I own a TP2. There are four different ways (that I'm aware of) to get iPlayer material playing on this phone:
1) Change the User Agent string in Opera 9.5 to impersonate a Samsung Omnia. You can then visit the mobile version of the iPlayer website and stream material. It plays in the Streaming Media player. Resolution is roughly 320x176. Doesn't work over 3G unless you're with 3 or Vodafone.
2) For programmes that have a "download for mobile device" option on the main iPlayer site (browsed from a desktop PC) you can grab the resulting .wmv file, copy it across to the phone, and play it on the TP2's "Pocket" Media Player. Resolution is 320x176 (ish).
3) There is a stand-alone iPlayer app, which imitates an iPhone; however, it doesn't work on my TP2 (just crashes before you can access anything).
4) The "myplayer" app. This offers two options: stream at 320x176, or (sometimes) download in .mov format. The latter has a slightly higher resolution - something like 480x270. The .mov files can be played back fairly well using Coreplayer, I believe, but I'm too cheap to pay for Coreplayer. Using TCPMP it's a bit jerky, and playing full-screen even more so. Does work over 3G although your carrier will hate you if you try it.
Now, using HTCAlbum as a player, the TP2 can very comfortably handle an .mp4 file with a res of 800x480, and a bit-rate of 750kb/s. So what I'm wondering is if there's any other way of getting iPlayer material to play which offers a higher resolution and better video quality?
The "iPlayer Desktop" downloads appear to be in .mp4 format, but no player other than iPlayer Desktop seems to be able to make head or tail of them.
IPlayer does offer higher-res .wmv downloads of some programmes - these have a res of something like 720x540, but are recorded anamorphically (so they play back at 960x540 or so, with horizontal upscaling). Trying to play one of these on a TP2 (using Windows Media Player) is fairly painful - the bit-rate is too high for it handle, and it doesn't recognise that it's anamorphic, so the aspect ratio is wrong. Feeding one of these WMV's through the Encoder programme that I normally use for converting video to HTCAlbum-compliant .mp4 files produces sparkly gibberish - the WMV is obviously encrypted in a way the Encoder application can't detect or handle.
Are there any other options I'm missing?
Related
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.
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
Hi everyone,
I know there are a hundred posts about Youtube and players and stuff, but none of these seem to work for me. One reason perhaps is most solutions date back to 2007, and things (may) have changed since.
Here is my situation: I have TCPMP 0.72RC1, GF5500 edition (by eoc and elviesss) because this version is the only one I know of that supports my GoForce and actually plays HQ/HD videos. However, when I try to watch a YouTube video, I get the "RTSP protocol not supported" error. I have installed the "mobytube.net - t2k269 TCPMPflvplugin0.4.4" and the "Skunkworks FlashVideoBundle"... doesn't help.
I also have CorePlayer 1.3.2, which (before installing TCPMP) worked fine with YouTube videos although poor quality but did not play the MP4 HQ/HD videos and has no support for the GoForce 5500.
I am fine with having both, as long as file associations worked properly. Every time I press "Watch Video" TCPMP opens and gives me the RTSP error. How do I associate this action with CorePlayer?
I have unticked Flash Video and MMS protocol file associations from TCPMP, and ticked the same in CorePlayer, particularly RTSP protocol, MMS and FLV.
After selecting all files in CorePlayer's File Associations, tapping the "watch video" link finally started opening CorePlayer instead of TCPMP but the only thing that happens is "network address not found".
Some help please!?
Have a look here
There is actual information regarding your topic
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=524708
Hope it helps,
Thanks!
I did look at those articles/threads again (in fact I read everything there, although I had already read some of these), but can't find a solution.
1. I can't use IE: m.youtube.com loads but when I click a video link to check out details, IE crashes - I never use it anyway.
2. I prefer Opera (8.65 for Em One, built in), I also have 9.7. The browsing part is naturally no problem. But whatever the settings of CorePlayer (FLV - high bandwidth, H264 - normal or high (720p) quality), the quality is horrendous on my WVGA screen. Media properties always has "Format:RTP/RTSP streaming; video/codec: H.263; Video size: 176 x 144.
So, I am still where I left off - TCPMP for GoForce 5500 does play high quality videos but won't work with YouTube, while CorePlayer won't work with HQ video and delivers awful quality YouTube.
PS. I do have the YouTubePlay app by Nick Miles, v. 1.0.0.11 (latest?), and, when video output is switched to RawFramebuffer I seem to get the most out of youtube videos labeled HD - I don't know what actual resolution they are played at, but look quite decent on the WVGA screen (probably 320x240).
Hi there,
I would like to have movies played on my HD2, but somehow I just don't get it right.
I've searched the internet as well as this forum for the right video converter that would show my movies on my HD2 (together with the subtitles as they are in the original movie) in full screen. I'm stuck...
Could anyone please help me out here? When I check a link, that is mentioned in the forum, I get a thousand others. To me, it's all very confusing... To which format should I convert a movie to have it shown on my HD2 in full screen? What player should I use on my HD2? Would it be possible to (de)activate the subtitles in that player? For instance, I've converted the movie "SALT" to my HD2, but the movie is NOT in full screen, and it's subtitles are gone...
I'm way open to suggestions.
Thanking you in advance!!
Robert
The best player... pretty much the ONLY movie player worth bothering with on windows mobile... is coreplayer. The cab I use is attached.
Coreplayer can fullscreen, but you may need to play with aspect ratio settings to make it take up the entire screen (as the movie will often fill the width of the screen, but won't fill the height... doing so would make everyone look tall and thin, or you'd have to crop the left and right sides of the movie).
Here's a thread with the info on subtitles.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-345995.html
I guess there's a subtitle plugin for coreplayer that you must download separately, but it doesn't take popular subtitle formats. So you must convert the subtitle to a format that coreplayer likes (on your PC) first. The movie itself may or may not need to be converted depending on the format. Core plays most things without the need for conversion, but some types (not all) of mp4 or mkv won't play without conversion. Also you'll need to convert if the movie is true high-def. A 720p or 1080p isn't going to play smoothly on the phone, but something like 720 x 304 will play fine.
Hi guys.
Is it possible to make Opera or other browsers open Youtube videos in an external player (like Core Player, the Youtube application, else)?
Actually Opera is unable to play them by default, there's an unofficial working plugin, but frame rate is very low and video is oversized...
Thanks a lot!!
You can get them to play in core player; the key is going to m.youtube.com. If you go to the desktop version (with the newer versions of PIE), then the embedded flash player will play the videos (with so-so quality).
With Core player, you need to set the file associations for RTSP protocol (and also .flv files).
HTC Streaming Video will also play youtube videos and some types of streams. Core player is better, though.
With Opera, I browse m.youtube, my Core Player is configured for flv, rtsp and all other formats, but Opera doesn't call Core Player like it was doing up to version 9.7.
About PIE, what's the last version?
I've just tried to setup Streaming Media, but I cannot launch it, because it returns e certificate error.
Do you have a working procedure to make it work on WM6.5?
Many many thanks!!
HTC Streaming player just worked for me when I cooked it in; I stopped using it when I got Core Player.
I'm using 28242 now, but all the 6.5.x PIE's work with Core Player. I don't use opera, so have no idea how to get it to work with it.
If you will browse with IE (in my case a standard one in 6.1) you can view the YT videos without any additional programs. The quality is low-medium.
DDDarOOO said:
If you will browse with IE (in my case a standard one in 6.1) you can view the YT videos without any additional programs. The quality is low-medium.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My IE doesn't play any youtube or flash video.
Ooops, sorry just checked one more time and noticed that the address is m.youtube.com (so mobile version of YT)