Product Reviews

If you don't fancy shelling out for a video transcoder to watch movies on your handheld, try PocketDivXEncoder - it's free. It isn't Palm OS-specific, but simply transcodes video into DivX or XviD-encoded files that are suitable for playback on any handheld device.

Like Kinoma Producer, PocketDivXEncoder

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asks you to choose a destination device for the transcoded video, but this doesn't optimise playback performance; it simply sets the appropriate resolution for full-screen video. You can override this setting if playback is jerky, though. You can also adjust the frame rate and opt for two-pass encoding for better compression and video quality. Audio is encoded as MP3, so PocketDivXEncoder's output can be played by any video player.

Given the price, and the fact that it's only at version 0.3.5, PocketDivXEncoder is surprisingly capable and is straightforward to use. It can convert files individually or in batches. Transcoded full-screen video files were around a third smaller than those of Kinoma Producer, giving a compression ratio of about 5:1 with full-screen video. It can't convert QuickTime video, but since it handles everything else this is hardly a deal breaker