Archos AV 500 series

Select Source & Destination Files

In the example, a source ﬁ le 24 hours of Lemans.avi has been selected

as the source video. You can see on the bottom of the window its original

characteristics (width 720, height 576, frame rate 24). Next, you must then

tell the program where to place (Set Destination ﬁ le) the newly recoded

version of the ﬁ le (don’t worry, it will not erase the original). You should give

it a new descriptive name, such as shown above Lemans.avi . Make sure

you add the .avi extension.

Change Settings

Next, you can change the parameters (Change Settings) of the

encoder to adjust the level of quality of the ﬁ nal image. Like MP3

music, the higher the bit rate setting is made, the higher the quality

of the music, or video in this case, that you will get. However, this will

also take up more space on your hard drive. A setting of 900 kbps will

give you a nice looking image for viewing on a television. For near

DVD quality, you can set it up to 1200 kbps.

Target & Priority

If the AV 500 device is not listed, select “ARCHOS™ Default”. You will

see a Priority box appear. This control is to allow you to select which

feature of the video to be guarded. If for example you are re-encoding

a video ﬁ le that is 800x600 in resolution and 30 frames per second,

this is beyond the maximum resolution that the AV 500 can play. Thus,

the MPEG-4 Translator program will have to decrease the resolution.

Choosing LCD optimizes the ﬁ nal video format for viewing on the built

in LCD screen. Choosing the TV option will optimize the movie to

keep the highest possible frame rate. You can see what the size and

frame rate will be by looking at the Video Image Size : Destination

parameters. When choosing TV , it is understood that the output will be

optimized for a television, and not the built-in screen.

Start

Click on Start and the program will call Virtual Dub to start processing

the video. Depending on the power and speed of your computer, this

could take real time (a 60 minute long video re-encoded in about

60 minutes) or much longer. As shown to the left, you will see the

progress as it processes the video ﬁ le. If the Start button is grayed

out, it would be for one of two reasons. 1) The source ﬁ le is not a

true AVI ﬁ le. Even if the ﬁ le name ends with .avi, the internal ﬁ le data

determines if it is truly an AVI ﬁ le. 2) The Virtual Dub program was not

located when MPEG-4 Translator was started up. Close the program,

restart it, and make sure you locate the Virtual Dub program.