People still seem to be stuck when trying to convert video to play on the DS, as I said in the video I made on ‘How to put video on the R4DS’, I can’t help with every error since I only intended to provide information on how to convert videos and put them onto the DS.
To answer the main question of why an error pops up after converting, that could be because you don’t have the necessary codec. I provided AviSynth in the BatchDPG file due to it being needed as part of the BatchDPG installation (it asks about AviSynth), but for other codecs, I recommend the K-Lite Codec Pack which has pretty much everything you need and since you’ll be converting video files, you’ll need the ‘Full’ pack for the encoders.
With the codec pack installed, you should be able to convert almost every major format into .dpg, the image above is of my DS playing the latest SEGA Rally trailer of which I converted from .wmv.
It converted with no problems at all, same with an .avi file I tried (similar to what was used in my ‘How to put video on the R4DS’ video) and an .mpg. Here is some good advice and information from another site that should help with any problems:
Video
- FPS: The framerate of the video. You can only use whole numbers meaning no decimels are allowed. By default, it is set to “auto.” Auto picks bad framerates for some content, so I suggest manually changing the FPS depending on the Width and Height.
- Suggested FPS settings:
- 256×192: 15
- 256×144: 18
- 256×112: 20
- 256×96: 22
- Profile: If you pick VeryHigh, it will give you the absolute highest quality, and significantly smaller filesizes than all the other profile. If you pick the Low, it will give roughly the same quality as DPGTools.
- Width & Height: Basically, you can set the width and height of the outputted video in pixels. BatchDPG automatically finds these numbers, except in a few cases where it doesn’t and asks for a manual input.
- Bitrate & Max Bitrate: A higher number results in a better quality video at the cost of size. The bitrate is variable so you will often the encoder will use more or less bits for scenes that need it to improve overall quality. I recommend setting the bitrate to 256 if using the VeryHigh profile for all types of encodes, since you will typically end up with actual average bitrates much lower than that (160-180). Set max bitrate to 384. Try not to set Max bitrate higher than 384, since higher than that may cause skipping and won’t really improve quality.
- Passes: This option lets you use multiple encoding passes to potentially improve video quality. However, this typically does not improve quality and simply makes encoding take longer, and make the video somewhat larger. This CAN help to improve quality (and possibly reduce skipping) in videos that have extremely high amounts of motion and skip in Moonshell. It may also help in very low-bitrate encodes.
- KVCD Matrix: This option will reduce filesizes and improve quality slightly with little to no cost in encoding time. This should always be checked.
Audio
- Bitrate: Everything about video bitrate applies here in audio as well except for the fact that the bitrate you choose for audio is constant, not variable.
- Samplerate: The DS can only take on 48000Hz in Mono, so use 48000Hz for Mono and 32000Hz for Stereo.
- Mono: It helps to lower filesize by letting you use a smaller audio bitrate without sacrificing much quality.
- Joint Stereo: Improves quality significantly for stereo mode, allowing you to keep the bitrate low without sacrifing quality. This is preferred over Mono.
- Normalize: Normalizing raises the volume of the audio to the highest possible level without losing quality. I recommend using this option.
Helpful tip: If your file has multiple audio tracks, install Haali Media Splitter with MKV, OGM and MP4 support, open Haali’s properties (Start -> Haali Media Splitter, Media Splitter settings), click Options -> Languages -> Audio language priority, and input the preferred language in the box: eng for English and jpn for Japanese.
If things still don’t work, then I really can’t help you. If you have installed the full K-Lite codec pack and followed the guide, I can’t see why your .dpg video won’t work. To reiterate: If you get an error, it’s probably due to not having the codec needed or it needs to be set as default. Installing a codec pack like the Full K-Lite Codec Pack should allow you to convert almost any file. If you still have any problems after reading all the info I’ve provided, there is nothing I can do.