This tutorial is from Werner Ruotsalainen of Smartphonemag.com.

The virtualdub route is good and you'll likely learn something going down that street but as he mentions, PocketDivXEncoder is by far the easiest way and it's still free.

Get it here:

http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/

 "SUPER" Is my favorite application for this. Every setting you need to configure is on one screen,  you drop your source file onto it, then change the settings and then it goes to work. 

Example - My DS.  I wanted to try watching some of my favorite episodes on the DS on the train, Opened super,  dropped the dvd into the drive and dragged the files accross,  picked DS as the output and clicked start.

There is alot of presets, for example "DS" which uses quite a proprietry codec and format, however if you know the specifics of what you want to encode, you can configure it all yourself. 

Best of all its free.  Its one of those apps you find and then say to yourself "....why haven't i heard of this before? this is incredible"   Check it out if you play around in this space. 

davidc:

 "SUPER" Is my favorite application for this. Every setting you need to configure is on one screen,  you drop your source file onto it, then change the settings and then it goes to work. 

Why haven't I heard of this before? This is incredible!

:)  I'm making it encode something right now.

Adam Z Lein:

Why haven't I heard of this before? This is incredible!

Thats exactly what i said!

 I have both SUPER and PocketDIvXEncoder.  SUPER is perfect for encoding to 3GP, but I have issues with WMV and AVI files on my Blackjack with it.

 I have a frontend for XViD encoding called Lathe (no longer supported) that works really well do downsample and watching with DIvX Player for WM

davidc:

Thats exactly what i said!

 It took a little while to figure out where it was encoding to, but that's a great program. 

Usually I just set up syncing playlists of videos and recorded TV shows in Windows Media Center and let that sync with the Windows Mobile phones, but that doesn't work for obscure files sometimes.  Media Center syncing is great though...  you can make automatic playlists that automatically sync the latest episode of Doctor Who or Hannah Montana as soon as they've been recorded.  Set it up once, and the latest episodes are always on your phone!  

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who thinks that's cool. 

 That is very cool Adam. Almost as cool as having the exact same setup, but streaming to your xbox 360 downstairs.   You media center does everything it normally does but you dont have to have it sitting next to your tv.   

Now if only they would make a Live Mesh client for windows mobile (one that can actually transfer files, not just view your page) and a client for the xbox. I would be very happy!