A few months ago I wrote an article about converting videos for the Samsung YP-S3 MP3 player. But it seems that people are still having problems, despite my recommendations. I've done some more research, and would like to go into more detail this time. Video conversion seems to be a tricky issue that almost no mobile device manufacturer has mastered completely. Scores of people have problems converting files for particular devices. Recently I also tried to convert videos to play on the Nokia 5310. This proved to be tricky as well, but I finally discovered a method that works for the Nokia as well as the Samsung mentioned above. Here's what I did.

I used a freeware program called ABC 3GP converter. This program, configured correctly, allowed me to convert videos to a format that works on both of my mobile devices. Once you've downloaded and installed ABC 3GP Converter, follow these steps:

1. Open the ABC 3GP Converter program.
2. From the File menu, select "Add (Auto Detect)".
3. Select the file you would like to convert, and click "Open".
4. Underneath "Output Options" on the right, select your Output Folder, and specify a File Name for the converted video.
5. Make sure "Merge Into One File" is checked.
6. For "Format", select "MP4".
7. For "Video Size", select "176x144".
8. For "Bitrate(kbps)", select "128".
9. For "Frame rate", select "15".
10. Under Audio Settings, select "64" for "Bitrate(kbps)".
11. For "Sample rate(Hz)", select "44100".
12. Now the settings are complete. Click on the "Start Convert" button in the toolbar (last button).
13. Once this process is complete, you have your converted file.

Now that you have your converted file, it's time to transfer it to your mobile device. For the Nokia 5310, copying the file to the device through the File Manager application will to the trick. It needs to go into the "Video Clips" folder. For the Samsung YP-S3, you will need to load EmoDio, and transfer the file via that interface. If you are asked for any conversion settings, just accept the default values. Once this is completed, you should be able to view the video clip on your device.

I've tested this method on both devices mentioned in this article, and have had good results. This method may not work for everyone, because the codec of your original video clip could be different to what I used. But in most cases, it should work.

I recently bought the Samsung YP-S3 MP3 player. It's a great little gadget, but I ran into some problems converting videos (AVI & MPG) into a format that can be played on the device. The bundled software that Samsung provided wasn't able to do the conversion properly, even though it claimed to. The Internet didn't immediately yield the solutions I was hoping for either. From what I read, the SVI format Samsung uses is just MP4, with some restrictions. But any configurations I tried had no effect, and all I got was a message saying that the videos were not in the correct format.

Finally I discovered a forum post where someone suggested a tool called Any Video Converter. There is a "lite" version that is free, and so I downloaded it and tried it. I converted my AVIs to MP4, and then ran them through the Samsung software. Voila! It worked. You can even customize individual settings, like resolution, FPS, sound quality, etc. And I suspect this method can be used for some of Samsung's other players as well.

Free Download: Any Video Converter

Input formats: AVI, MPG, MOV, FLV, and loads of others

Output formats: MPG, AVI, MP4, FLV, WMV