GBA Movie Player/GBA Media

DomaGB · April 07, 2009, 07:58:14 PM

Well since I got my new replacement SuperCard in on Saturday, last nite I had time to test the GBA movie software.

The links found in many places, probably even the FAQ's and WIKI's for the SuperCard which lead to the internet archive don't work. Well the link works but when you download (at least me) the program, it won't unzip. And other programs I had found produced bad errors and no videos.

However I found one that did work here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9RKBAI5Y

and dantheman posted one that does work here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20061117091558/http://www.movieadvance.com/images/GBAMEDIA-eng.zip

Despite folks saying the videos come out bad I found the cartoons I did, looked fine. 1st however I tried the High Quality setting and it errored after a few minutes before finishing the conversion. I tried another HQ just a few minutes ago and got the same error. However when I try the medium or normal setting it works. But it does error and crash at the end. But the video does complete the conversion before it crashes, however I didn't watch it all the way thru...but I did test it and it worked. I have done 3 cartoons so far. I can't put many on my SuperCard now, its filled with games, but I hopefully will have that solved with the 4GB I am getting soon. And if it works I will report it on the thread I started for that. And I will buy 2 more as well.

If anyone knows why it crashes please tell, I would love to make the HQ ones.

I think in the relitively near future I may add a page to my website or blog about all the details about the SuperCard I am gathering. I know the SuperCard is on the way out because everyone and their brother is going for the DS, but there has to be some folks out there interested in getting the SuperCard for their GBA SP and want the info I have gathered.

dantheman · April 08, 2009, 07:20:06 PM

I'll be honest, I haven't really tested the media-playing capabilities much, because I bought my Supercard to use on my DS with Moonshell. From what little testing I've done, the highest quality mode just lagged like crazy for me upon playing, so I had to use the lower quality modes to get the video to play at all. At that quality, it was too squished to read anime subtitles, and the framerate wasn't the greatest. Unfortunately, Meteo isn't all that much better, though it does give you a bit more control over how you want the videos converted.

Sorry I can't help out more =/

DomaGB · April 10, 2009, 12:34:58 AM

My kids watched some vids tonite on the SuperCard and were happy. However the volume was kinda low. I may have to increase the volume of the vids elsewhere before converting. I also wanna get some earphone converters for the GBA SP, and that may help.

dantheman · April 10, 2009, 02:11:02 PM

For my volume needs with the GBA and DS, I generally used a portable headphone amplifier like the Boostaroo (mine's just a generic Radio Shack branded one but functions the same). This also had the added benefit of having an audio splitter for whenever I happened to need one. For instance, for some reason kids at my high school enjoyed crowding around a single iPod listening to the same songs, so with this and three pairs of earphones, one could get up to 6 people per iPod.

Of course, just amplifying the sound in software would also work fine too, heh.

DomaGB · May 04, 2009, 09:32:36 PM

I have converted quite a few movies now and they are working great. I have tried increasing the volume with Windows Movie Maker and that makes it louder but seems to also make the sound tin canny. so not sure if thats better or not.

I also tried again to convert with High level conversion and it worked! In fact two AVI files in a row converted fine. They error at the end like the normal one does after it finishes converting.

However I compared the quality of the High to normal conversions and didn't see any real difference, tho there was a slight one. But the High converted file had more fast forward control. The size difference went from 50 meg to 200 meg, and I dont think that the increase in quality warrants that size, so I will be going back to normal, perhaps if I find a movie which turns out really bad I will try the HQ one.

DomaGB · May 18, 2009, 06:41:23 PM

I have noticed that the Movie Player also has text file reading. Is this in txt format? Can it read PDF or what? I happen to be reading some material in PDF on my computer and am going camping this weekend. I would like to read it on the GBA SP thru the SuperCard.

Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Thanks.

dantheman · May 19, 2009, 08:45:34 PM

There is no PDF reader for the GBA. There is an experimental one for the DS, but even that has difficulty with many PDF files.

You'd be better off converting to text if possible, then using the GBA Book Reader, or if you can't do that, convert to a series of JPEG images and use an image viewer for the GBA to view them (either GBA JPEG Viewer or using the Pogoshell JPEG viewer plugin with the Plugin2GBA program).

DomaGB · May 20, 2009, 07:05:54 AM

I been too busy to test it yet, but I did convert the file to text. I found 2 different free programs that do that. One didnt seem to work. The other worked fine. Later I will try putting it in the SuperCard.

DomaGB · May 21, 2009, 11:05:35 PM

yep yep, it worked. and if anyone wants a free pdf to text converter, here ya go:

http://www.a-pdf.com/text/

Now I am of camping.

Have a great memorial weekend everyone

DomaGB · June 07, 2009, 03:10:14 AM

I actually finished my book on the SuperCard. It was nice.

I wouldn't recommend this as a primary source, but works great if your on the go, or out camping like I did. It was however a pain to forward to where I needed to start. Since the screen is so small the book was like 1500 pages. You can skip like 25-50 pages at a time tho.

dantheman · June 07, 2009, 08:36:24 PM

I would have used the GBA Book Reader, personally. It lets you insert chapter marks and volume marks (which I generally use every 5-10 chapters for convenience), or add a clickable link to a specific section of the text. Also supports bookmarks as long as you make sure to update the *.sav file after turning off the GBA.

Glad to hear that you got it to work anyway though.