how do i watch Video files?

[rude_boy_mick]

My little brother just got a Wii, and it's pretty cool, but i'm a bit disappointed with the fact that I cant watch video files from my computer on it. Well I can watch videos, but it's totally impractical. He has a 2gb SD card, so I thought "great, I can stick a couple of films on it and watch them on his Wii". Then I found out that you have to convert them to a special format to play them. I cant figure out why nintendo would make you do this. The converted files become nearly four times the size as the originals, and the quality is....well....there is no quality. So not only can I not fit the files onto the 2gig SD card, but even if I could, they look like absolute SH!T. Am I missing something here? is there any other way that I can play my films from my computer on his Wii??

Thanks for reading

 

[rude_boy_mick]

someone? anyone?

 

[Spiraea]

As far as I know, No. That is the current only option. You have to understand tho. It was never Nintendo's intention to make the Wii into a multimedia powerhouse. It's just not that. However, I wouldn't be surprised (and I'm hoping personally) that we will see a Video Channel in the near future allowing more common file types such as .wmv or .avi

Time will tell.

 

[Dougamer]

Thats strange, cos i've been able to surf websites with videos (not the correct format) with my Wii and be able to watch them...

 

[vagrant]

You can also use SD cards and watch them in the photo channel.

 

[Spiraea]

Thats strange, cos i've been able to surf websites with videos (not the correct format) with my Wii and be able to watch them...

That's also via the browser tho. I haven't been able to try out Opera yet...but I'm certain that they imprinted (not the right word I know but the only thing I can think of :idea: ) the players into the browser such as Youtube's and maybe even one of the more common players such as Quicktime. I don't know about Quicktime for sure since I haven't tried out the browser yet but I do know Youtube works on it.

However, the Wii by itself doesn't have these capabilities at the moment.

 

[vagrant]

That's also via the browser tho. I haven't been able to try out Opera yet...but I'm certain that they imprinted (not the right word I know but the only thing I can think of :idea: ) the players into the browser such as Youtube's and maybe even one of the more common players such as Quicktime. I don't know about Quicktime for sure since I haven't tried out the browser yet but I do know Youtube works on it.

However, the Wii by itself doesn't have these capabilities at the moment.

^ *points to what he just posted*

 

[No Smoking]

I got it working you need a program called wii video 9 it converts your media file to a format that the wii can play

 

[MaxCapacitor]

It's funny how you're able to play Apple Quicktime movies in the Photo Channel but when you try to do the same thing in the Wii web browser, it either says "Plugin not supported" (streaming quicktime video) or "Format not supported" (straight up .mov files). That's what I got when I went to www.gametrailers.com.

rude_boy_mick, if you could figure a way to get your Wii to communicate with your PC and access files, then you'd be able to play .avi files directly from your PC's hard drive. I'm not sure if .mpeg videos work. I don't quite remember which website that used that format.

 

[3mpathy]

i tried a .mov file in the photochannel and it said unsupported format maxcapacitor, so what are you doing differently?

 

[MaxCapacitor]

Well, the videos I've played on my Wii were edited and encoded using Adobe Premeire Pro w/out any special codecs (i.e. Cinepak, Sorenson)

My manual states -

Format: Quicktime (motion JPEG) (.mov files)
Size: Up to 848 x 480

My .mov files didn't deviate from those specs and it worked fine for me.

Oh yea, there's a little disclaimer after all the supported file format specs -

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:
* Some files in the above formats may not work with the Photo Channel
* The audio components of some video files may not be playable.
* Using an SD Card with slow transfer speed may result in longer load times or irregular video playback.

 

[MaxCapacitor]

Did some testing, used my digital camera to record some videos and then played them on my Wii.

They play flawlessly from my 32mb SD card. Both the 640x480 .mov as well as the 320x240 .mov.

That seems to be the intent of playing videos through the photo channel. It was geared towards amateurs and their cameras to play back on their Wii.

As long as you're not trying to convert a video file that uses a motion compensation type compression directly to the Quicktime format, it should technically work.

If the video file's compression does motion compensate, you're gonna need to convert each video frame into a sequence of JPEGs. After that, package it up as a Quicktime movie and it should play in the Photo Channel. Expect exponentially larger file sizes than the source video.

 

[3mpathy]

Maccapacitor, when converting an .avi is there a huge size increase like when converting with red kawas video converter? useing it a 175mg video went to 700mg mjpeg form and turnd to almost unwatchable quality

 

[MaxCapacitor]

It would depend on what codec and compression the .avi file used.

Sounds like you're converting a subtitled anime using the Divx codec. Hehe, they all seem to be around that target file size for a 22 minute episode.

You're going to see upwards to 700MB, 1GB or beyond when converting it to .mpeg or a similar sequential image format. The raw video recordings were most likely above 700MB as well, before they got compressed.

I've never used Red Kawas video converter before so I don't how that software converts videos. But I have used Premiere Pro to uncompress a 175MB (give or take a few MBs) to .mpeg before and I got a 700MB to 900MB when it completed.

useing it a 175mg video went to 700mg mjpeg form and turnd to almost unwatchable quality

Uhh, that last line seemed a bit incoherent to me but I think I know what you mean

The Wii and most computers won't handle playing back a 700MB chunk of video too well so it'd be best to break it into smaller chunks to keep the video player from stalling or freezing up during playback.

And also, if the quality of the video suffers from massive artifacts (lots of discoloration, pixelation blocks), then your video converter most likely took each video frame as they were and placed it into the new file.

If you understand motion compensation in video compression, then you'll know that the lossy type video compressors attempt to share blocks of pixels with other video frames before and after it. So many video frames have blocks of pixels missing or discolored when taken out individually.

The better converters are the ones that copy frame by frame just like as if you were watching your video a single frame at a time.

 

[timthepig]

We want a Video Channel, more specifically somewhere to play DIVX or XVID videos(Supporting a wide range of bitrates and compression). Thats the dream! - ah well. Time to get that GP2X and a tv out lead ! (www.gbax.com).