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I just wanted to post to let people know that the Gmini 400 is an
excellent digital photo wallet. I waited a while to get one of these
and the Archos Gmini400 or Gmini 400 does many things OK but a few
things really well.

1) Photo Wallet:
This function is where this product excels. I can take a 500MB
Flash Card (CF) and download it at superfast USB 2.0 Speeds. I was
really impressed. You can pre-name a bunch of folders on the Gmini or
rename on the fly. Battery life is awesome. This is as I see it the
primary function of this little device. On vacation this device is
perfect. You have 20GB of picture room, more than enough unless you are
shooting RAW for a whole day with no downloading.

2) Movie Function
The Gmini 400 is OK for this. It CANNOT, I repeat cannot handle 720
x whatever full DVD resolution without stuttering. The device has to
keep hitting the hard drive as its buffer seems to get exhausted and as
a result you get a brief but annoying stutter in the video. I am still
working to work the video size down to 320x or 352x whatever and this
works very well as expected but I get a somewhat wierd side effect of
pixelation in the middle of a clip. For example: if a clip is 25
minutes long. At about minute 12-15 the video goes from awesome to a
pixelated mess that looks horrible. Advance the clip to minute 20 and
voila we are back to awesome quality. This happens over and over again
and I am still trying to figure it out. If anyone has a clue on this
let me know.

3) Music
Works very well, but it ain't an iPod.
4) Output to TV, Works very well, the picture quality is excellent.

Try searching for "PocketDivxEncoder." It may help with your sizing
problems and I use it with an Archos AV420. So far, I haven't experienced
the problems you have, although it has taken me forever to figure out how to
rip DVD's correctly (i.e. DVDShrink, DVD Decrypter, AnyDVD, VirtualDub,
PocketDivxEncoder, Magic DVD Ripper, DivX 5.2.1, and Super DVD Ripper.)

I find that if the thing won't play well in one of the computer's player
like Nero's player, trying to load it into the Archos is pointless. Another
scheme is if you can load directly onto the player from the source (from the
DVD player to the recorder's input if your has that feature). Takes less
time and quality isn't bad.

B~

wrote:
[trimmed]
> 1) Photo Wallet:
> This function is where this product excels. I can take a 500MB
> Flash Card (CF) and download it at superfast USB 2.0 Speeds.

What does USB have to do with the CF -> Gmini transfer? This is
a direct xfer from the CF socket to the disk, and does not use
USB.

Naturally, a fast implementation of USB2.0 is great for transferring
from the Gmini to my computer. How long does it take to xfer, say,
200 images of 2.5MB each (total of 500MB) to your computer? But more
importantly - how long to originally xfer the same data from your CF
(exactly which one?) to the Gmini?

The above may look picky but without objective data it is hard for
me to get excited about it. I have looked at tests of a few units
and found them incredibly slow where it matters (CF->Disk in the
field) where my 2GB CF would take 30-60m to download (in other
words impractical).

A modern CF should deliver 5MB/s (faster ones easily more than
double this) meaning a full 2GB CF should xfer in under 10m.
500MB should take less than 2m.

--
Eyal Lebedinsky () <http://samba.org/eyal/>
attach .zip as .dat

I don't have an exact time for you but suffice it to say that a 500MB
CF Lexar 40x Card took about 2-3 minutes to transfer. Not bad don't you
think?

I will try and time it and get you a number.