Item description:

Requirements:

PC with DirectX 8.1 or above for converting MPG, MPEG and AVI files to GBA files.
One of the GBA Flash Linkers and Cards (XG, EZ-Flash, F2A any one will do)
Gameboy Advance or GBA SP or the movie playback!

Convert Video Files (MPG, MPEG and AVI) to .GBA movie files with Avi-2-GBA and METEO video codec!

Controls:
All buttons restarts the video so be careful if you're watching a longer video.

Avi2GBA METEO Manual:

Video file: File must be an AVI or MPEG1 video playable in Windows Media Player.

GBA ROM file: Any rom name you like, end with .gba.

ROM Name: Choose something descriptive if you use a menu loader.

Bitrate: Higher value = higher quality = bigger filesize. Around 100 gives a very nice quality, 40 average, 20 very compressed. Set the framerate to automatic for low bitrates. But for the highest possible compression you need to set the frame rate manually, see below for sweet spots.
Even if you set the bitrate very low it won't go under 20kb/s in reality. Likewise even if you set it to a very high value it won't really go over 150-300kb/s depending on contents.

Picture Settings:

No crop
Displays video with original aspect ratio without cropping. Adds
black bars to sides or top and bottom if video isn't 2:3 ratio.
Good for regular TV sized 4:3 videos.

Crop
Displays video with original aspect ratio after cropping. Does not add black bars but cuts the sides or top/bottom if video isnt 2:3 ratio. Good for widescreen 16:9 videos.

Resize and ignore aspect ratio Stretches the video to fill the screen and ignores aspect ratio.

Manual Setting:

Trimming:
No Crop is like No Crop above and Crop is like Crop, but lets you select frame rate and pre-filter.
Manual crop - keep ratio: first crops off whatever value you give and then crops off more if needed to get 2:3 ratio without stretching the image. U = Up, D = Down, L = Left, R = Right.
Manual resize: lets you choose exactly how much of the image to crop. After cropping the video is stretched to the aspect ratio of the values given in Resize, default 240x160.

Frame rate:
Select frame rate. Auto should be fine for most videos. Higher rate = smoother playback but bigger filesize and worse image quality. Don't set the frame rate to more than half of the
compression value, see below for sweet spots to use. If you use Original, note that the GBA can't keep up very well with framerates over 24 FPS and will lag noticeable when it gets
up to 30 FPS.

Pre-filter:
Filters the video before encoding. Default is 4 times resample which should be fine for most videos.
None: fast, not very good, depends on source
15bit: improves quality with low compression rate
2 times resample: high quality dithering, makes color gradation smoother but can make details grainy
4 times resample: even higher quality dithering, best choice for keeping file size down.

Tips:

Meteo has a number of sweet spots in the relation between compression and frame rate. If you don't hit them the file size can grow very large with no increase in quality. Below are some recommended settings under various circumstances.

Highest possible quality and biggest file size:
Bitrate: 120-250
Trimming: Crop (or No Crop depending on personal preference)
Frame rate: 24 FPS
Pre-filter: 15bit/4 times
Should fit about 5 minutes of video into a 256mbit (32megabyte) rom depending on contents. Video quality will be excellent. Great for music videos, anime openings or other short clips.

Lowest possible quality and smallest file size:
Bitrate: 10-15
Trimming: No Crop
Frame rate: 6 FPS
Pre-filter: 4 times
Should fit about 20-25 minutes of video into a 256mbit rom depending on contents. Video will be very choppy and blocky/blurry. Great for TV shows or other longer videos but too blurry to see subtitles on anime for example. Note that these settings is a sensitive sweet spot and changing them even slightly will increase file size dramatically.

Medium quality for low motion video:
Bitrate: 30
Trimming: No Crop/Crop (depending on source/preference)
Frame rate: 6 FPS
Pre-filter: 4 times
Should fit about 12 minutes of video into a 256mbit rom depending on contents. Video will be very choppy but the image clear. Great for anime or other videos with subtitles.

Medium quality for high motion video:
Bitrate: 30
Trimming: No Crop/Crop (depending on source/preference)
Frame rate: 15 FPS
Pre-filter: 4 times
Should fit about 12 minutes of video into a 256mbit rom depending on contents. Video will be very blocky/blurry but the motion pretty smooth. Great for higher compression on music/action videos or other videos with lots motion.

Sweet spot list:
Bitrate: 50 Frame rate: 24 FPS
Bitrate: 40 Frame rate: 20 FPS
Bitrate: 30 Frame rate: 15 FPS
Bitrate: 20 Frame rate: 12 FPS
Bitrate: 20 Frame rate: 10 FPS
Bitrate: 15 Frame rate: 7.5 FPS
Bitrate: 10 Frame rate: 6 FPS
Basically, keep the bitrate at twice the frame rate or more, or the file will get huge.

To make videos look better on GBA SP you can use a video editing program (VirtualDub is highly recommended) to increase the contrast with 5-15% and color saturation with 25-30%, depending on contents of the video.

A source video that is 4:3 ratio but where the actual image is widescreen 16:9 with black bars on top and bottom can be manually trimmed to fit into the GBA screen without black bars and with aspect ratio intact. Typical example: Original video is 640x480 with actual image in 16:9 that is 640x360. Set Meteo to manual resize of up/down to 60 and left/right to 50 and leave Resize at 240x160. Or Manual crop - keep ratio, set up/down to 60 and it will automatically crop what's needed on the sides.

Note that Meteo is capable of creating very large roms that emulators are not able to run, and even if the emulator is able to open it the sound or image might get cut off while playing the video. Keep size under 256mbit (32megabyte) to be safe.

Input video with too high (over 30) FPS may cause program to get confused. It also seems sensitive to minor errors in videos that Windows Media Player might not notice. Especially AVI files might get cut off in the middle of encoding or sound might drop out. To work around this you can try to re-encode the video in VirtualDub.