Tips for improving playback on an OLPC XO laptop?

[roystonlodge]

I recently bought an OLPC XO laptop on eBay (got it really cheap), with the intention of using it when I'm travelling, instead of lugging around a big heavy laptop.

So far I'm very happy with it. I replaced the built-in Fedora/Sugar combo with DebXO/LXDE. I've installed all the software I need and I still have over 300MB on the internal flash memory.

One of the things I use it for is to watch movies on aiplanes, trains, buses, etc. However, it has much trouble playing videos unless I compress them down first to about 512 Kbps.

This doesn't really affect the picture quality since the XO's screen is so small anyway.

However, it is a bit of a hassle to take the time to make separate copies of my movies so that they'll play on the XO. My desktop is only a 1.9Mhz with 2GB of ram, and transcoding an entire movie takes quite some time.

Usually, I save movies on my desktop as avi files using xvid. I save them at a variable bitrate so that each movie is under 700mb in size (so one movie can fit on a CD-R), regardless of the length of the movie. I'd rather not save the desktop copies of my movies at 512Kbps because they look terrible at that bitrate when I watch them on my bigscreen LCD tv.

Do y'all have any tips on what I can do to maximize the playback quality on my XO? Specifically:

1) Are there any settings I can change in VLC that will allow it to play larger video files better on underpowered hardware? Like, is there some sort of "downconverting" I can do in realtime?
2) When I first save my movies on my desktop, should I use a different codec and/or container? Would another codec or container (such as H.264 or MPEG-2, and MP4 or MOV) provide better playback?
3) Can you suggest a "happy-medium" bitrate, so that I can save my movies once as a file that plays relatively well on the XO but also look relatively good on a big-screen tv?

FYI: The XO has a 433mhz Geode CPU, 256 MB of ram, and no video acceleration (as far as I can tell).

I don't MIND transcoding a separate copy of a movie to play on the XO. It's just inconvenient, so I'd love to find a workaround. Thanks in advance!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

MPEG-2 would be the fastest, but there is just no way you'll get acceptable speed without transcoding neither hardware acceleration on a 433 MHz CPU.

[roystonlodge]

Thanks for the advice. I'll transcode to MPEG2 at 512mbps. Any suggestions regarding the most appropriate container?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

PS.

[roystonlodge]

Excellent. Thanks!