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MP3 Encoding for Fuze

I don't want to start the whole debate about CBR vs VBR, and what bitrates to use. But can someone tell me if they've run into any issues with incompatibility on VBR-encoded mp3's on their Fuze or on recent WinMo media player apps (such as Media Player, Kinoma, built-in player in TouchFlo3D, etc)?
I recall having issues on old Moto phones but that was years ago. It seems VBR has some qualities that will be beneficial to me, such as faster encoding, smaller filesizes, and adaptive quality.

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.
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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.
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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.

Any Smartphone MP4/ACC Media Players out there?

I just want to know if there's any media players that can support both MP4 video formats and AAC audio formats on a smartphone.
I just got a Samsung Omnia, and I use coreplayer, which can play MP4's but it says AAC is not supported. I use the latest version which claims it can support AAC, but still no dice. Not much luck on google either.
So if anyone can help, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

not 100% sure what you mean by acc
if you mean what you buy in itunes these days
as in m4a then coreplayer play them all
if you mean old encrypted itunes stuff then you can
make them normal un drm m4a which coreplayer plays fine
for free now that itunes stop'd drm
you can do it from inside itunes right click menu
if you don't want to do that you have to use pocket player
or whatever it's called which you have to pay for it's plugin
which play drm encrypted acc m4a stuff from itunes

[Q] Best format for music, size and quality

Can anyone tell me the best format to store thier music so that the files will stay resonably small but retain thier quality. I guess what I'm asking is, is there a better file format than MP3? I was storing a ton of music on my old phone's SD card, but since the Nexus S doesn't have the "extra" room an SD card allows for, I was wondering if anyone can help me to shrink the files to save space.
Also, I know, I can just carry fewer songs, so please don't put that.
Thanks.

Man just chill

there are better formats, but i don't think the stock music app actually supports them.
The nexus s does have 13GB of space on the SD card, i think that would be enough unless your one of the crazy people who spent $100 on 32GB SD card.

So how big are your MP3 files? Encode your MP3 to VBR 128-192kbps, they sound fine with good file sizes. If you're an audiophille, you'll have your own standards.

AAC is the best format, because it's actually mp3's successor. They couldn't call it mp4, because that was already used for the video file format.
AAC uses a different compression algorithm, thereby offering better sound quality at lower bitrates. 96kbs AAC = 128kbs mp3 in terms of quality.
HE-AAC v2 is an advanced format of AAC that allows even lower bitrates, such at 32kbs.
Listen to this song encoded at 32kbs: HE-AAC+v2 (44100Hz [email protected]) 1.1 MB
Yup, the entire song is 1MB!
Here is a free encoder: http://www.nero.com/enu/technologies-aac-codec.html

ryude said:
AAC is the best format, because it's actually mp3's successor. They couldn't call it mp4, because that was already used for the video file format.
AAC uses a different compression algorithm, thereby offering better sound quality at lower bitrates. 96kbs AAC = 128kbs mp3 in terms of quality.
HE-AAC v2 is an advanced format of AAC that allows even lower bitrates, such at 32kbs.
Listen to this song encoded at 32kbs: HE-AAC+v2 (44100Hz [email protected]) 1.1 MB
Yup, the entire song is 1MB!
Here is a free encoder: http://www.nero.com/enu/technologies-aac-codec.html
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
pretty awesome stuff there, do the android music apps support it though? stock, winamp, poweramp?

I am making a batch file that will automatically transcode any mp3 files in the current directory to HE-AAC v2 mp4 files. All you'd have to do is unzip it, copy the .bat file into the directory where your mp3 files are, then double-click the .bat file. I have it set for 64kbs for highest quality.
There are players available that will play AAC files in android, just search the market.
Also, make sure you edit the .bat file paths to the correct path of lame & neroAAC.
Code:
SET LAMEEXE="C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\AAC\lame.exe"
SET NEROAACEXE="C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\AAC\win32\neroAacEnc.exe"

doubleTwist supports mp3 AND AAC, and it's free
If you're really concerned with file size, 32 kbs is the lowest I would go and 48 kbs is a nice balance of size and quality.

I use ogg vorbis 192kbps which can yield very good quality sound, especially Android has native ogg support.

OGG Vorbis has been consistently proven to yield higher quality audio at lower file sizes than mp3, and about equal to or better than AAC. That's why it's part of Google's WebM video container format. Vorbis is supported by default in Android and is what I encode my music in (along with FLAC).
Windows doesn't support *.ogg by default (open standards aren't their thing), but this link should get you set up to listen on Windows: http://www.vorbis.com/setup_windows/
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

Ogg is better than mp3, but it gets hard to tell difference between formats once you get to 320kbps. Being open source, ogg benefits from improvements over the years while mp3 is stagnant and costs to include on device. But its well adopted and almost everywhere. Other formats may be better compression, but not well supported like mp3 and ogg.

Bah! No URLs for newbs. Google for: winamp preferences guide, and on that wiki page search for the text "force transcoding"
I was looking into writing an auto-transcode app/script for just this reason, but it turns out that winamp has one built in: I set the "Force transcoding of compatible tracks if bitrate is over __ kbps:" to transcode anything above 191kbps and when syncing music over it works like a charm. You can set it to a couple different codecs, winamp seems to include LC-AAC, AACPlus, mp3, and wav.
Note that these settings only appear when you have your device attached.

Each MP3 averages to about 3-4mb. I only have about 4gb worth, so not a lot, I'm just looking to obtimize space where I can. Is there a specific AAC player for Android that you would recommend?
Oh yeah, and thanks for the helpful answers.

If you care about audio quality you wouldn't use mp3 any way.
Use 160 its the best middle ground.
Un compressed aiff is best but 10MB per minute is to big for a phone
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

WMA Audio
Nexus S doesn't play wma audio ? If it does let me know how.
Thanks

Im a big advocate of FLAC but size compression is almost non existent

All my music is in mp3 format and I was just discussing with my brother how to improve sound quality. I went to the vorbis site and downloaded "audacity" a free audio converter.
I chose a mp3 file I had which was about 10mb @ 320kbs. Using audacity I exported that mp3 to .ogg and it cut the file size down to 4.2 MB @ 165kbs. Does that sound about right? Does doing a simple export actually improve sound quality? Or just cut the size down.
EDIT: I did some more digging around and apparently converting to ogg from mp3 is not recommended rather to convert to ogg from a lossless format like flac or from CD.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

320kbps is damn near lossless, you won't get much more quality from a lossless format.

Use I tunes to convert your music. It does a great job. mine is 192kps. Just about right for me for mp3. I'm just use to mp3. I will try ogg
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

havent really tried myself but has anyone tried the leaked music player to see if it supports any new formats?

[Q] Walkman app HR?

I just added an album in flac format on my z3. and if i look in walkman there is a HR behind the album and behind some songs. What does this mean? I thought it stands for high ress audio or something.

Yes it does. AFAIK it means either the bit rate is above 16 or the sampling rate is above 48kHz.

rwesten,
It means the file you're playing is not only a FLAC, but a Hi-Res FLAC. It's like this:
You got your lossy files......mp3s, AACs, which are at the lower end of music quality (but take up the least space b/c they're the most compressed). Then you got CD-Quality files and Hi-Res tracks, usually in the FLAC format (or related like ALAC). Lower quality FLAC tracks are CD-Quality. They are better than mp3s, but not AS good as Hi-Res FLACS. They are rated at 16-bit/44.1KHz (sometimes 24-bit, but not often). THEN you got your Hi-Res FLAC tracks. Like the CD-Quality FLACs, Hi-Res FLACs are lossless, which means NO data is lost or taken out (think blu-ray vs DVD). These are rated at 24-bit/96KHz, though they are definitely known to go as high as 192KHz (and in some very rare cases, up to the 300-400KHz category).
All the FLAC files are compressed, but somehow they still retain all the original music data information. They do have uncompressed lossless files like WAV files, but they take up more room, so I think FLACs are better b/c they take up less room (compressed) but still have the same sound quality (lossless). If you are a TV guy, then think of mp3s as 480p, CD-Quality FLACs as 720p, Hi-Res FLACs as 24-bit/96KHz as 1080p, and like 24-bit/192KHz+ as 4K. lol The Z3's built-in DAC (digital audio converter) can play Hi-Res but only up to 24-bit/96KHz, which is still amazing and better than most other phones. If you want higher, you can buy a separate DAC and hook it up b/t the phone and your headphones or speakers. My thinking is down the road, the DACs will get better, so you can wait and buy them later, or get them now. Maybe they will get cheaper over time, so maybe just stick with 24/96 for now.
"HR" DOES in fact mean Hi-Res. It means you're playing the highest quality of music that's available today. I just started getting into all that recently and have learned a lot in only 4-5 weeks (as you can see above). lol Some say it's all BS, but I've compared songs I have on mp3 to Hi-Res FLACs like 24-bit/96KHz, and I definitely DO notice a difference. Hi-Res doesn't sound so "closed in"........ you can hear each instrument distinctly where on the mp3 version it sounds like more condensed, or like you're listening through a small hole in the wall. lol I compared my mp3 of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" by Led Zeppelin and then the Hi-Res FLAC version I got from www.hdtracks.com, and yeah, the HR version sounded bigger, better, more clearer, louder at the same volume....... I could hear little guitar fills much more clearly on the FLAC version too. So if you want more, go there. Not many options right now, but that's a great one with an ever growing library. Or to Pono Music (Neil Young's push for Hi-Res), though you can only look up what they have for now. The music will be available for download in the next couple months I read somewhere.
Hope that helped!
RockStar2005