Alternative video player - General Questions and Answers

I've playing around with a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone and wasn't satisfied with the Windows Media Player.
When it is opening a video, the video is all choppy but the program becomes totally unresponsive
Seeking is just a guessing game. I hold down the rewind/forward button and don't really have a clear idea where the video is going to stop at all.
Just wondering are there any good alternatives video players that will load faster and be more responsive?
The only three players I've looked at was:
TCPMP which seems very good...except I'm not sure how I'm supposed to install it and customize it (I think there was some plugin to get it to play FLV files?).
Core Player Mobile seemed pretty good as well.
PocketTV didn't seem to support many formats.
In general, I use Avidemux to change videos (AVI's or FLV's) I find online to MP4's with MPEG4-SP video and AAC audio. I wouldn't mind be able to run FLV files without having to process them or being able to encode h.264 video but that's not too important to me.
What is important to me is a responsive and fast video player.
Any suggestions?

I use CorePlayer and it's wonderful.. don't see any reason to use anything else.
which device do you have?

PanTech Matrix Pro
Apparently someone involved in the project was a college buddy of my dad or something.
Though I did notice a weird issue...the frames don't seem to update at the same time...
Like whenever the screen flashes or something moves suddenly, I can notice that the bottom half of the screen tends to update before the top half of the screen.
And the division of the screen is rarely in the same place.
So basically if the video is flashing black and white, the screen looks like a wave of black and white is moving from the bottom on the screen to the top in a real jerky manner.
Really annoying when...well...anything moves.
Does it for all my videos even if the video is low fps and an easy codec.
The default windows media player doesn't do it...but the default players pretty sucks in every other way.
Any idea of how I can tweak it?
I'm using 1.3 for Windows Mobile 6.1
edit: Hmmm...setting the video driver to GDI seems to make it slightly less noticeable.

im with nir i sue coreplayer ansdi t plays pretty much every codec and theres no need to install extra codecs
this includes divx
its not free but worth it

You can use TCPMP if you want some thing free and good

Oh I tried. But Coreplayer's h264 playback is amazing to me.

movie player
i had coreplayer but its freezing on me so what else can I use?

it froze on me too!

CorePlayer is fantastic - the only drawback that I have occured so far is that fact that it cannot play AC3 sound files commonly found in *.avi files...otherwise, it is brilliant. Worth the money in my opinion.
No need to encode or whatever, usually I just drag and drop video files onto my phone and it plays it just fine...much better than converting through iTunes ....unfortunately no 720p/1080p just yet, but that's just asking for too much

Related

Blank screen when using Windows Media Player

Hi there --
I'm trying to help my wife with a really strange Windows Media Player problem.
She has four videos on her phone (T-Mobile MDA). One video is a WMV recorded using the camera, in mp4 format. The other three are MPEGs converted to WMVs using Windows Movie Maker in WinXP.
To a first order, all the videos play fine. However, if she plays the captured video, THEN tries to play one of the converted videos, she will get a blank screen. If you go to the "task manager", and kill WMP, you can play the converted videos again, until the next time you play the captured video.
The symptom is a completely blank screen. Sound plays fine, and the cursor moves across like the video is playing, but no video.
Has anyone else seen this symptom?
Thankx!
imho them wmp is not a really good player
i would try winamp if that also do it
you can narrow it down to
a codec issue
or a video card driver issue
This does sound like a codec issue. Personally I don't recommend using WMP on your phone or on your desktop.
Instead download the free TCPMP. It supports many formats and has a wide verity of options to control playback, performance and memory usage.
http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download
codec?
I'm definitely going to have my wife try the other media player, thanks.
A codec may be involved, but there clearly has to be something else at foot: the problem arises across individual playing sessions. All the videos play, if you start from a fresh WMP. The faulty interaction only comes up if you play a video *from the phone* first. Totally weird.
So it sounds like no one else has seen this...

[Q] Have you watched a movie yet on your HTC Pro?

If so how was the viewing and what media player did you use? I haven't tried it yet. Although I do have the latest version of TCMP loaded on my device.
I've moved some tv programs over (synced them like this http://www.fuzemobility.com/?p=743) and the quality was really good. I'm just using Windows Media player which is probably the worst of the players. I found that if I went to fast forward there would be a delay between the sound and video but if I just let it play it was perfect.
I followed the advice that was posted in a previous thread (I can't locate it at the moment) and ripped my DVDs to MP4/H.264/AAC/1000 kbps/29.97 bps, 640/360 size (for 16:9 movies), then used the built-in Windows Media Player to play them. The playback is virtually flawless - smooth, no dropped frames, virtually no pixleization on action shots, etc. This even works great for really difficult movies - Blade Runner, ID4, Matrix, etc. Some notes:
- I'm storing the movies on a 8GB Class 6 microSDHC card, which provides much faster performance than the cheaper Class 2 and 4 cards
- The files are big - each 2 hour movie is around 1GB
- The movies still play great in fullscreen mode
I've used the free apps like SUPER or AutoMKV, as well as Corel DVD Copy, and they all work fine.
John
Because I already had the iPod Touch, I didn't really feel like having an iPhone. I really thought the TP would be a good alternative. Of course I realized that the multimedia experience would be a little less because of the smaller display etc. But I never would have guessed that playing any movie on my TP would be such a disappointment. I tried the mediaplayer of course and I also tried the coreplayer and the Divx player for the PPC. They all play the movie either too small, no movie at all or bad quality etc. I have to admit, I stopped trying pretty soon and will pick up on this as soon as I have flashed a custom rom or something, but I would really appreciate it when someone could direct us in this thread on how to enjoy movies on the TP.
^ that's weird because I'm using the newest version of coreplayer and its opening and playing pretty much all divx and xvid encoded files that I've copied over. I am trying to find a simple way to copy my favorite dvd movies to it though (for a long bus ride this coming T-day).
BTW, does anyone know how long the battery will last watching a movie on full charge without AC power?
Haven't watched a movie yet, but was playing around with the AT&T CV application (Cingular/ Cellular Video). My daughter and I watched a couple of preview for upcoming movies. I was blown away by the picture quality.
I moved over some regular sized movies onto my microSDHC, playing on coreplayer, output GDI, quality Medium, and it runs perfectly full screen. Make sure aspect ratio is 4:3
The only gripe so far is WMV files that are larger resolution on Coreplayer or WMP. Everything else seems to play fine. I have a copy of Casino Royale on my phone just to piss on the iphone boys when I show them my resolution and clarity. The playback is flawless it really looks like a a mini HD screen, I love this thing.
i watched happy gilmore then a bunch of tv eps that looked great using coreplayer and the divx player
but i downloaded some movie trailers from ign in wmv format and they were vga res and would barely play they had so much lag! i dont understand that at all
joeh4x said:
I moved over some regular sized movies onto my microSDHC, playing on coreplayer, output GDI, quality Medium, and it runs perfectly full screen. Make sure aspect ratio is 4:3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make sure aspect ratio is 4:3? Why is that? I just tried that and this f*cked up my widescreen episode of Heroes. The GDI, quality Medium tip however, made my movie run much smoother. But again, having to set the quality to medium surely doesn't enhance the 'movie experience'.
I guess it depends how the original movie is formated. i used 4:3 for 640x360 movies. I think medium still looks great. I dont think you could expect any phone to run it super high quality. Remember we have a super high res screen for a phone.
I've streamed Borat from my PC with Orb and the quality was excellent.
I have noticed that I can watch a movie that is 640x480 at the highest quality no problem. The second i try to watch a 640 x 350 movie at high quality it lags like crazy. Anyone else notice/try this?

Video's On The Fuze

How will you get a full movie (Wall-E) to work on the AT&T Fuze? Do you have to convert to a different format or size? Please help.
For best performance, it's best that you convert it. The more you start doing it and mess with the settings, the better you'll become and find which settings yield the best results.
I originally tried Quicktime Pro for this, but the people at Apple have decided that the iPhone screen is the biggest resolution they want to support on export, and I don't want the player scaling up, so I had to look elsewhere.
I'm playing with a program called Allok MPEG4 converter (http://www.alloksoft.com/mp4_converter.htm), which seems to do a nice job if a bit slowly. Of course, to do a nice job requires LOTS of processing power. I have been using the defaults except for making the output H264 and 640x480. Once the files are converted, I just copy them to the Fuze's SD card and play them from there.
I use a program called VideoReDo (www.videoredo.com) to suck in the DVD files and make a single large MPG file from them (the free DVDShrink will also work for this, if you can still find it somewhere), then load that single file into Allok and let it run. A decent DVD will take pretty much overnight to process. The results have been very good so far.
Start with a small (5 minutes or so) piece to practice with and try various settings, then when you're happy, let the full movie conversion run overnight.
Also, be aware that most commercial DVD's will have DRM and you will have to deal with that before you can do anything with the files.
xhypnotik said:
How will you get a full movie (Wall-E) to work on the AT&T Fuze? Do you have to convert to a different format or size? Please help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you are converting from an .avi file then you can try PocketDivXEncoder (freeware). It has presets for Diamond which you should start with. You should decide whether you want VGA or QVGA. VGA should look a little sharper but will be ~30% increase in file size and on a 2.8" screen the difference may not be much. Test for your self
I would modify some of the settings though. Leave video as is. Change the audio (small arrow on the left) to 32Khz 80 kbps stereo. Go to advanced and tick 2-Pass and Xvid.
What is your source file for the movie? If its on DVD then you definately want to convert it. Once all of my media is ripped or converted to the container / format I want I leave it at computer base resolution and just play it on the phone. Core player has done pretty well at handleing what I put at it so far.
Now that PocketDivx Encoder is a good program and does a pretty good job and shrinking files down.
Any recommendations on codecs, resolution and bitrate? I would especially be interested if anyone knew which settings preserved battery life the best while watching video.
Menneisyys has a good thread on video playback.
I use Core Player and I really don't covert any of the TV shows that I watch.
Windows Movie Maker is a great tool too. Its free (if you have XP SP2 installed) and it uses WMV format that Windows Media Player Mobile will play without any addons.
If you watch alot of movies on your Touch Pro I would suggest investing in Core Player, it plays most of the commonly used codex and its pretty quick too.
Bit rates and resolutions: I have found that if its a TV show that is about 40 to an hour, I dont have to do anything with it. For example an episode of House is about 42 minutes long, its 624x352 and running at 23.97 frames. With Core Player the episode looks flawless, eventhough the statistics on Core Player say its dropping frames, I can't tell.
I would think that a full length movie would perform a little worse, or a TV show with alot of action.
Also fatheadpi has this thread posted about encoding video for the Raphael phones.
Thanks for all the reply's. I'll try them out.
Watch Movies on Fuze Problems
So I got an HTC FUZE not too long ago and have been trying desperately to get it to play movies.
Windows Mobile Player does not want to play the wmv files I give it...
and no matter what file I use with CorePlayer the audio is terrible
mpegs, mp4, avi, h.264...
All of these videos will play fine on my computer but as soon as I get it to my phone, the audio goes to crap.
To make it all more difficult, I only have a Mac to sync this device with, so Windows based programs are useless to me...
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks all,
'Jammin
I too have been trying and so far no Success
Operating my Fuze in cooperation with a Mac Laptop is difficult enough. The programs most suggest to convert videos exist mainly for PC.
I have used many methods of conversion and found no luck with producing watchable quality on my FUZE
CorePlayer gives me bad audio playback when the video played perfectly on my computer
and Windows Media Player will not play my bigger wmv files for some reason.
Let me know if you found a combo of programs and settings that really works
'Jammin
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112
I use this and it works great. Converting the video is a pain in the butt.
+1 Take time to convert but yield a much better result in viewing your video in either Album or WMP
Thanks for the info, but isn't that program for PC's?
I have many different methods of converting videos
from freeware that helps me with wmv's (as I am on a Mac and that is somewhat hard to do)
To Final Cut Pro's Compressor and even Adobe's version
Windows Media Player on my Fuze seems not to like any files over 100mb
and even though the video will look awesome on my computer after conversion, the players I use on my phone completely destroy the audio...
I've searched up and down threads like these and am at a complete loss...
qwik question
which is better to convert movies to my fuze spb video or avs video?
sorry people
um what size micro sd card on average would I need to store the videos?
get at minimum a 4GB microSDHC... under $8 if you're lucky
or a 8GB for $16... no reason to jump for that now that memory isn't that expensive
Use coreplayer bro
I bought it, and its amazing $29.95... Don't convert anything that I get. It only has trouble with on6 flv files, and devs say it'll never support codec. Shame, because flash 9 and 10 protected movies are almost all encoded with this...
A small ffmpeg utility can run one through flv to avi, keeping aspect and original source resoultion, and process a 1.5 hour flv file in about 3 minutes and give you a great quality avi output for your phone
With TCPMP I get lag when watching full movies, but Coreplayer is fine
Set video to the qtv display, high quality.
If you've got bad audio, perhaps you need to lower the pre-am if muffled, or increase if quiet
Also, you may have equaliser enabled, and not know it.
Check the options section go through pages
There definatley should not be a problem playing media with this program
Only problem now is.... I bought this... ya sweet - but now can't afford to get my raph unlocked until next month
So still without a mobile
xhypnotik said:
How will you get a full movie (Wall-E) to work on the AT&T Fuze? Do you have to convert to a different format or size? Please help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
News Flash
Disney released Wall-E on DVD and Blue Ray discs. I have yet to see a cell phone with a built in DVD or Blue Ray player.
The motion picture experts group (standards body)...MPEG for short, many years ago, decided to evolve the distribution techology (for consumers), from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. MPEG-4 is a broad spec and covers everything from small hand held devices to HD quality video (H.264, VC-1 etc).
Your Touch Pro has built in hardware acceleration to handle MP4 up to a reasonable limit. Your best built in video players, as delivered by the OEM, are HTC Album and Windows Media Player. Both apps support hardware accleration for MP4 video.
I continue to read about (and have purchased) Coreplayer. In the mobile space, Coreplayer is a modest improvement over the free open source TCPMP player. CorePlayer, caused a brief stir when they half-hacked into the (modest) built in hardware acceleration on the HTC Kaiser.
On a Touch Pro, Coreplayer does support non industry standard video formats, but only in software mode (slowly rendered down sized formats). Coreplayer fails dismally, when compared to Album or WMP for MP4 playback.
So...yes, convert your content to a fully supported format. Or...leech your content in supported formats. Search this forrum and you'll find guidance, and free conversion tools.

[Q] Can the Thunderbolt handle 720p HD video smoothly?

Howdy folks, hope some of you might have a few suggestions for a new Android guy.
After much love and consideration for the Android platform, I decided to come over to the Android world. Sold my iPhone 4 and picked myself up a Thunderbolt at the neighborhood Verizon store. So far, I love it. Great device, screen, customization and service. A world of difference from AT&T. However there is one lingering issue.
On my iPhone, I could send 720p direct from iTunes to the phone. It played smooth as silk, nary an issue, perfect.
With the Tbolt's fantastic size of screen, I would think it would be the perfect place for mobile HD video. However, when I take an mp4 onto the Tbolt, it chokes. The playback is varying levels of choppy, and audio often loses sync.
Am I doing something wrong? Is the Tbolt not capable of playing this type of file? I see a lot of talk on the forums about Froyo messing with 720 playback. I'm not sure what to do because aside from that one issue, I love the phone.
Any feedback/advice/info is appreciated. I love Android and so far the community rocks.
Signed,
Former iPhone User
i had the same problem. installed "vplayer advanced" and it was much better - no skipping, no sync issues. i think you just need to find a different player. the hardware should play them fine, but i havent tried a 5 gig 720p HD movie yet. and the default player wont play mkv files, but vplayer did.
You guys do realize the thunderbolt's screen is 800x480, which is a lower resolution than 720 (which you normally think of in terms of 1280x720 resolution). The horizontal scan lines on the thunderbolt (480) is the same as a standard definition television (640x480), so all you're getting is a placebo effect and a huge drain on your phone battery/resources.
yareally said:
You guys do realize the thunderbolt's screen is 800x480, which is a lower resolution than 720 (which you normally think of in terms of 1280x720 resolution). The horizontal scan lines on the thunderbolt (480) is the same as a standard definition television (640x480), so all you're getting is a placebo effect and a huge drain on your phone battery/resources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally understand this. However, for me its more an issue of ease of use. I don't want to convert videos 3 times because I have 3 devices, which was the nice thing about the iPhone/iTunes. One file, done.
Plus, I've downconverted the videos to test, sometimes they skip too, and they never look as good to me. Placebo effect maybe, but again the ease of use thing is the biggest importance to me. If the iPhone 4 can handle this kind of file, why shouldn't my Tbolt?
Problem is probably not the hardware (since the thunderbolt outdoes the iphone in this), it's probably the codecs on the phone not being adept enough to handle them or the developer of your media player not keeping up with certain advancements in android hardware.
Just for instance on a pc, coreAVC will work on really old computers for x264 hd movies (ive gotten it to run smooth on pentium centrinos), however, the built in codecs for something like VLC player (last I checked), couldnt handle a computer that old for rendering HD.
The other issue could be how well they (both the android os developers and the media player developers) take advantage of using the hardware to do all the heavy lifting in the decoding. If it's all being done with software (like VLC does by default on a pc), then that is going to kill the cpu. If it's leveraging the gpu in the phone to take some of the burden off the cpu (similar to what something like coreAVC does now on a pc with nvidia's cuda), then that would help immensely. If in fact android can leverage the gpu to handle things like video decoding, then the final issue is whether or not the developer of your chosen media player is taking advantage of that.
However, if it was some sort of hardware issue, it could be the read speed of the included sd cards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#Speeds. Try sticking a smaller video file directly in the internal storage of the phone and see if that makes a difference.
I haven't looked too far into the internals of the typical android phone and os yet, but coming from many years of linux and windows development for the web and desktop, those are just my thoughts on the issue.
Android OS 3.0 has an encoder built into it already for h264 avc, so that should take care of issues in the near future for converting your video. Whenever we get gingerbread finally (well 2.3.3 that is), we'll have vp8 decoder as well and that should run things much smoother as google built it themselves for html5 video streaming, so I'd hope it would run efficiently on android. I've read issues with people not being able to handle high res MP4 files on the inspire (the att's thunderbolt) so it doesnt overly surprise me you are as well. I assume they are h264/mp4 files, right? Perhaps try encoding to h263 if so or wmv
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html#core
Yeah your gonna have to Download a Video Player app that is Hardware accelerated and plays those kinds of Video Formats. Rockplayer should work too i think.
Been up all night loading my anime + tv shows on the bolt. I agree, i really don't want to be bothered with trans-coding everything i have, plus the bolt does has DLNA capabilities which is another plus if you have a server loaded with the proper media but chances are, those are 720p or better as well.
The best player i used so far is rock player, it beats out meridian, qq player, and vplayer advanced as is the only player that played back everything i threw at it. that said is not pefect, it drops frames when you try to playback 720p mp4 but still smooth for the most part. It lags a bit more with 720p mkv, and lags really bad with 720p avi files. Anything not using the native hardware decoder however, sucks a ton of battery life out the Bolt.
it will playback almost anything at 480p, which is about what the screen native resolution is at. The Bolt does come with a Adreno 205 gpu but i don't think that does anything for video acceleration, maybe is missing the proper hardware decoding chipset which is why is not armed with a HDMI port.
It should only get better with improvement in software/codec but for now, is a let down in terms of video playback.
Try Diceplayer 1.3.0
Thunderbolt's QSD8655 can play H.264 720p.
but HTC's stock media player can't handle MKV, DTS , Flac.
Diceplayer take advantage of hw decoder.
it can play MKV(+DTS+720p).
Don't worry about battery life. diceplayer use almost same power as stock player.
MoboPlayer with ARM V7_NEON coded plays everything fine.
http://www.moboplayer.com/moboplayer_en.html
For reasons stated earlier there does not seem to be any good solution that will handle all common formats used in a PC/Mac/Home theater system on a Tbolt without re-encoding. I posted a video player "shoot out" of sorts over on the "other" forum. In short I was completely let down by all the players I tested. There are a couple here I did not include at that time.
http://forum.androidcentral.com/ver...layers-review-test-comparison-included-3.html
The only one I left on my device was MoboPlayer.
Don't bother with files larger then 4GB either, our SD cards do not support them (or was it the OS...). That being said a good 720p rip with 5 or 6 channels of audio (yes I know there are not enough speakers to hear them all - just so no re-encode required) should generally be smaller than 4 GB.
I am quite keen to hear about any diceplayer vs. MoboPlayer as I did not test diceplayer.
yumms said:
MoboPlayer with ARM V7_NEON coded plays everything fine.
http://www.moboplayer.com/moboplayer_en.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mobo or Rock or vital or QQPlayer can not play MKV(+DTS) HD.
dice is the best. dice use hw video decoder. no sw video decoding.
juami said:
Mobo or Rock or vital or QQPlayer can not play MKV(+DTS) HD.
dice is the best. dice use hw video decoder. no sw video decoding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did some quick testing of diceplayer. It is no good. I used the same blend of file types, video formats, audio formats, files sizes and audio and video quality as my tests I posted about with the link to the other forum (prior post in this thread). Diceplayer was very bad. It played 1 out of 4 of the files I tested. Some played but had garbled audio or a very slow frame rate meaning effectively no successful play. I found Moboplayer to be slightly better than Diceplayer.
We really need an equivalent to VLC for Android. VLC as anyone can testify is the "swiss army knife" of players. Plex is the only app better than VLC in that it can output DTS and Dolby via optical (not concerns for a mobile device obviosuly). Who can or wants to re-encode a multi terabyte movie library?

[Q] Smooth 720p/1080p video playback possible?

In particular MKV files.
I have noted that if I playback an 720p MKV with AC3/DTS sound the video plays perfectly fluid. No microjudder or frame drops AFAIK. But there is no sound of course because the inbuilt player does not support AC3/DTS natively.
However add AAC 2.0 audio into the file (MKV or MP4 container it matters not) I see judder. Kinda like when you have 23.976FPS playing on a 50Hz PAL CRT.
I have tried muxing at various framerates and interestingly the judder gets faster the higher the FPS. Very odd.
I'm used to dealing with AV stuff as I use MPC-HC/ReClock/MadVR etc to my HDTV over HDMI (BTW my Panasonic G20 Plasma does not recognise the TF HDMI output. My PC monittor does however so the TF is outputting in an unsupported res/Hz for my HDTV obviously).
It's puzzling me how when the TF does not have to playback audio the video is perfect but as soon as it has to decode audio it throws a wobbly.
The other interesting thing of note is that Youtube vids at 720p and even 1080p (Big Buck Bunny for instance) play just fine. Methinks that Flash is optimized to the Tegra 2 chip whilst the inbuilt TF player (and all the other players) are not. Moboplayer, Vplayer etc are all a bit crap at it. There is one player called LittlePlayer which gives the option of hardware playback but it is no better than the inbuilt player as it does not decode AC3/DTS and it too judders when AAC audio is played.
Anyone got a clue why this is the case? I was wondering if it was a UK specific issue (would not put it past Asus to make it PAL centric) but then why would it play a 23.976FPS 720p x264 in MKV perfectly (sans audio obviously)?
Yeah I have a 720p mkv and it plays a little off with the sound but I play a higher quality move still at 720p and the sound is like a second off. And the 1080p vids I have don't play at all. What app do you use to play your videos?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
you must be doing something wrong with the muxing or the avc stream you ended up with is not extracted properly.
I encode movies with x264 (commandline), encode the audio with neroaacen(lc, cbr, 128kbit) and mux them with mp4box. The file plays perfectly with the built-in player, meridian or rockplayer in hardware decoding mode.
Most mkv TV series I can extract th evideo stream from and use it, but not all. Some use too many reference frames while encoding and the TF can't handle it.
X264 profile high, level 4.1, preset veryfast or medium. No other options except quality level ((crf 20 or 21 I use mostly).
I've tried MKVToolnix for straight muxing. A simple MKV to MP4 prog without reencoding called mkvavi2mp4. Handbrake (Used settings suggested on this forum). I've also tried some test clips from various sites. All of them judder when audio is being decoded. I am not talking about HUGE judder. I am talking about very small judder. The video is not 100% fluid. Some may not even notice it. I do because I am always messing with progs like ReClock and MadVR in order to get perfect 24p playback to an HDTV. I am also susceptible to phosphor lag, any audio sync issues and other annoyances. I am Mr Super Anal when it comes to perfect playback and have color calibrated all my displays with a colorimeter
But I digress.
If I play Big Buck Bunny 1080p in Youtube or in the default browser it plays fluid (well enough not to be annoying). Now if I rip that same Youtube clip down to my hard disk. Copy it to the TF and play it in ANY player (Moboplayer - with or without codecs packs, Rockplayer, Vplayer, Littleplayer or the inbuilt player) it will not play it without stuttering. What the hell is that all about? Flash player is better at video playback on the TF than Honeycombs implementation? Quite.
I wish I could figure out a way to load the MP4 files in Flash through the browser. I tried file://path to MP4 and it did not work.
If anyone knows a way to do that I would be interested. Maybe I should setup a web server on my PC and stream everything in Flash
P.S. If you wish I can provide you with two sample MKV's. One with audio the other without and you can directly compare the two and post your results. I see small juddering on the clip with audio muxed in every time.
The Youtube app is not using Flash. If it was, Youtube wouldn't play on the iPhone or iPad, and it most certainly wouldn't have played on Android devices before Android 2.2. If you want to see true Flash performance so far, load up Hulu and see if you can get a 480p stream to play acceptably. Edit: Since you mention the UK though, I probably shouldn't assume you're in the US. If that's the case, just load up any Flash-based video player besides Youtube. Sometimes it helps to set your user agent to Desktop, too.
The Youtube app is actually using HTML5, with videos encoded in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and stereo AAC. The maximum bitrates supported are 5 Mbit/s and 152 kbps, respectively. You need to bear in mind too that by playing videos through the browser, the servers will recognize the device you're playing from and compress and optimize the stream accordingly. A full 1080p video at 5 Mbit/s would take forever to buffer on a tablet, so it's highly unlikely that you're getting the full quality over the network stream. Locally-stored videos, however, are free to be downloaded and played in their maximum quality, so it's understandable that you may see some stutter on large files.
deadman3000 said:
I've tried MKVToolnix for straight muxing. A simple MKV to MP4 prog without reencoding called mkvavi2mp4. Handbrake (Used settings suggested on this forum). I've also tried some test clips from various sites. All of them judder when audio is being decoded. I am not talking about HUGE judder. I am talking about very small judder. The video is not 100% fluid. Some may not even notice it. I do because I am always messing with progs like ReClock and MadVR in order to get perfect 24p playback to an HDTV. I am also susceptible to phosphor lag, any audio sync issues and other annoyances. I am Mr Super Anal when it comes to perfect playback and have color calibrated all my displays with a colorimeter
But I digress.
If I play Big Buck Bunny 1080p in Youtube or in the default browser it plays fluid (well enough not to be annoying). Now if I rip that same Youtube clip down to my hard disk. Copy it to the TF and play it in ANY player (Moboplayer - with or without codecs packs, Rockplayer, Vplayer, Littleplayer or the inbuilt player) it will not play it without stuttering. What the hell is that all about? Flash player is better at video playback on the TF than Honeycombs implementation? Quite.
I wish I could figure out a way to load the MP4 files in Flash through the browser. I tried file://path to MP4 and it did not work.
If anyone knows a way to do that I would be interested. Maybe I should setup a web server on my PC and stream everything in Flash
P.S. If you wish I can provide you with two sample MKV's. One with audio the other without and you can directly compare the two and post your results. I see small juddering on the clip with audio muxed in every time.
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Shoot them over
http://www.mediafire.com/?gp3bumw7qy9mppm
Check the panning of each. One has AAC audio the other not. Use the default inbuilt video player of the TF (Should offer if you click on the files if you have other players installed). The one without audio plays perfectly smooth on my TF. The one with audio has slight juddering.
deadman3000 said:
If I play Big Buck Bunny 1080p in Youtube or in the default browser it plays fluid (well enough not to be annoying).
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Click to collapse
Just to clarify: You are talking about viewing youtube via the default _web_ browser, setting your user agent such that you get the desktop site and using the flash plugin to play the video? Rather then using the mobile youtube web site or using the built in youtube app?
FYI of your two clips the one without audio plays smoothly in the _default_ player and the one with audio chokes with "This video cannot be played" (This is assuming you tack ".mp4" onto the file names to fool the default media player into trying to play it)
Interesting... I just re-encoded the audio _only_ ("-vcodec copy -acodec libmp3lame" in ffmpeg) and that plays smoothly.
Now mp3 audio isn't part of the mp4 container spec so you'll only get away with it in an mkv container (its flexibility is one of the things that makes matroska difficult to parse)
Ah... the video is High profile at 3.8Mbps that pretty much on the limit of what the tegra2 can do at the moment (I'd say it over it actually) so I'd say that the addition of a complex (relative to mp3) audio track is just too much.
I bet if you re-encoded that video to baseline at the same bitrate and copied the audio stream it would play fine, its just at the max computation threshold.
sub'd... I want to see what you guys are doing, I'd really like to play at least 720p peacefully.
I've tried reencoding using Handbrake and get similar results. Jerky playback with audio. Smooth without. It's like small juddering every quarter second or so. Ignore the web playback that's already been explained that it's HTML5 and is not sending me the full 1080p stream anyhow.
In fact. If someone can send me a 720p video clip with audio that they say plays 100% smooth on their TF I could see if it's not 100% smooth here. If not (as I suspect it won't be) then it's either my TF has issues. Your eyesight is not picking it up or I am going nuts
deadman3000 said:
I've tried reencoding using Handbrake and get similar results. Jerky playback with audio. Smooth without. It's like small juddering every quarter second or so. Ignore the web playback that's already been explained that it's HTML5 and is not sending me the full 1080p stream anyhow.
In fact. If someone can send me a 720p video clip with audio that they say plays 100% smooth on their TF I could see if it's not 100% smooth here. If not (as I suspect it won't be) then it's either my TF has issues. Your eyesight is not picking it up or I am going nuts
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Click to collapse
try this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1060825
I am using the same profile settings in handbrake (high profile) and ALL my videos are really smooth! and YES...I did have judder/stutter before. download the sample files and you can test it on your TF.
the ONLY downside is that handbrake takes a while to encode but its worth it!
hope this helps.
..........
While I agree that, officially, Honeycomb doesn't support the mkv container. It must be able to parse it as it does support WebM and that uses the matroska container.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6553908/with_audio_mp3.mkv
This is the same video stream but with the audio re-encoded to mp3, plays nicely for me in the default video player it I tack ".mp4" on the end to fool the player into trying to play it.
I don't stream but everything e.mote said about hinting is spot on, also you may want to look at interleaving (a feature of the muxing that MP4Box can do) is you want to stream.
earlyberd said:
A full 1080p video at 5 Mbit/s would take forever to buffer on a tablet, so it's highly unlikely that you're getting the full quality over the network stream.
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Way too generalized. I have a Playbook and it plays 1080p Youtube in the browser flawlessly.
I played The Cape clip from the example Handbrake settings thread. The clip plays with micro judder like every other clip with sound. I am now using a Prime 1.4 rooted not the stock firmware and it still does it. It is like frame drop every half or quarter second. If you have ever seen NTSC 23.976FPS played back on a PAL 50Hz CRT TV you will know what it looks like. It is very obvious on pans.
Surely I cannot be the ONLY person who can see this??? Are your eyes really that bad?
EDIT: Tried the MP3 version you provided. Still there. You can count the judder. Tick tick tick tick... every quarter second.
EDIT2: I guess the only way to demonstrate this to you guys is by way of a video of it along with some audio prompting from me to point it out to you (excuse the d(t)icks). You will notice that the audio drops out for some reason during playback but when it does the video plays buttery smooth. No idea why the audio drops out. I was playing back the MP3 muxed version from the link above using Moboplayer but this problem - the juddering - occurs with any player I have tried. The juddering happens on every single video I have tested it on when it is decoding audio.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXfdQP8BtEA
I will restate however. Yotube playback looks much smoother than playing a file from the inbuilt flash memory or SD cards.
I am having the same problem as you and I see the judder on these clips as well. I posted my issues in the encoding guide thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1060825&page=9
It has nothing to do with the overall bitrate rate as many of my samples are <2,000 kbps, and just like you, if I remove the AAC audio, video is silky smooth. I assume it's just a software issue that should be able to be resolved, but I guess we'll see...
e.mote said:
BTW, if you recoded the clip, then I suggest using better settings. The settings used are excessive. When facing a device with marginal playback, there is less tolerance for bad encodes. If you're anal about playback, then you should be equally anal about your encode settings.
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Thanks for that. But since your video judders just like every other clip that means diddly squat. I don't see why I should have to reencode every video I have in order for it to playback on the TF either. It should be able to handle 720p at least. It does play it but only plays it smoothly with no audio playback whatsoever.
bartleyg82 said:
I am having the same problem as you and I see the judder on these clips as well. I posted my issues in the encoding guide thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1060825&page=9
It has nothing to do with the overall bitrate rate as many of my samples are <2,000 kbps, and just like you, if I remove the AAC audio, video is silky smooth. I assume it's just a software issue that should be able to be resolved, but I guess we'll see...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Phew! Thanks for chimeing in! I am glad it's not just me. Do you live in the UK perchance? If not that would rule out any UK specific reasons.
Nope, I'm in the US. My TF is also running Prime 1.4. I've tried the "stock" kernel and the OC kernel and the problem is the same with both. I didn't think to test video before rooting and installing Prime, so I can't vouch for whether or not it happens on completely stock HC 3.1
deadman3000 said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXfdQP8BtEA
.
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Click to collapse
How... what...
Are you serious? I see literally no issue. Either my eyes or your camera, one of the two can't pick up this judder. And I did notice the compression in the better encode offered here (text, grappling hooks, lasers, pretty much anything like that. Not a bad result, but clearly visible)
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