Software

In order for the conversion software to work you require a few other components on your PC. First up you require the DirectX August05 redistributable, next is windows media player 9 or 10 and finally you require the codec’s installed to allow playback of any files you intend to convert. 3 extra installs may seem like a hassle however the chances are that many of you will already have at least two of the above installed already, if not all three.

So with the install complete you decide whether you want to convert movies or music and you select the relevant wizard.

NOTE: The GBA Movie Player also allows you to play some games, view pictures and read text books however we will only be concentrating on the movie and audio functionality in this review.

Video Conversion

Converting a video with the supplied software is an easy process.

First off open the converter and are shown the following screen:

You select the file(s) you want to convert to GBA MP format by clicking the add button on the left and then configure the quality as required. For use on my DS I selected Contrast 50, Brightness 55, Saturation 1 and Sharpness 5 for “live” video with animation set to the same with the exception of sharpness which was 3.

Generally I chose Crystal Fast and best compression for the other settings and found the resulting files to be a very good balance between size and quality.

Additional options in this tool allow you to limit the file size before splitting, choose the output folder and select mono or stereo sound.

Once you’ve selected your profile you hit convert and the files are created, our test file of a 22minute Family Guy episode came in at just under 100mb using the settings noted above. A 42minute episode of “The 4400” came in at approx 300mb. Conversion happens a little faster than real-time with the Crystal Fast profile and a little slower than real-time with Crystal Slow. This was when using a P4 3.46EE cpu so your results may vary.

There is one feature worth mentioning also and that’s the preview window, when you hit convert you get to see a preview of your video quality so that you’ll immediately know if it’s to your satisfaction. A useful feature which many conversion tools lack.

Audio Conversion

Converting audio happens in much the same way as video conversion. The Screenshot below shows the conversion video for music.

Again it’s a case of selecting your output format and input files, you can choose to convert in stereo or mono again and if desired you can also increase the volume of the track.

Conversion of Audio takes seconds for each track and you’ll have a full album converted in less than 1 minute and file sizes remain almost the same as the original source files.

Using the Device.

The first thing you want to do when buying the GBA MP is to purchase yourself a decent Compact Flash card. We are going to recommend that you purchase at least a 512mb card to allow you to convert full movies at decent quality. Our card of choice would be Crucial’s 1gb (or 512mb) Compact Flash cards. We used the 1gb version throughout our testing and it worked flawlessly…it was also incredibly fast which makes a huge difference if you are transferring files every day for watching/listening on the way to work.

To show how this benefits you here are the file transfer speeds we measured:

dont have flash installed? then click here for a jpeg image

 

So, if like me your transferring 1 hour of video you’ll save about 2mins per transfer each day by using the Crucial Compact Flash Card. Buying this card also ensures you’ll get decent and stable transfer rates whilst streaming video/audio to your Nintendo. You can purchase the card here

So, once you have your Movie Player and Flash card and the files converted getting them to the Nintendo couldn’t be easier. First off you drag and drop your audio/video files to the Compact Flash card and insert it into the GBA Movie Player.

Next insert the Movie Player into your Nintendo and power on.

After a few seconds you are presented with the main menu of the Movie Player. This, as with all of the other screens can be skinned. For the screenshots below we’ve used the impressive Aqua skin available here (note requires registration).

From this main menu you select the type of file you want to open and you are presented with a list of the media onscreen.