Open Source Software vs. Commercial Software:
Migration from Windows to Linux
An IT Professional's Testimonial

Nintendo Wii Video Playback (MPlayer_CE)

If you have a Nintendo Wii, you can use it as a media player as well. Getting it to work though, it a subject for another place. But, if you have a Wii up and running with Homebrew Channel, and MPlayer_CE (the media player) is installed, there are some tools for Linux that will surely come in handy.

I have found that the best performing files for MPlayer_CE on the Wii are in MKV (Matroska Video) format. My main reason is that MKV files allow you to mark chapters, which MPlayer can use. So, this allows you to skip ahead to chapters inside the video. Very handy.

To start, you will want to get Handbrake. Handbrake is an awesome video compressor, that can handle a wide variety of video formats and also includes batch processing with some powerful features. Download the RPM package from the Handbrake website, and install. No requirements are necessary for this RPM package. I have also used the Windows version of Handbrake, but it seems to not be as stable; the Linux version of Handbrake (version svn3552) is very stable with my experiences.

Handbrake is fairly simple to use. Basically you open it up and select your source video (either a file, DVD disc, etc.), select your video/audio compression settings, and your output file. You can add a series of files to a queue for batch processing, or process one at a time.

I have found the following settings to work very well for Handbrake, that play back flawlessly in MPlayer_CE 0.75 and up on the Wii. I play them from a SMB (Samba) share over a network, and they run great. In Handbrake, the following settings are used:

Video:

Video codec: Mpeg-4 (ffmpeg)

Framerate: Same as source

2-pass encoding: checked

Turbo first pass: checked

Bitrate (kbps) : 1500 (note: I use 2500 for movies and you can even go higher up to 4000 if you want better quality; anything up to around 5000 should work, but for bitrates higher than that, you may experiencing some lag watching them over a network due to too much data being piped over the network).

Audio:

Codec: AAC (faac)

Bitrate: 160

Sample rate: Same as source

Mix: Stereo

DRC: 1.0

Chapters:

Chapter markers: checked

Now, I also found a very handy utility called "mkvmerge". This will allow you to combine MKV video files. Very handy as well. Simply run the command to download and install this package:

yum install mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix-gui

To use the mkvmerge utility (found under Applications / Sound & Video / mkvmerge GUI), you simply click "Add" to select your first video, then use the "Append" button to append videos to it. You can select the order in which they are appended, and change additional properties. Once you are ready, simply select the Output file and click "Start muxing".

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