State of the software
A number of competing technologies have emerged on the Palm computing platform, which is surprising given the number of issues that need to be addressed to provide a viable movie solution. These issues include size of the completed files, quality of the compressed imagery, smoothness of playback, usability of the compression software, and support for synchronized sound. My company, TealPoint Software, has developed TealMovie (at http://www.tealpoint.com/softmovi.htm), which we humbly consider to be the first product to provide a true all-around solution. It runs on all Palm models and supports sound on all models newer than the original Palm III. In fact, it currently is the only product to offer any kind of sound support at all. Best of all, TealMovie can be used on a 30-day free trial basis, so you can try it out and evaluate the technology before purchasing it.

Making movies
TealMovie files are made using TealPoint's TealMovie Encoder, which comes as part of the $19.95 TealMovie Encoder/player package. It's pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A


Create TealMovie files using TealMovie Encoder. Roll over picture for a larger image.

The TealMovie Encoder runs under Windows and reads in standard AVI files. The encoder provides a good number of configurable options and can perform any necessary scaling, cropping, or color processing. Still, a few hints and tricks can help to get optimal results.

Video source material
As is the case whenever working with video, it's always best to start with the cleanest source material available. If your original footage is in a video format, you can capture it using a video capture card and export it to AVI format, which all PC video programs support.

When taping new footage, pay careful attention to lighting and focus to make sure you have sharp, high-contrast video with a minimum of graininess and video noise, as these can be amplified in the compression process. If working with files already in a digital format, beware that the footage is probably already compressed and that any noise or glitches (artifacts) introduced by the compression used can look much worse when converted to a Palm device. Thus, when generating your own AVI files, it's usually best to save them as "uncompressed" AVIs, as this will ensure that no additional noise is added to the image as part of the AVI-writing process.

If the quality of the video leaves something to be desired, you can sometimes compensate by using a third-party video processing tool. Use one to make sure that the blacks are a full, dark black, the whites a full, bright white, and the colors true. TealPoint provides a link to the freeware program VirtualDub (at http://www.virtualdub.org), which has some powerful image processing and conversion functions, including the ability to convert MPEG files to AVI. A slight warning, though: VirtualDub's interface takes some getting used to. Video newbies might be more comfortable with a commercial package with a comprehensive manual like Adobe Premiere (at http://www.adobe.com), which is a pricey but powerful industry standard.