Rockbox on the sansa E280

Got the sansa last year for xmas. Hadn't used it too much. Wanted to play video, but the sandisk software for converting was pitiful at best and the highly uncommon video container and encoding made it near impossible to encode files in linux using something like mplayer.

Enter rockbox. Plays mpeg1 and mpeg2 videos, provides a highly customizable interface, and even plays gameboy games! Check out the manual for installation, etc.

My video conversion script ended up something like this:

#!/bin/sh
# convert $1 into an mpeg named $2 for use with the sansa

# options tried:
# 15, 24 fps
# 256kbps, 512kbps
# mpeg1, mpeg2

# 256k yields poor quality video
# 512k doesn't work with 24fps
# no noticeable diff for mpeg 1/2 - 1 is simpler, use it

mencoder "${1}" -of mpeg -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp2:abitrate=128 -af resample=44100:0:0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video:vbitrate=512 -vf scale,harddup -ofps 15 -zoom -xy 220 -o "${2}"