All,
I thought I would pass along that I am very excited that I was able to rotate videos so I can watch videos on the widest part of the screen. It can be very simple for all of you as well by following the directions below. I have only tried this with avi files but I believe the software works with (unencrypted) DVDs as well.
See note below if you are not using a Pearl:
1. download and install MediaCoder (
MediaCoder - more than a universal audio/video transcoder)
2. download and extract the .zip file attached with the settings for 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios (4:3 is standard 16:9 is widescreen)
3. Load the file to convert into Media coder
4. Select File -> Load Preset and select the appropriate xml file that was extracted from the zip file
5. Click "Start" and wait.....load .avi on to Pearl and enjoy widescreen rotated movies on your BB.
Note: if you are using an 83xx or 88xx or Bold or other device that isn't 240x260 (w x h) you will need to change the aspect ratio...but then again why would you want to, the 83xx and 88xx are wider screens when viewing normally and you can just change the Picture size to 320x240 and remove the rotate function.
Enjoy, let me know if this works for you.
SIBION
Updated 6/20/2008: Updated xml presets to be 256x144 (widescreen) and 256x192 (full screen) because encoding dimensions should be evenly divisible by 16 apparently to run correctly.
Also, download VLC to watch the video rotated and resized on your desktop. For some reason the mencoder has a problem with playing back in QuickTime and WMP doesn't support the codec but VLC will play perfectly.
See my other post in this thread for the simple .bat converter that has been tested on a variety of .avi encoded files to convert to a rotated mp4 for the Pearl.