Leapster Explorer: Play Theora Videos

This how-to will show you how to load your own Theora (Ogg Vorbis) video files on to the Leapster Explorer and play them from the standard User Interface.

Programs Needed
ffmpeg2theora

Winscp or similar client *ToDo add link to sshd how to*

7zip archiver or similar

Text Editor

Software Needed
Video file to convert, any thing ffmpeg2theora can handle.

The leaplet movie folder from Leapfrog

Under Windows
First you need to find a suitable video file, usual rules apply, better the source better the final video. Download ffmpeg2theora and save it in a directory.

Using your free leaplet card, download the movie available, as of this writing it was, Leapfrog's Letter Factory

Once downloaded you'll find it in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Leapfrog\LeapFrog Connect\LeapsterExplorer\LST3-0x001B000A-000000.lf2 extract the folder with 7zip or similar.

Go into the folder and delete LetterFactory320x240a2v7F12_AV.ogg that is the main movie file. You will be replacing it with the movie you create later. You can also modify the png logos if you want here, as they will be showing up in the Explorer UI and it will help you tell them apart if you load the Leapfrog movie on there. Be sure to save them as 8bit PNG. Next you're going to need to know a couple things about your video, open up VideoInfo.json in a text editor, changing VideoFile and AudioFile to the name of your soon to be theora video file, VideoTime is the number of seconds the video is, and framerate will be 12. Now open a command prompt and cd to the directory you saved ffmpeg2theora in. Copy and Paste your source video file to the same directory and run this command in the prompt. 12fps and 16000hz sample rate, seem to be the max before syncing issues occur. You could play around with this if you want.

ffmpeg2theora-02.7.exe -o output_file.ogg -F 12 -H 16000 input_file.ext

Once the file is finished encoding, copy the .ogg file to the /LST3-0x001B000A-000000 folder. You can rename the folder something easier to remember like /My_Video.

Open up your ssh program and navigate to /LF/Bulk/ProgramFiles on your Explorer. And upload your folder.

Now eject your Explorer, pull the usb cable out, and let it refresh to the main UI, you might have to scroll the screen over, but you should see your new movie file there. If all went well, you can tap on it, and it should start playing. Tap on the screen at any time to bring up the player controls, or hit the home button to exit out of it with a confirmation.

Under Linux

 * ToDo