This article was contributed by mytreo.net forum member Handquake.

There are many ways to put movies on your treo. I believe this one is the easiest and produces really beautiful results. I use a PC running Windows XP and a Treo 650.

Things needed for this tutorial:

For Your Treo:
TCPMP (The Core Pocket Movie Player)
HandZipperLite (Optional but super handy)
FileZ (also optional but even more super handy)

For Your Windows Computer:
DVD Decrypter
Auto Gordian Knot

Movies are quite large, so you will also need a Memory card (1 or 2 GB).

The programs above are all freeware or donation-ware. You don’t have to pay for them. However, movies will probably cost you something. (I recommend only using the methods described herein to download and watch movies and programs that you have purchased and own. There are severe penalties for pirating movies.)

Installing HandZipperLite

The first thing you need is HandZipperLite, which will enable you to download compressed .ZIP files directly to your Treo, where you can decompress them locally. You can use your Treo’s browser to follow this link to HandZipper Lite in the mytreo.net download section. There you can click on the link that says “.PRC” to download the program directly to your Treo. Once the download is complete, click “Yes” to accept it into Applications.

Installing TCPMP

Now that you have HandZipperLight on your Treo, you can download The Core Pocket Movie Player directly to your phone and decompress it. Using your Treo’s browser, follow this TCPMP link to find the program in the mytreo.net download section. Then click on the “.ZIP” link.

Your Treo will then give you the choice of downloading TCPMP into HandZipperLite (already highlighted) or to your memory card. Choose “HandZipperLite.” It will ask you: “Do You Want To Download Now?” Click “Yes.” It will download. When it has finished, you can choose “Save” or “Save and Open.” Select “Save and Open.”

Your Treo will then indicate that the program is being accepted into HandZipperLite. This takes a while so be patient. When the program has finished downloading and transferring to HandZipperLite, it will automatically open HandZipperLite .You will see the HandZipperLite opening page. Select “Ok.”

You will be shown the TCPMP file inside HandZipperLight. You will need to highlight the TCPMP file by touching it with your finger or stylus. It will turn blue indicating that it has been selected. Choose “Unzip” to decompress it.

You will then see the player along with all of the plug-ins. You will want keep all of the files checked except the “Sony” and “Matroska” plug-ins. Uncheck those. Movies use the Mpeg4 plug-in. But the others are nice to have as well for other functions, such as music encoded into different formats like ogg vorbis and MP3.

Use your stylus to select “Unzip/install.” It will show TCPMP being installed onto your Treo. It will then say “Done.” You now have the movie player installed on your phone! You will probably want to delete the zip file from HandZipperLite once done to save memory.

If you feel more comfortable installing TCPMP using your PC, instead of directly to your Treo with the instructions above, you can do that as well. Just follow the instructions that came with your Treo to install TCPMP from the link above. Personally I like using the Treo’s browser and HandZipperLite because I find it to be faster.

Copying TCPMP To Memory Card (optional)

Once you have loaded the TCPMP onto your phone, you can copy the player and all the plug-ins to your memory card. I like to have a copy of TCPMP on the device as well as one on each of my memory cards, in case someone else wants to borrow one of my memory cards to watch a movie on their device. That way they don’t have to download TCPMP and I don’t have to beam it to them.

To copy it, first you will need FileZ, which is available for free by following this link to FileZ in the mytreo.net download section. Download FileZ and install it on your Treo the same way you downloaded HandZipperLight (by using your Treo’s browser to choose the “.PRC” link in the product description on mytreo.net).

Once FileZ is installed on your device, open it and you will find a screen with several choices. You want to select (with your stylus): “View And Edit Files”. It will bring up a screen showing “INTERNAL” and whatever your memory card happens to be named. Use your stylus to touch the little triangle next to Internal. This will show you every file on your phone! What you now want to do is use your stylus to touch the name of every file that begins with TCPMP. A check mark will appear next to each file you select. There should be between 9 and 16 files and plug-ins depending on your version of TCPMP. They are constantly improving the capabilities of this player. So perhaps there are even more plug-ins as of this reading.

Once every TCPMP file has been touched with your stylus and you see the check next to them, it’s time to copy. Use your stylus to touch the blue box labeled FileZ in the upper left hand corner of the FileZ screen. It will open your menu choices. Use your stylus to touch “Copy”. It will then ask you to select your destination folder. You need to use your stylus to touch the little triangle next to “whatever your memory card is named”. The program will show you the sub folders on your card. Touch the little triangle next to the “Palm” folder. It will then open sub-sub folders. Use your stylus to touch the word “Launcher”, NOT the triangle next to it. The triangle will turn black. Use your stylus to select “Ok.”

Your phone will then show you the copy process being completed. Once finished, you will have a copy of TCPMP on your memory card. (Incidentally, you can use this same process to move any program or file (accept those in permanently installed in RAM, such as the Preferences application.) You can find the player on your memory card by pressing the home key on your Treo several times until your memory card appears. You will know this has happened because the name of your memory card will appear in the top right corner of the device next to the battery and signal strength indicators.

Installing DVD Decrypter & Auto Gordian Knot

The next thing you need is DVD Decrypter. I Googled for DVD Decrypter version 3.5.4.0 and found a couple of websites that had it. Here is a link to one of them. Download and install it using your computer. This applicaton is not intended for your Treo. Once it’s installed, you will need a copy of Auto Gordian Knot for your PC. Install it to your pc.

As mentioned earlier, you are going to need is at a 1 Gig or larger memory card unto which you are going to put movies. I say 1 Gig because you can fit 2 movies (or four hour long TV episodes) onto one and still leave room for backing up your Treo and listening to MP3s. Although cheaper ones work as well as hyper speed cards, I recommend buying them from a Treo site such as mytreo.net so that you know it will be compatible with your Treo and reliable. A link to one memory card can be found at the beginning of this article.

You are now ready to go!

Using DVD Decrypter To Rip Movies

Open DVD Decrypter on your computer and insert a movie into your computer’s DVD drive. You will see the name appear loaded into DVD Decrypter. If your computer tries to open a movie player automatically, make sure you press cancel or close it out the player before you start using DVD Decrypter.

Next move your mouse to the menu bar on DVD Decrypter and left click on “Tools”. It will open a sub-menu. Left click on “Settings”. It will give you several choices. Choose “IFO Mode.” Make sure the “On Startup” has all three choices selected. In “Options” under “File Splitting” select “None.” It is easier if the file remains one big piece of data rather then being broken into 1 gig pieces. Also, in “Options” ensure “Copy IFO” file is selected, “Remove RC” and “Remove RCE Protection” boxes are checked as well as the “Patch M2V Timecode.”

Under “Create Additional Files,” ensure “Stream Information” is checked. Under “File Names,” ensure both boxes are checked. Left click the “Ok” box at the bottom. Next go back into the menu bar and left click on the “Mode” choice. It will open 3 choices. “File,” “IFO” and “ISO.” Left click on “IFO.” The DVD that you have loaded will then appear as several VTS files on the right hand of the decrypter. It almost always has the actual movie shown as a sub-menu that is grayed out. It will be labeled as PGC 1 [The length of the movie]. Left click on the grayed out sub-menu PGC file. It will turn blue.

Once that happens, go up to the tabs above and left click on the “Stream Processing” tab. This opens up an area that shows you not only the movie but all the different languages and audio commentary tracks from the director and so on. Left click on the “Enable Steam Processing” box. You want to uncheck all but the first two boxes, which are the movie (shown as a OxEO-video file) and the main soundtrack for the movie (shown as an Ox80-audio file). It saves a tremendous amount of space and time in the long run not decrypting this. I’ve also found that TCPMP will sometimes, after encoding, play the movie starting in one language then switch to another, then move to a director commentary as you go through it, if you don’t remove these extra audio tracks. Once you’ve unchecked the extra audio streams, it’s time to select a destination folder.

Go to the destination folder area on the left side of DVD Decrypter. Click on the folder and select a destination folder that will be easy to find. DVD Decrypter will automatically create a destination for the movie, but it will be a folder on your hard drive that can be tricky to find. Make the DVD decrypt into a folder in My Documents and create a new folder under whatever movie name you’re decrypting. It makes finding it easier.

If you find that you haven’t made a folder because you were doing a lot of movies at the same time and forgot this step, then you can always find the decrypted file by left clicking on the start icon on your windows opening page. Select My Computer, left click on the folders option at the top of the window and that will open (on the left hand side of the window) your folders. Left click on your hard drive and one of the sub folders will be your decrypted dvd under a file named for the movie you decrypted.

Once you’ve selected a destination all you have to do is left click on the “DVD to Hard Drive” icon. It will decrypt your DVD. It takes between 2 and 10 minutes depending on the speed of your computer. After a few minutes DVD Decrypter will let you know it has finished decrypting your DVD. Now it’s time to encode it using Auto Gordian Knot.

Using Auto Gordian Knot

Close out all the windows on your pc then double left click on the Auto GK icon on your PC screen as the shortcut gets automatically placed there during installation. It will open Auto GK. The first thing you will want to do is left click on the folder icon to the right of the Input File choice. Locate the folder you put your decrypted DVD into and open that folder. You will see at least two files. The one you are looking for will be a huge VOB file. You can locate the one you want by putting your cursor over each of the files in the folder and letting it sit for a few moments.

Quickly the file type will pop up. The file that you want will say something like: Type: VOB File. Date Modified (the date you decrypted your DVD and the size of the file. You want the one that is about 4gig. It will be MUCH larger than the others. Double left click on it and it will load into the input file area of Auto GK. The output file will then automatically be selected for you. It will output into the same folder that the input is coming from. Under audio tracks choose audio stream 0AC3. Choose no second audio track. It will still play in stereo.

Next it is time to choose your output file size. Select the Custom size [MB] choice. For movies I use 400 meg. For hour long TV shows I use 200 meg. For half hour shows I use 100 meg. These settings seem to work really well for me. Video is crisp with no pixelation and the audio remains outstanding. Next you want to click on “Advanced Options” box on Auto GK’s main screen. For your Treo 650 you want to set output resolution setting to 320 (if you use a Treo 600 you want to select 160). Under codec I use the XviD box. Output audio type use auto. Left click OK in the advanced options window. This will close out the advanced options sub menu.

Now click on add job. You will see your encoding project show up in the Job queue window. If you have other movies to do, add them also. The movies seem to take as long as it runs in real time to encode into the XviD format. A two hour movie will take around 2 hours. Once it is finished you can find the file in the folder you imported it from. It will show up as a file usually labeled VTS_00_PGC_00_0 (the numbers will not be 00 but whatever the original movie code was). It is pretty easy to recognize as it usually appears as a box with a thick black horizontal bar through it and the size will be roughly the size you specified. If you right click on the file you can play it with Windows Media Player (providing you have it, also a free download) to see what it will look like when played on your phone.

At this point I usually copy it to a DVD so that I can keep my computer less cluttered and have a copy I can load anytime I need it. You can fit around 11 movies or a full season of a TV series on a 4.7 Gig DVD. Once I have a copy then it’s time to load it to the expansion card. I have a 5 in 1 card reader so I use that to put it on my sd card. It is way faster than hotsync. To hotsync it to your phone double left click on the palmOne Quick Install icon that is on your PC and then just drag the movie file from its folder into the Expansion Card section of the Quick Installer. Next, hotsync your phone to your computer. It will install the movie to your memory card at this time. Once it is on your memory card it is time to play it!

Using TCPMP

On your phone, open TCPMP and then click the file key on your phone (the one above the mail button). Choose open files and then select the folder the movie is in. You will see it as an .avi file. Select it and then hit OK. Once that’s done all you have to do is push play. The movie will then start rolling. If the volume is too low or high select the Pref box. Go to audio and adjust sound as needed. The preamp slider does major volume changes and the volume slider is for fine tuning. The last thing you can do is choose how you want to view the movie. Select video in Prefs and go to the Full area. The two choices I use are “fit best” and “full”. Experiment with the two and you will see the benefits of each. Once back at the player main screen select the full choice and you will see the benefits of your work.

I hope this helps. I realize this is a bit long winded but wanted to give you something that would answer almost any question (hopefully).

Filed under: How-to guides