Database Info

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.
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.

Is there any music player that plays ALAC m4a?

I have tried Pocket Player, Pocket Music, and CorePlayer. But none of them plays ALAC m4a. My previous music device was an iPod, so I have all my CD's encoded into ALAC m4a format. Do I have to transcode them all? Or is there a salvation?

ALAC require a lot of juice to play as they are allmost like old wav files
it were always a bit of a silly thing for portable players as no headset would
not be bottleneck compared to 256k/sec
even the ipod touch offical forums are full of ipod owners compalining about skipping when it comes to ALAC

I totally agree with you that no portable player + headset is any lossless audio worth. 256Kb should be sufficient enough. But I have a huge collection of ALAC audio files at home, which I rather not convert everytime I want to carry some tunes on my Xperia. My long time portable music player was iPod Touch, hence I had my collection encoded in ALAC. However, I never experienced any skips with my Touch.

M4a is pretty much all apple and somewhat new... the simplest thing is probably a batch coverter (select the files and let them all convert over night)
Here is a google search to let you choose one.

Question: Movies on cappy?

i got some 700mb avi movies and dropped it on my phone. it said it could not play. do i need to resize it or is it an encoder issue? maybe the file size is too big? idk!
thanks

What player are you trying to use?

use rockplayer or vplayer, I had played 2.7gb mkv 720p movie with no issue.

kamesen said:
i got some 700mb avi movies and dropped it on my phone. it said it could not play. do i need to resize it or is it an encoder issue? maybe the file size is too big? idk!
thanks
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Click to collapse
Try the program "handbrake" with high profile settings

Are you using a custom rom? Because I have been watching 700 mb .avi and great big hd .mkv with no problem, on both stock and newest cognition. Only format I HAVE had a problem with is m2ts.

I use PavTube Ultimate Blu-Ray Converter to make Xvid MP4 files out of my discs. They work great on the Captivate. I played around with different settings and there really isn't much visual difference between using the native 800x480 resolution compared to HD rez, but the difference in file size is significant.

I get the same issues with some AVI's in both Rockplayer and the stock player on the stock rom. Haven't tried movies since flashing to Cognition 2.3b7. MKV's don't typically play in rockplayer, the few that have skipped a ton, or they would play with no audio. Not sure what you guys are doing to your movies to make them play. All of my videos are encoded properly, and play on my WD TV Live just fine. The WD is a good test of media quality for rips.

The WD TV Live also can play pretty much any audio and video codec you throw at it.

SlappyMcGee said:
The WD TV Live also can play pretty much any audio and video codec you throw at it.
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There have been mkv's that have not played correctly on it, so if it's not encoded properly, the WD is a good test, from my experience.

I have some 700mb xvid movies on my phone and they play fine on stock rom w/stock player. But I highly recommend vplayer for video and rtsp watching.

Yep. Gave Handbrake a shot. Works like a charm. Will download vplayer and check it out
thanks fellas

What kind of settings are you guys using for your conversions?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

followed the settings outlined on this webpage:
http://www.knowyourcell.com/samsung/samsung-captivate/captivate-guides/513592/how_to_convert_videos_and_transfer_them_to_the_samsung_captivate.html
Requirements:
Installed copy of Handbrake software
Video files and or DVD of your choice
Samsung Captivate with microUSB cable
Step I: Launch the Handbrake application on your computer and select the video source
In the menu on the right-hand side, select the iPod Legacy preset (figure 1)
Select your video source by clicking on the Source dropdown menu (we used a DVD for our testing purposes)
Select the destination and name for the file once it has been converted (both the .mp4 and .m4v extension work for the Captivate)
Confirm that the container is set to MP4 File and that Large file size, Web optimized, and iPod 5G support are unchecked
Step II: Adjust Handbrake's Video Settings
Picture Tab:
Uncheck Keep Aspect Ratio
Set the Captivated Width and Height (the Captivate supports a maximum of 800 x 480 pixels)
Video Tab:
Confirm the Video Codec is set as H.264 (x264)
Framerate (FPS) should be set to Same as source
Under Quality, select the Avg Bitrate (kbps) and change it to 1500
Step III: Adjust audio settings
Confirm the Audio Codec is AAC (faac)
Mixdown should be set to Stereo
Change the Samplerate to 48
Change the Bitrate to 160
Step IV: Save as a preset for future use
Click on the Presets menu and select New Preset
Enter Captivate in the dialog box and click Add
"Captivate" will now be saved as a preset and listed on the right hand side in Handbrake to be used in the future
Step V: Convert the video and copy to your Captivate
Click on the Start button in Handbrake
A command line/DOS window will open and start to process the video conversion
Once the conversion is done, mount your Captivate on to your computer via USB
Once mounted, create a folder named Video in the root folder on the Captivate
Copy converted file into the Video folder
That's it! The converted video can now be played on your Captivate using the Gallery app. It should look fantastic on the Captivate's screen as long as the original source was of good quality.
A few things to keep in mind when converting video:
The Captivate does not like video file sizes over 2GB (the settings in Step II should help insure that the file size is kept under 2GB)
Your converted video will only be as good as the source video
If your source is over 800 x 480, you must be sure to set the width and height to a maximum of 800 x 480 as noted in Step II

chirs said:
use rockplayer or vplayer, I had played 2.7gb mkv 720p movie with no issue.
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ditto. no problems with xvid or mkv files of that size.
i hate converting! all i want is drag, drop and play.. easy as that.
On Assonance 4.3 o/c to 1300 mhz

I actually converted like 20 movies or so for my phone but I dont think Im allowed to post the links to them here lol.

I don't know what went wrong, I can just say I'm running same cog rom you are and so far .mkv, .avi and .mp4 work just fine for me on the stock vid player :-/
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Tried Handbrake using the settings above and the video was garbage. I'll stick with Pavtube as it converts anything I throw at it in any format without issue and it does Blu-Ray, as well. Looks like 1500 bit rate is the sweet spot for good video quality and manageable file size.

I believe all you have to click is High profile on the right side , that is it

malicenfz said:
I actually converted like 20 movies or so for my phone but I dont think Im allowed to post the links to them here lol.
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I don't think u would need to convert any vids for the captivate. Captivate by itself plays a variety of formats

Actually, since I'm ripping mostly Blu-Ray discs, they DO need to be converted. And I did a check ripping standard DVD to both mpg2 and mp4. A 50mb mpg2 rip was about 3:40 (min:seconds) whereas the same settings ripped to mp4 was closer to 4:20. Over the span of a complete movie, the mp4 conversion will yield a smaller file size.

[Q] Best format for video

What is the best for playing movies? I plan to rip some from Dvds, and wondered what would play best. I am using Vegan 3. I dont know much about divx vs other codecs.

I use mp4 I have 22 video and they only take 20gb of space. I have heard of guys using .mov but I think it is a full 1080 few so it will probably use a lot more space. I think mp4 is only 720 capable

JoeMofknDot said:
I use mp4 I have 22 video and they only take 20gb of space. I have heard of guys using .mov but I think it is a full 1080 few so it will probably use a lot more space. I think mp4 is only 720 capable
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I want to convert some mkvs and some DVDs to mp4 for an up coming trip, has anyone used handbrake? If so what profile or preset are you using?

jamesgf said:
I want to convert some mkvs and some DVDs to mp4 for an up coming trip, has anyone used handbrake? If so what profile or preset are you using?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Handbrakes stock settings work fine for me I tried anyvideoconverter but converted files gave corrupt error

Depends on the source. DVD = standard video, so I would actually recommend Xvid in an AVI container. They play very nicely, plus it's a pretty standard format. And for problematic AC3 audio, you can use an app like Rockplayer. MKV also works nicely in Rockplayer. Or you can even encode to MP4 if you want iPod / iPad compatibility.
For High-Def, I would personally recommend MP4 (h263), only because h264 is so problematic. I use Handbrake and then alter the iPad Profile from h264 to MP4 (h263) and it works very nicely on our device. Yes, it's not "standard" so my files are really only for this device or my PC.

I'm not an expert on video formats or ripping/converting. However, I've spent the last couple of days (off and on) trying to find the best way to get vids on the gTab. As of this morning, the best option I've found is using Pazera. I used the "Video to iPod" converter with the following settings:
Output file format
MP4 (MPEG-4/AAC)
Bitrate: 1000 kbit/s
FPS: 30
Audio - Left it in "Auto"
Advanced Settings
Resolution: 1280 x 720 - HD720
The quality looks really good. No issues with the audio either. My only problem is the file size is 1.2GB. The vid I converted was 2 1/2 hours but I still think I want the file size around 500 to 700MB. I'm going to adjust the settings some more and see if I can find the balance between video quality and file size. It just takes an hour or so to convert it so this may take a few days.
I hope this is helpful to everyone. If anyone else has any experience with Pazera and can recommend good settings, I'm all ears!

Sly Soft's AnyDVD to rip and them AnyDVDMobile to convert (I use ipad's default settings on the mobile conversion and they work great - I use those settings b/c I my kids use the same rips for the ipod touch and it comes out as something they all can use (rather than keeping multiple copies for each device).

I have been using this to convert HD video into something the hardware decoder can play without issue:
Code:
INPUT="My_movie.mkv"
OUTPUT="My_movie-gtab.mp4"
ABITRATE=64k
VBITRATE=1500k
RESIZETO="-s 1024x576"
ffmpeg -strict experimental -y -i $INPUT -f mp4 $RESIZETO -vcodec libx264 \
-vpre default -vpre ipod640 -acodec aac -ab $ABITRATE \
-ac 2 -b $VBITRATE -threads 0 $OUTPUT
1000k for the video bitrate would net you about 480M/hour, with 1500k at about 700M/hour (which is fine by me).
The RESIZETO will work for 720p and 1080p content as it's resizing for the longer width. If you have SD content (DVDs) just comment out the RESIZETO. If you have something that is anamorphic (check ffmpeg -i $FILENAME) you will need to do your own math, or just leave it and up the bitrate. A good rule of thumb for high quality is:
0.14 * Height * Width * frames/sec
So 0.14 * 576 * 1024 * 29.97 = 2477260bps, or ~ 2500k, about 1.1G/hour
adjusting the number downward will reduce quality, but it's a choice between video quality and size at this point.
I have tested this with a few videos (Big Buck Bunny, originally 1080p content) and with some 720p videos. 1500k worked out really well.

Great info ckelly33 and ckelly. I'm starting to think the question is more on "what are the acceptable formats". Everyone is different and the output they are looking for is just as different. I'm still trying for 500 to 700MB.
I tried again and I think I've got it like I want it. Need to test it some more. On the last conversion I noticed a button for max file size. That got me right where I want to be!

ima_UNC_fan said:
Great info ckelly33 and ckelly. I'm starting to think the question is more on "what are the acceptable formats". Everyone is different and the output they are looking for is just as different. I'm still trying for 500 to 700MB.
I tried again and I think I've got it like I want it. Need to test it some more. On the last conversion I noticed a button for max file size. That got me right where I want to be!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So far, It has accepted mp4 and avi containers (I prefer mp4), as well as mp3/aac for audio and h.264(main profile). Reports from roebeet says h.263 works as well. I have not tested xvid yet. I had issues with ac3 audio, so I don't think it supports that.
Of all of those, h.264 is a very very high quality codec, so I would recommend trying to use h.264/aac for encoding if at all possible.

[Feature request] External audio-streams

Please add to API ability to pass additional audio streams for video file in similar way as it done for subtitles.
sample: I have on server mp4 video file with 1 audio stram and couple mp3 files with audio in other languages.

Separate video and audio files
dkc said:
Please add to API ability to pass additional audio streams for video file in similar way as it done for subtitles.
sample: I have on server mp4 video file with 1 audio stram and couple mp3 files with audio in other languages.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd love this feature too. Especially for playing videos that have the audio and video tracks already separated (eg. m4v and m4a files of the same name). Ideally in this case the app could detect that the video file had no audio and then pick up the similarly named audio track and play that.

yes, this is the MOST WANTED feature I need for MX Player (or Pro).
I got a huge movie collection in MKV files, many of them are not packed with my native language audio stream and my littlle child is too young to read subtitles, actually I can get the native autio stream perfectly match these movies.
so now I have to repack these MKVs to enable the audio selection in MX player, this will change the original files that I cannot continue seeding them
--------------------------------------------
edit: and the external audio stream files may in the file type of MKA, DTS, AC3, etc.