Using FFMpeg to convert videos for the VTech KidiGo

So a neighbor of mine came up to me with a VTech KidiGo. It’s a kids audiobook, mp3 and video player. And it’s a horrible one at that. You either have the choice to buy audio files and videos from VTech, or you’ll have to put up with a video player that only accepts a strange format.

So this neighbor came up to me wanting to put videos on this thing and of course nothing really worked. Everything I tried failed on the KidiGo with “Invalid Format”. Finally I tried to transcode the video with ffmpeg and what worked was the following:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -vf scale=480:272 -b:v 1M -vcodec libxvid output.avi

The resulting media file has the correct dimensions and the audio file is an untouched 128kbps mp3 stereo stream. Heres the VLC info on the resulting codec used:

the resulting codec used as displayed by vlc
the resulting codec used as displayed by vlc

3 Replies to “Using FFMpeg to convert videos for the VTech KidiGo”

  1. I don’t even get “invalid format”. The KidiGo (video player for baby goats?) that I was presented with simply ignores any .avi files I copy into its VIDEO directory from my Linux box. The files are not even listed by the device, no matter what mencoder/ffmpeg parameters I tried (including yours). Are we supposed to install Learning Lodge (which requires root access to Windows or Mac and won’t run on WINE) just to load our own AVIs? Or perhaps there are different versions of the KidiGo that behave subtly differently? It’s really awful. I do wish people wouldn’t keep expecting me to fix stuff like this just because I’m a computer guy.

    1. I always wonder if people would ask a 5-star chef to microwave some ready-made food just because he’s probably better at heating things up. Obviously if you study computer science you must be inherently great a fixing other peoples tech problems… I need to send out bills to people for these kind of things. ;)

      BTW, I advised the people to get an android tablet and put VLC on it. Much better than the KidiGo anyways.

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