I've been playing around with various software and settings for transcoding video for the Nexus One. The bright, clear 800x480 screen of the Nexus One makes it great for watching videos. In order to have the smallest possible file size and to take advantage of the decoding hardware the video needs to be encoded using the H.264 codec.

One of the handiest tools in my Linux toolchest is FFMPEG, the universal media transcoder. I'm pretty sure this fantastically useful piece of software runs in the background of every service that converts audio or video from one format to another (Google video, YouTube, Archive.org, etc). Over the years I've amassed a small collection of commands that will allow me to take media from one source and convert it for use in another - for example ripping video from a DVD or the web and then editing it and burning it back to DVD.