If you encounter any problem while trying to follow this convertion guide or are trying to do something else related to VLC, I encourge you to seek out help in the following ways:
Update your VLC Player to the latest stable version (currently 0.8.6f).
Check the Videolan support page which has lots of usefull links to their forums, wiki, irc channel, documentation and mailing list.
This page is a simple walkthrough on how to encode almost any movie you have to the .mp4 format (so you can put it on your ipod / cellphone / anything else). The only thing you need for this guide is the AMAZING, FREE, program called VLC media player. You can download it here for any platform (Windows/Linux/Mac/Whatever...).
First of all, if you dont know this amazing piece of software, I highly recommend it for daily usage of playing multimedia file... It might look not very friendly at start (no bells and whistels like other crap out there) but this thing can play almost ANYTHING you throw at it without any needed for downloading codec packs and stuff (thats it, no more XVID/DIVX, no more media conflicts, and what not), oh and ofcourse it supports subtitles.
It's also very easy to use once you get used to it (file->open->the movie plays :) ).
1. Run the VLC media player (vlc.exe):
2. Go to the Settings -> Preferences menu:
3. Mark the "Advanced options" in the bottom, then goto Stream output -> Sout stream -> Transcode menu:
4. Set the Video width / height and Maximum video width / height to your device's resolution (you can find this information by search Google or checking your products web site.
5. Click on Save, then go to the File -> Open File menu:
6. Click on Browse and open your input file. You can use subtitles if you want...
7. Check the "Stream/Save" at the bottom, then click on Settings...:
8. Follow the RED marked areas, make sure that File is checked, and type in the filename you want to save (If you wont put a directory, it will be saved in the vlc installation dir). Make sure MP4 Encapsulation is marked. Also Check the Video and Audio codec, and set them to mp4v and mpga respectivly. Also make sure that Channels is set to 2.
9. Here you will have to experiment with the Bitrate settings and Scale settings, this will effect your final file size, and it's quality.. you can start by trying the settings i've put, and change it if the quality is bad. When finished, click OK
10. Press PLAY, and wait for the process to finish:
11. Thats it... Simply put your created .mp4 file in your player.
Feel free to check out my main page where you can get some general information about me and a few of the other things I did.
If there are any questions or comments on this issue, please mail me (replace it to @ in the middle).
So Digg it.