I've got a stack of stuff to get done, but I'm pulling a Russ, and musing about ways of getting video media onto my taco for playback whilst I'm out and about.
It appears at a quick glance to be feasible with today's technology, and I've got the processes down to around 3-4 steps.
- Obtain video in digital format - likely sources include TV network and film web sites (like Sven's), TV capture cards, DVD ripping, and peer to peer networks, all pretty straight forward, although the picture sizings, encoding methods and frame rates are going to be far from optimal.
- Converting the data to a common format - 3gpp seems like the best bet for this to me, especially as Chris has mentioned some open source tools, failing that Nokia's Multimedia Convertor should be up to the job.
- Getting the video onto the phone - Bluetooth transfer might be a tad slow given that I'm generally rushing to get out the door in the mornings, however the USB cable with the N-Gage would be pretty quick. A strategy to sync the phone's content with a prioritised program list would be neat, something along the lines of upload one of this list of films or TV shows, and if that list is empty upload the morning news or last night's football.
- Automating and streamlining the process - the boring bit, but without it being swift and easy to do, I'm not likely to keep using the process except for exceptional events.
Interesting thoughts, and something I'll have to look at, but I'll put it on the back burner for now.
Update: SmartMovie looks very interesting for the media conversion.
