op=postpreviewrefId=5096150"covered in our guide/a)./p p3. Now, you can use Mplayer to play files off or even an attached USB drive (as long as its formatted in FAT16 or FAT32, which most are). The interface is not nearly as nice, but it gets the job done./p p4. Mplayer for the Wii covers a ton of codecs, but sadly, the Wii's processor chokes on HD content. If you've got HD files, you'll need to transcode them into a lower resolution with VLC./p pAnd that's about it. Now, no more huddling around your laptop screen or fiddling with TV and audio-out cables. Welcome to the good life./p pemAdditional reporting and testing by Seung Lee. See more a href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/how_to"Giz how-to guides here/a. And as always, if you have anything to add to our findings, please let us know in the comments./em/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a5f8e7e6b714214c9acf57feb2a23015p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a5f8e7e6b714214c9acf57feb2a23015p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a5f8e7e6b714214c9acf57feb2a23015" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=2Sprc4If"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=B7Ld3MDr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=FGGqQmpb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=FGGqQmpb" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ihusyPJE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=ihusyPJE" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/7dHhmHJCNb8" height="1" width="1"/

I have a Sony Mini DV. I have connected to my iMac with a firewire and with a power cable connected but get the following message.........

The attached camera uses a different video format than your project's format. To use this camera, disconnect any other tape-based cameras, then create a new, empty project.

I have no other tape based camera to disconnect and although I tried to open a new project in each of the available formats I got the same message. This camcorder is a few years old - is it incompatible with my iMac or can I still do something to make it work? Elsewhere on this site I have seen advice that it should be ok.

Can anyone help please?

John:confused:

centerimg title="MPGIO MF101 Portable Media Player" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="MPGIO MF101 Portable Media Player" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/11/mf101.JPG" border="0" //centerbr / pTrust the Koreans to roll out this portable media player that not only handles a wide variety of audio and video formats, it also boasts the ability to keep you entertained via pre-loaded Flash games including 'Mini Game Heaven', 'Super Action Hero', 'Penoa jeongi', 'Punupunupong' and 'Come2us Soccer 2006'. The MF101 PMP will have 1GB of internal memory which frankly, isn't decent enough to qualify it within PMP ranks, although it does come with a ARM 922T 192Mhz processor and a 2.4" QVGA TFT LCD (320 x 240 resolution) display with 260 thousand colors, allowing you to milk your compressed video for all its worth. Prices start from less than $100 onwards. Would be nice to see a memory card slot of some sort though./P pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/mpgio_mf101_portable_media_player.html"MPGIO MF101 Portable Media Player/a from a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"Ubergizmo/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081121083548" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081121083548?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081121083548" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081121083548amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F11%2Fmpgio_mf101_portable_media_player.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/J3d13U6jP0l4WXyq45VaXZYr7qQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/J3d13U6jP0l4WXyq45VaXZYr7qQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=UVOq5msD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=pyFNLtEL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=pyFNLtEL" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=fHvIn8G7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=afnBIeXd"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=afnBIeXd" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=mzxS9lyU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=mzxS9lyU" border="0"/img/a /div

Convert video formats to PSP MP4 and convert audio formats to MP3

centerimg title="Chuwi M70 Portable Media Player" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Chuwi M70 Portable Media Player" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/11/chuwi-m70.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pChuwi has just introduced a new portable media player (PMP) for the masses in the form of the M70, and this little PMP that could comes with touchscreen support (with a little bit of help from LG, of course), a display at 800 x 480 resolution with 16 million colors, gaming support (nothing 32-bit obviously) as well as a wide compatibility with both audio and video formats. Unfortunately, it lacks GPS navigation, which sorta pushes it down the list where desirability is concerned. Won't be knocking the iPod off its perch anytime soon though./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/chuwi_m70_portable_media_player.html"Chuwi M70 Portable Media Player/a from a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"Ubergizmo/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081121083039" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081121083039?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081121083039" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081121083039amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F11%2Fchuwi_m70_portable_media_player.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/CWljacnrVev-6Wbzu4Fgnf4jaik/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/CWljacnrVev-6Wbzu4Fgnf4jaik/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=fL9UQBik"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=yCgyAB9x"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=yCgyAB9x" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=y0kbzIRb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=XtKLhl9W"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=XtKLhl9W" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=YUjDCtf4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=YUjDCtf4" border="0"/img/a /div

Pegasys has added more video format compatibility with popular digital devices such as the latest iPod Nano (4th generation), iPhone 3G and Sony Walkman to its TMPGEnc MovieStyle software.

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/n7774903715_1031684_6168.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="604" height="256" style="display:block;" /Jason, I was in LA for a bit yesterday, helping Jalopnik cover the a href="http://jalopnik.com/tag/la-auto-show/"LA autoshow/a with my long lens. (It was a boring show with nothing too interesting other than the a href="http://jalopnik.com/5093425/all+electric-mini-e-hits-la-auto-show-floor-with-hottest-deputy-mayor-ever"Electric Mini/a and a href="http://jalopnik.com/5093386/honda-fc-sport-hydrogen-sports-car-concept-of-the-future"Honda Concept/a.) But it was coincidentally the same day JJ Abrams was showing off some scenes from the new a href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/star-trek"Trek movie/a, so I stopped by. This is funny: When they asked me if I had any recording gear in my bag, I had a heart attack. Most people had a mere cellphone, but I had my full journo-blogger-battle messenger and so I ended up checking like 4 pieces of AV gear and a laptop. So embarrassing./p pInside, I don't usually get star struck, but how can a geek not get excited seeing both Harold from Harold and Kumar and Sylar in the same theater sitting in the same row watching themselves on the screen. And it was Trek! Not the old Trek, and Not even Next Generation, but a new kind of Trek with the origins of the old characters and how they met up. Shields up, spoilers ahead./p pThey first showed the new trailer, previewed in theaters playing Bond, which you can see here.br object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lmJO3ppLBskhl=enfs=1" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lmJO3ppLBskhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/objectbr Then they went through the scene were we see a trouble Kirk getting into a bar fight with cadets until a man stationed on his father's ship realizes who he is, stops the fight and asks him if he wants to do something better with his life. Kirk takes him up and joins. The next scene involves Kirk working with Bones to smuggle him aboard the Enterprise and he saves them from walking into a trap. The next scene involves a fight scene with John Cho (HAROLD and Sulu) and Chris Pine (Kirk) vs some filthy Romulans, skydiving (yes, skydiving) and a saber fight. And the final scene involves Spock and Kirk meeting Scotty./p pThe Trek Dorks are currently a bit polarized, a few upset over rewriting canon and a few worried about the stylistic updates. But I really like the New Trek, and I think it could break out of the category of Films Only for Nerds. You've got more action, humor, and heat than you did in the old ones. Even if its a bit less intellectual than previous movies at times, if the preview was any indication, it doesn't seem to ever slow down. And most importantly, it's impossible to not resonate with the young cast playing the classic characters as they express the old mannerisms; Kirk runs like Kirk, Bones complains like bones, and Scotty, well Scotty is 100x more funny than the old Scotty. Come to think of it, everyone with an accent is extremely funny, but maybe because I'm a bit racist. (In a loving way.) Someone should have done an origins movie long ago, but within a year, we'll have a modern telling of the heroes many of us grew up with. If you're like me, you'll probably find the story of how they all got together as cadets and juniors as important as the actual adventure they go on. Maybe we can do an io9/Gizmodo reader meetup movie night./p pHere are my favoritest Giz stories today:br bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5093715/blackberry-storm-review-verdict-not-quite-a-perfect-storm"BlackBerry Storm Review (Verdict: Not Quite a Perfect Storm)/abr bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5094416/future-iphones-may-have-always+on-display"Future iPhones May Have Always-On Display/abr bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5093670/giz-explains-every-video-format-you-need-to-know"Giz Explains: Every Video Format You Need to Know/abr bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5094371/10-takes-on-the-blackberry-storm"10 Takes on the Blackberry Storm/abr bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5094182/dealzmodo-hack-accessorize-your-ipodiphone-like-macgyver"Dealzmodo Hack: Accessorize Your iPod/iPhone Like MacGyver/abr bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5093557/at-gizmodo-gallery-the-red-one-camera" class="top"At Gizmodo Gallery: The Red One Camera/abr bull; a href="http://gizmodo.com/5094602/a-look-at-the-nokia-damage-test-labs" class="top"A Look at the Nokia Damage Test Labs/a/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=51bb5f17071b0d34e1cb509b8365883ep=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=51bb5f17071b0d34e1cb509b8365883ep=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=51bb5f17071b0d34e1cb509b8365883e" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=JyxAPlib"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=hseGkkDb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=cNdkf79B"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=cNdkf79B" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=blGt2Yxj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=blGt2Yxj" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/BJCEwJuE71c" height="1" width="1"/

div class="center"div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/a5/cc/0009cca5.gif" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/a5/cc/0009cca5_medium.gif" id="external_img_642213"//a/div/divbr/ div class="center"bVSO ConvertXtoDVD 3.2.8.92 | 16.1 MB/b/divbr/ ConvertXtoDVD (formerly DivXtoDVD) is a software to convert and burn your videos to DVD. With ConvertXtoDVD and in a few clicks you can backup your movies to DVD playable on any home DVD player.br/ ConvertXtoDVD supports most popular format such Xvid, MOV, VOB, Mpeg, Mpeg4, MP4, AVI, WMV, DV and stream formats. It converts your files into a compliant DVD Video set of files and burns it on a DVD media.br/ The aspect ratio can be automatically selected or forced to a specific format. The program works for NTSC and PAL video formats and creates chapters automatically. Multiple audio tracks are supported. Version 2 uses a completely rewritten interface with subtitles support and a lot of new settings.

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/3f/cc/0009cc3f.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/3f/cc/0009cc3f_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_642111"//a/divbr/ div class="center"bVSO ConvertXtoDVD 3.2.7.90 | 16MB/b/divbr/ ConvertXtoDVD (formerly DivXtoDVD) is a software to convert and burn your videos to DVD. With ConvertXtoDVD and in a few clicks you can backup your movies to DVD playable on any home DVD player. ConvertXtoDVD supports most popular format such Xvid, MOV, VOB, Mpeg, Mpeg4, MP4, AVI, WMV, DV and stream formats. It converts your files into a compliant DVD Video set of files and burns it on a DVD media.The aspect ratio can be automatically selected or forced to a specific format. The program works for NTSC and PAL video formats and creates chapters automatically. Multiple audio tracks are supported. Version 2 uses a completely rewritten interface with subtitles support and a lot of new settings.

Once upon time, video codecs and formats were really only the concern of AV nerds, anime freaks and hardcore not-so-legal movie downloaders. Now, even the most part-time of geeks has to deal with...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/codecsarentgoodlkepancakes.jpg" width="807" height="414" style="display:block;float:none;" /Once upon time, video codecs and formats were really only the concern of AV nerds, anime freaks and hardcore not-so-legal movie downloaders. Now, even the most part-time of geeks has to deal with them, whether they're trying to stream a flick across their house with an Apple TV, dump some video onto their phone or just trying to grab last night's episode of Dexter because they, uh, forgot to renew their Showtime subscription that'll work in their media player. It's messy and annoying, but we're here to clean it up. Take a deep breath./p pYou might recall our discussion about a href="http://gizmodo.com/5048025/giz-explains-why-hd-video-downloads-arent-very-high-def"video bitrates earlier/a, or how much data is packed into a file. As a general rule, more bits per second translates into more betterer quality audio and video. The variable in thatmdash;the other part of the equationmdash;is how the content is compressed and de-compressed. Better compression techniquesmdash;the zen of knowing what bits of data to pull out to make big data chunks smallermdash;make for better quality video while taking up less space on your hard drive. Basically, the part you need to know is that codecs are the software that make that magic happen./p pstrongStandard Standards/strongbr bull; strongH.261/strong is not a term you have to worry about, but it's the technology a href="http://www.javvin.com/protocolH261.html"that most video standards and codecs/a were originally based on. Originating in 1990, it's the first major digital video compression standard, and like other "H" standards, it was developed by the International Telecommunication Union. This one was primarily for teleconferencing over ISDN lines, and as such, it looks like ass./p pbull; strongMPEG-1 Part 2/strong is another oldie, developed by the a href="http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/"Movie Picture Experts Group/a and approved in 1991. (All of the MPEG codecs we talk about, btw, will have an associated layer, since the video section is only part of the full standard, which includes audio and other stuff. MPEG-1 Layer 3, you probably know, is MP3.) Based quite a bit on H.261, a href="http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/frame/research/mpeg/mpeg_overview.html"MPEG-1 was designed to take VHS quality video/a and squeeze it down to a bit rate of about 1.5Mbps, optimized for CD transfers. No surprise, it's the standard used for all VCDs (which can play in most DVD players), but not a standard you would see hanging around today./p pbull; With strongMPEG-2 Part 2/strong, approved in 1994, we're finally talking decent vid. Also known as H.262, since it was developed jointly by the ITU-T and ISO, a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/papers/paper_14/paper_14.shtml"MPEG-2 is an extension of MPEG-1/a that delivers better resolution and higher bit rates (3-15Mbps for standard def and 15-30Mbps for HD). It's the video codec used by DVD and digital television, though now it's slowly being replaced by the more efficient MPEG-4, except on DVDs, where it'll ride out that disc format's lifetime./p pbull; bH.263/b is a href="http://www.phonescoop.com/glossary/term.php?gid=197"designed for sending video over crappy connections/a. So it's used to encode most Flash video and to send video over mobile networks./p pbull; strongMPEG-4/strong is where we really stand right now. It has a much broader scope than past MPEG standards, aiming to tackle both the low end (crappy cellphones on a crappy network) and the high end (Blu-ray). It's still developing, so it's not-so-coincidentally a href="http://www.m4if.org/mpeg4/"where this whole story gets messier/a. There are two relevant parts of the MPEG-4 standard for our myopic video purposes: Part 2 and Part 10mdash;which is also known as H.264 or Advanced Video Coding (AVC). To be clear though, even though they're both part of the MPEG-4 standard, they're itotally different formats/i. Nevertheless, both are more efficient at compression than past MPEG codecs, delivering better quality using less space./p pbull;Okay, so if you've ever frequented a Torrent site, you've actually watched tons of videos that use strongMPEG-4 Part 2/strong, though it's not like they would've had a flashing sign telling you so. MPEG-4 Part 2 actually a href="http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:2-AcZvq6F8YJ:www.mpegif.org/public/documents/vault/m4-out-30037.pdf+mpeg-4+profileshl=enct=clnkcd=4gl=usclient=firefox-a"has different "profiles"/amdash;the two that matter being Simple Profile, for low bitrate, low-res stuff, and Advanced Simple Profile. The latter profile is what's used by movies you would download in formats like DivX or XviD or 3ivxmdash;which are all codecs that are essentially just differing implementations of the MPEG-4 Part 2 standard./p pbull;strongMPEG-4 Part 10/strong, the other part, was actually co-devopled by MPEG and the ITU-T, so it's also knownmdash;in fact, more commonly knownmdash;as H.264. It's more efficient than MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Part 2, delivering the same quality video in as little as half the space, making it suitable for the low and high-end. Because of this, it's quickly becoming a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC_Products_and_Implementations"the standardest standard/a. It's part of the HD DVD and Blu-ray spec, replacing MPEG-2 in digital TV (like with satellite services and ATT's U-Verse IPTV) and supported by pretty much every portable video player on the planet from the iPod to the PSP. Apple has a decent, if Kool-Aid flavored, a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/faq.html"FAQ about H.264/a./p pbull;strongVC-1/strong is essentially a a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/vc1techoverview.aspx"Microsoft developed alternative video codec/a to H.264 released as a standard by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, though it descends from the same H.26X/MPEG family. (It essentially started life as WMV9, but then a href="http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=50500181"Microsoft shopped it to the SMPTE/a to make it an industry standard, and now it is.) It too, is part of the mandatory Blu-ray and HD DVD spec, and is the official video codec of the Xbox 360. It's pitch is the same as H.264'smdash;trying to deliver better quality using less space, like HD video in 6-8Mbps./p pstrongFree-Floating Codecs/strongbr Okay, so all that stuff up there are industry-wide standard video codecs. On top of emall of those/em, various entities love putting out their own spin on those standards. As we mentioned before, DivX (a href="http://www.divx.com/"proprietary/a) and a href="http://www.xvid.org/"XviD/a (open source), for instance, use MPEG-4 Part 2 (more specifically, MPEG-4 ASP) compression, meaning stuff that'll natively play back MPEG-4 ASP will also play back DivX. a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/xbox-360-divx%5Cxvid-test/xbox-360-divxxvid-tested-it-plays-almost-everything-329769.php"Like the Xbox 360/a, for instance. There are a ton of MPEG-4 ASP-based codecs, actually, like FFmpeg, 3ivx and others, but DivX and XviD are the most common. Same deal with H.264: Some well known codecs that use it are Apple's Quicktime H.264, x264 and Nero Digital. You've also got Windows Media Video (WMV) codecs, which are Microsoft's proprietary twists on industry standards./p pstrongContainers aka Wrappers/strongbr Alright, well you've probably noticed that none of your video files have the extension .h264 or .vc1 or the like. That's because videos are packaged in a href="http://www.doom9.org/glossary.htm#Container"containers or wrappers/a that stuff things like the audio, navigational info, etc. along with the video in a single pretty file. Naturally, there are about as many of them as there are codecs. To be clear, you would take a video encoded with, say, H.264, and wrap it up as a .MP4 file./p pThe majors ones are:br bull;AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a href="http://www.jmcgowan.com/avi.html#Definition"Windows' standard multimedia container/abr bull;MPEG-4 Part 14 (known to you as .mp4) is the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4"standardized container for MPEG-4/abr ·:FLV (Flash Video) is the a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/"format used to deliver video through Flash Player/abr bull;MOV is Apple's QuickTime a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/"container format/abr bull;OGG is an a href="http://www.xiph.org/"open standard container/abr bull;MKV (Mastroska) a href="http://www.matroska.org/"is another open specification container/a that you've seen if you've ever downloaded animebr bull;VOB a href="http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/terms/vob.cfm"stands for DVD Video Object/a. Guess what? It's DVD's standard container, and what you get when you rip a DVD.br bull;ASF is a a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/format/asfspec.aspx"Microsoft format designed/a for WMV and WMA. (Files can end in .wmv or .asf)./p pSo, in order to play a video file, your setup has to be able to handle both the actual video codec, and the container. It's why you can try to play an AVI file and Windows Media Player laughs at you, even though it totally played one a minute agomdash; the container was no problem, it didn't have the right codec. Or conversely, even though an iPod could play back an H.264 encoded video, if it was wrapped up in MKV, it couldn't read it./p pOkay, my brain hurts. Hopefully this will make yours hurt less when it comes to dealing with pesky videos. If you'd like to do even more homework, Wikipedia, as always, has a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codecs"a more in-depth discussion/a. And Doom9 a href="http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-final-105-1.htm"is always an amazing resource/a for all things digital video./p pemSomething you still wanna know? Send any questions about codecs, kitties or pad thai (but not RealMedia) to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line./em/p p[Image: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/siebeneinhalb-de/2385134555/"ME/a@Flickr]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=8b16e36f57caf7463dda52b4758c5125amp;p=1"img style="border:0;" src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=8b16e36f57caf7463dda52b4758c5125amp;p=1" border="0" //adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=FxSbpUqh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=6oQdGflA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=qLBnOvuS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=qLBnOvuS" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=pIR4dxIP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=pIR4dxIP" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/q1B1QOVLsx0" height="1" width="1"/