Video playback / Quality and battery impact? - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

When I first had my Nexus S I don't think there was a suitable video playback solution for the large avi / divx / mkv video files as rockplayer was not compatible and neithere was AVPlayer I don't think.
How are things now some months on? How does the Nexus S cope with large video files in popular formats such as those above? How is the battery impacted given that the lack of native codecs means that software decoding and playbach has to be used rather than hardware? As a portable media plater, does the Nexus S pass the test?

Related

[Q] Watching Videos?!

hi, anyone watch movies and that on thier phone? just wondering what the optimum video size would be to get a good picture and make it less flickery! and the best programs to use to convert the size of the movie?
Cheers
Hon
anyone?? surely someone must know??
Streaming or stored video files, basically you can use the same parameters and the same tools. I describe streaming only.
Use VLC to stream the video via Wifi or Edge to your phone.
An excellent client is Coreplayer (only 20 bucks)
On VLC set transcoding params like this:
video codec: mpeg4 (alternatively you could use h264)
video bitrate: 300-400kbs (wifi) ; 100-200kbs (edge)
resolution 320x240
audio codec: mp3
audio bitrate: 48-64kbs
container: ts (transport stream)
VLC can stream everything including live TV from TV/Sat cards and also from settop boxes.
If you wonna play files from memstick transcode your videos to files with the wifi parameters.
i used TCPMP with my vox oc'd to 252mhz
it can play most videos stored on my mSD (tv. eps and things of that sort) without having to convert
if i do need to convert, just make sure it's at 320x240
sorry i didnt specify, it is stored movies. cheers
A friend is considering this phone as an upgrade and I'm also interested in finding out about how good video playback on this phone works. Can you install freeware codec packs to support DivX, Xvid and all the other common formats on it like you can with the bigger PDA-style phones? Is its CPU speed enough for it to decode the videos without stutter? Is its built-in player good enough or would I need a third-party app?
I tried it. I think the optimum is Divx or Mpeg4, 320*240 and 512 kbit/s with 44 khz stereo audio. It can be played more than 100 % speed. (TCPMP benchmark).
manveruppd said:
A friend is considering this phone as an upgrade and I'm also interested in finding out about how good video playback on this phone works. Can you install freeware codec packs to support DivX, Xvid and all the other common formats on it like you can with the bigger PDA-style phones? Is its CPU speed enough for it to decode the videos without stutter? Is its built-in player good enough or would I need a third-party app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends. If you don't use H/264 / AVC, then, it'll work just great. With AVC, you'll need to stick to CorePlayer and not even then will you 100% frame rate with higher bit rates / resolutions.
I did a tutorial on this
search for "Video Recoding Tutorial - Video Settings" in this forum

Droid X/Galxy S play DivX/MKV natively... Evo port comming?

Engadget article, last video:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/exclusive-motorola-droid-x-preview/
It plays DivX videos natively, and with very good quality as well... not sure how it is with android, but should we expect an Evo port of that player sometime soon? I know it was done in winmo world, but since i'm relatively new to android scene, wanted to ask before forking out $10 for yxplayer.
Thanks!
EDIT:
Galaxy S is also "DivX HD Certified Android Smartphone":
Galaxy S (I9000) Product Specifications, Video: HD([email protected]) video playing & recordingCodec: mpeg4, H.264, H.263, H263Sorenson, DivX HD/ XviD, VC-1Format: 3gp (mp4), WMV (asf), AVI (divx), MKV, FLV
another opportunity for a great divx player port to evo?
frifox said:
Engadget article, last video:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/exclusive-motorola-droid-x-preview/
It plays DivX videos natively, and with very good quality as well... not sure how it is with android, but should we expect an Evo port of that player sometime soon? I know it was done in winmo world, but since i'm relatively new to android scene, wanted to ask before forking out $10 for yxplayer.
Thanks!
EDIT:
Galaxy S is also "DivX HD Certified Android Smartphone":
Galaxy S (I9000) Product Specifications, Video: HD([email protected]) video playing & recordingCodec: mpeg4, H.264, H.263, H263Sorenson, DivX HD/ XviD, VC-1Format: 3gp (mp4), WMV (asf), AVI (divx), MKV, FLV
another opportunity for a great divx player port to evo?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There was a thread about rock video player floating around but I can't find it anymore. amazing player, handles whatever I throw at it besides the 720 stuff our phones don't have the power to play.
Mod. edit: That's because it is still a beta and the developer didn't consent it's distribution. It was therefore removed as warez according the forum rules.http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=6805512#post6805512http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=6805512#post6805512
yes, i have it, use it every day... but i found yxlpayer to handle h264/MKV's much better, without major stuttering. most releases (i'd say ~80% of all) on the scene right now are high profile h264 in MKV's so i have a need for yxplayer more than rockplayer.
since Droid X and Galaxy S plays DivX and MKVs (galaxy s, at least) natively, i would imagine its performance being MUCH better than yxplayer/rockplayer. that's why i was hoping for an Evo port
mrono said:
There was a thread about rock video player floating around but I can't find it anymore. amazing player, handles whatever I throw at it besides the 720 stuff our phones don't have the power to play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Our phones can handle 720p h264 base profile just fine with HW acceleration, It's just that rockplayer seems like it's more or less a software implementation.
But yes I would LOVE to see some sweet h264 High Profile HW decoding support, this phone was meant and advertised to be a powerhouse media player and it pains me to see it only crippled by lack of SW support. (Sorry youtube HQ, you're only useful if I wanted to see lolcats, for everything else, I'm sick of having to go through a conversion process) If only AirVideo developers would at least say SOMETHING about a possible android port...
Or you could do what I did and write a transcoder using ffmpeg to get tv and movies streamed. I'm able to get native res x264 to my phone from my own script, even over 3g. Just can't get seeking to work because I don't know a way to move the the atom chunks to the front of the single pass encoding process before it starts encoding. I don't actually think its possible over http which is why I'm thinking about moving it to an app.
But apart from that I have x264 hw from the HTC player and xvid from rockplayer. What is the problem? They work fine. I don't care that its two apps.
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flexgrip said:
Or you could do what I did and write a transcoder using ffmpeg to get tv and movies streamed...
But apart from that I have x264 hw from the HTC player and xvid from rockplayer. What is the problem?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i wrote a batch script for myself that re-encodes (not streams) my vids into evo-supported format. just drag&drop all vids and they are properly encoded regardless of the input format. as far as streaming, i use Orb. the problems with both, i don't always want to spend time (if i have any at all) to re-encode, and streaming doesnt produce enjoyable 800x480 quality with real-time encoding (tho orb allows seeking, which is a +, but not enough to compensate for quality loss).
that i know, but hw-accelerated h264 playback is limited only to baseline profiles. many scene releases are either main or high profiles, and in addition to that, inside mkv's which stock player doesnt do.
i have no difficulty going through loops and hoop to get my vids played on Evo, but most of the time i'm simply wasting time/quality while doing it... that being said, DroidX/GalaxyS most likely incorporates hardware accelerated playback (or a dam good software-based decoding algorithm), and seeing how silky smooth it plays 720p DivX/AVI files, I would LOVE to have a player on my Evo with such good decoding performance... thats why asking about an Evo port. DEVS, please respond
... oh and also, let's not even mention SUBs (A.S.S. inside MKV's)... those things are ALWAYS a problem, no matter which player you use
flexgrip said:
Or you could do what I did and write a transcoder using ffmpeg to get tv and movies streamed. I'm able to get native res x264 to my phone from my own script, even over 3g. Just can't get seeking to work because I don't know a way to move the the atom chunks to the front of the single pass encoding process before it starts encoding. I don't actually think its possible over http which is why I'm thinking about moving it to an app.
But apart from that I have x264 hw from the HTC player and xvid from rockplayer. What is the problem? They work fine. I don't care that its two apps.
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mind elaborating on the process for this a bit? I know that AirVideo essentially does the same thing on the iDevices but with a pretty complicated script that can raise or lower quality based on bandwidth constraints. Also they use some sort of framserver to serve subtitles embedded into an mkv/ogm container before transcoding it on the fly. I really don't know enough about encoding to get into this (though I'd love to learn more) but I would love to be able to have SOME sort of solution to this.
frifox said:
i wrote a batch script for myself that re-encodes (not streams) my vids into evo-supported format. just drag&drop all vids and they are properly encoded regardless of the input format. as far as streaming, i use Orb. the problems with both, i don't always want to spend time (if i have any at all) to re-encode, and streaming doesnt produce enjoyable 800x480 quality with real-time encoding (tho orb allows seeking, which is a +, but not enough to compensate for quality loss).
that i know, but hw-accelerated h264 playback is limited only to baseline profiles. many scene releases are either main or high profiles, and in addition to that, inside mkv's which stock player doesnt do.
i have no difficulty going through loops and hoop to get my vids played on Evo, but most of the time i'm simply wasting time/quality while doing it... that being said, DroidX/GalaxyS most likely incorporates hardware accelerated playback (or a dam good software-based decoding algorithm), and seeing how silky smooth it plays 720p DivX/AVI files, I would LOVE to have a player on my Evo with such good decoding performance... thats why asking about an Evo port. DEVS, please respond
... oh and also, let's not even mention SUBs (A.S.S. inside MKV's)... those things are ALWAYS a problem, no matter which player you use
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Orb quality is absolute crap on any mobile device I've been on, and that includes WiMo 6.x, The iPod Touch and of course Android. Unfortunately I couldn't use Orb 2.5x because of the lack of subtitle support and their fix "soon" is worse than Blizzard's "soon" on game releases.
My current solution is a batch script to convert the h264 high profiles to ffmpeg mp4s (simply because the conversion takes 4 minutes compared to 9 if I converted it to h264 baseline) and proceeding to manually rip out the A.S.S./SRT files from the mkvs manually and using mVideoPlayer/meridian to softload everything. It's a long process that I simply don't want to do to enjoy some video
did some more research... Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) & Motorola Droid X both have something in common: Cortex-A8 w/ NEON™.
What's that? Simply put, hardware acceleration for "watching any video in any format". Soft codec standards include MPEG-4, H.264, On2 VP6/7/8, Real, AVS, and more. This explains the above mobile's ability to playback 720p high profile h264 in MKVs with no problem at all.
As far as I know, Evo sports QSD8650, a chipset from 2007, which doesn't include Cortex-A8. Conclusion? No hardware accelerated Main/High profile H264, MKV, DivX, etc playback for HTC Evo no matter how hard we try...
Seriously, the MAIN reason I bought Evo is for its 1GHz and 4.3" screen hoping to finally escape the dreaded days of horrible video playback on my Touch Pro. I LOVE Evo, but this... @#[email protected]#$!
anyways, our last hopes lay in the hands of CorePlayer devs, since they're working on android port. their player was the only thing that kept me winmo somewhat bearable for video playback. CorePlayer plays pretty much everything you throw at it since they use their own video decoders, not android's, to play back avi/mkv/mp4/etc...
PS: most of the time, video re-encoding is NOT an option for me... no computer at home besides Evo
I loved core player.
Rock player is simply outstanding. I highly recommend everyone pick it up once it his market. Much better than yxplayer.
720p h264 (high-profile) video, both rockplayer & yxplayer = 0.5 to 3 fps playback. unacceptable.
PS: different sources report differently, but according to some - Droid X runs same chipset as Evo, QSD8650. So AVI/MKV/DivX (not sure bout main/high h264) support Evo port could still be possible... just need some dumps from Droid X and start cooking
EDIT: Droid X runs OMAP3630, which also has Cortex-A8... dam, why does Evo just has to be different? Cortex-A8 = hardware accelerated ALL video playback, and Evo doesn't have it
Not sure if this will help, but.... Galaxy S (i8000) /system dump:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=704817
the goodies:
/system/lib/libs264domxoc.so
/system/lib/libsac3domxoc.so
/system/lib/libsdiv3domxoc.so
/system/lib/libsflacdomxoc.so
/system/lib/libsvc1domxoc.so
/system/lib/libswmv8domxoc.so
/system/lib/libsavidocn.so
/system/lib/libsmkvdocn.so
/system/lib/libsflvdocn.so
/system/lib/libswmfdocn.so
wonder how much of the above is cortex-a8 specific...
droid x native playback
I've seen it mentioned in a few places that the DX will play divx/mkv files natively, but i really havent had much luck with it at all. All of the MKV files i've tried (3 or 4) have failed to play. Since mkv is just a container, does anyone have some specifics about which decoders the dx has?

Viewsonic 720p MKV File Lags While Playing

Hello Guys,
I have used both Vegant and Latest TNT 2.2 and both lag while I play 720P .mp4 encoded videos downloaded from youTube, I'd like to know if its a software or hardware limitation? Does anyone else have the same problem with 720 .mp4 files from youtube? Does it lag (as in audio and video lose sync - audio plays faster than video).
ive incoded some 1080p bluerays using handbrake normal preset H.264. container mp4 also had to do this with 1080p .mkv files couldn't even get them to play otherwise. after that they played great on my tablet
The Tegra 2 chipset cannot handle h264 encoded as high profile. Main profile works fine. I know this confuses some people, but grab the excellent "mediainfo" tool (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en) and you can see how your file is encoded.
MP4 containers seem to work best, although I believe Rockplayer can play MKV's with hardware acceleration.

[Q] Laggy when playing video 1080p with VP9 video format

Hi, Recently I've downloaded video 1080p from youtube but when playing it, the video laggy but the audio just playing properly fine...
I thought it because the decoder set to H/W, but when switched to S/W both video & audio become laggy, then try switched to H/W+ it become worse (doesn't support this kind video it says...).
When I see media info of video, it use VP9 format video.
Here is the video: www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=aE2GCa-_nyU
I've tried on 3 devices; Asus Zenfone 6, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, and LG G2, all of it have the same issues...
And tried on PC to check if the video has errors or something, but the video is playing perfectly fine.
Is it something like bugs so the video didn't play properly? Or android can't play video with format VP9 properly?
Because I've tried other video 1080p, it can be played properly.
Oh FYI, I've tried using few other video player, and none of its can play the video as good as MX Player. That's why I've been using MX Player as default video player.
Hope there will be improvement on the next update so the video VP9 1080p can be played properly
MX Player is the best
All 1080p videos are not same.
It may lag at various parameters like higher frame rate, bitrate, color depth,....etc.
For example if you consider a video 1080p @ 30fps inorder to display 1 sec of videos it needs to decode 30 frames. Where as in 1080p @ 60 fps it requires 60 frames to be decoded. So, It will require the double power. Like wise various encoding parameters matters in video playback.
Second, H/W uses your hardware's native decoder . If the codec is natively supported by your device, H/W decoder will be the best option.
In case of S/W decoder, it supports more video formats since it depends on the ffmpeg. But, decoding will be completely done one CPU. So, it needs very high cpu power. That's why it's more laggy.
Night.Lurker said:
Hi, Recently I've downloaded video 1080p from youtube but when playing it, the video laggy but the audio just playing properly fine...
I thought it because the decoder set to H/W, but when switched to S/W both video & audio become laggy, then try switched to H/W+ it become worse (doesn't support this kind video it says...).
When I see media info of video, it use VP9 format video.
Here is the video: www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=aE2GCa-_nyU
I've tried on 3 devices; Asus Zenfone 6, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, and LG G2, all of it have the same issues...
And tried on PC to check if the video has errors or something, but the video is playing perfectly fine.
Is it something like bugs so the video didn't play properly? Or android can't play video with format VP9 properly?
Because I've tried other video 1080p, it can be played properly.
Oh FYI, I've tried using few other video player, and none of its can play the video as good as MX Player. That's why I've been using MX Player as default video player.
Hope there will be improvement on the next update so the video VP9 1080p can be played properly
MX Player is the best
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
VP9 isn't a widely supported format. That's likely why HW and HW+ don't work well with it; most devices don't have VP9 hardware acceleration.
SW rendering of a 1080p video is very demanding. Even on the most powerful devices, since there's no hardware acceleration, expect performance to be sub-par. Currently, devices on the market can only SW render 720p smoothly.
This being said, for SW mode, try Settings > Decoder > use speedup tricks. See if that helps a little bit on SW.
Ultimately, the best option is to reencode the video to something like H264/AVC mp4.
VP9 on KitKat+
I've tried on 3 devices; Asus Zenfone 6, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, and LG G2, all of it have the same issues...
And tried on PC to check if the video has errors or something, but the video is playing perfectly fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you explain more where you're trying to playback the video? VP9 support is built in to Android from KitKat+ and should not have an issue playing back. Additionally, can you try playing back the video on Chrome on Android and see if there are still decode issues?
Thanks.
ktsamy said:
All 1080p videos are not same.
It may lag at various parameters like higher frame rate, bitrate, color depth,....etc.
For example if you consider a video 1080p @ 30fps inorder to display 1 sec of videos it needs to decode 30 frames. Where as in 1080p @ 60 fps it requires 60 frames to be decoded. So, It will require the double power. Like wise various encoding parameters matters in video playback.
Second, H/W uses your hardware's native decoder . If the codec is natively supported by your device, H/W decoder will be the best option.
In case of S/W decoder, it supports more video formats since it depends on the ffmpeg. But, decoding will be completely done one CPU. So, it needs very high cpu power. That's why it's more laggy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CDB-Man said:
VP9 isn't a widely supported format. That's likely why HW and HW+ don't work well with it; most devices don't have VP9 hardware acceleration.
SW rendering of a 1080p video is very demanding. Even on the most powerful devices, since there's no hardware acceleration, expect performance to be sub-par. Currently, devices on the market can only SW render 720p smoothly.
This being said, for SW mode, try Settings > Decoder > use speedup tricks. See if that helps a little bit on SW.
Ultimately, the best option is to reencode the video to something like H264/AVC mp4.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see... So the point is the problem because most devices don't have VP9 hardware accelaration yet, especially for 1080p VP9...
Well... I've tried using SW speed up trick, it didn't much help...
Yeah...maybe the best option is to reencode the video to H264...or download 720p version..., cause the 720p VP9 can be played perfectly fine.
Still... I hope the MX Player developer team has plan to improve playback for 1080p VP9 video
Btw thanks for your answer bro
gurupanguji said:
Can you explain more where you're trying to playback the video? VP9 support is built in to Android from KitKat+ and should not have an issue playing back. Additionally, can you try playing back the video on Chrome on Android and see if there are still decode issues?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I said before, I'm trying to play 1080p VP9 video (that I've downloaded from youtube using IDM on computer) on my Asus Zenfone 6, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, & LG G2 using MX Player.
But when I playing it, the video is laggy on all devices...
Surely you can streaming it using youtube app & chrome android and it plays well till the end cause the available quality option in those apps is up to 720p (the 1080p quality option is hidden on those apps so I can't select it to test if it plays well or not).
Night.Lurker said:
Still... I hope the MX Player developer team has plan to improve playback for 1080p VP9 video
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be something you would have to ask the ffmpeg team to do, since MX uses their codecs. Unless the MX dev has a magic trick up his sleeve, I don't think there's much else MX can do to further improve SW playback performance for a video that exceeds the CPU's capabilities...
Likewise, on a hardware acceleration, it's limited by the hardwaree put in place by the manufacturer... so this aspect would need a new device.
Hi, i bumping this thread because i encountered the issue on some youtube vids too, but it's mostly playing fine, i think that with a few updates it will be good my phone is getting hot fast though.. (oneplus one)
VP9 1440p https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNNfZuIA1GQ : fine
VP9 1080p with a lot of "motion" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGyZY4HNumw a bit laggy
I think I have already answered.
Read the second post. Video encoding parameters matters.
If you can't play in H/W or H/W+ decoder, Don't expect the smooth playback on S/W. It fully depends on CPU. If is laggy then your processor is not powerful enough. Sometime enabling the speed up tricks may reduce the lagging.
One more thing, using CPU will drain your battery faster than H/W. When CPU runs it's maximum speed for long time it will emit more heat which may lead to issues.
ktsamy said:
I think I have already answered.
Read the second post. Video encoding parameters matters.
If you can't play in H/W or H/W+ decoder, Don't expect the smooth playback on S/W. It fully depends on CPU. If is laggy then your processor is not powerful enough. Sometime enabling the speed up tricks may reduce the lagging.
One more thing, using CPU will drain your battery faster than H/W. When CPU runs it's maximum speed for long time it will emit more heat which may lead to issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay thank you. Then i hope new processors will have vp9 decoding h/w
coc014 said:
Okay thank you. Then i hope new processors will have vp9 decoding h/w
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The chance of that happening, I can't see to be high. The MPEG consortium probably pays a lot to lobby chipset makers to only support MPEG formats, such as H.264 and H.265.
CDB-Man said:
The MPEG consortium probably pays a lot to lobby chipset makers to only support MPEG formats, such as H.264 and H.265.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lolno, it's just that industry is not interested in VP9. Even if they don't have to pay royalties they still have to develop asics (and h/w engineers are saying that it's not h/w friendly) and include them into the chip. It still costs a lot.
And what is the point of supporting vp9? It's an ugly google toy that they're ready to abandon (say hello to vp10 in 2015).
Ah yes, ASICs. I don't think manufacturers would be very happy at making more dies for new ICs. They already aren't happy with being forced to support Hi10p in H.265.
Forced? I would be happy if they were forced, but, at least Qualcomm, have no plans whatsoever
vivan000 said:
Forced? I would be happy if they were forced, but, at least Qualcomm, have no plans whatsoever
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, this sucks. Looks like we'll be waiting another generation... Where did you find that support chart?
Edit: We should move this discussion to the 10-bit thread. I'm going to quote you over there. http://forum.xda-developers.com/app...layer-10-bit-video-discussion-t2725241/page12
abput supporting vp9 1080p and undeleting files in mx player p higher andrpid version
first of all:
"Most probably you’re on Android marshmallow 6.0 API. If you’re trying to delete a video that is located on the external storage then its not possible due to some bug in the file system and mx player.
If you’re on the internal storage then MX player has only read only rights on the directory on which you’re currently on."
or just delete on your internal system file manager application.
Second answer about playng videos vp9
becayse you can't play vp9 if you download youtube videos with IDM (internet download manager)
because it is bull**** and its newer versions used idmmkvlib.01 codec.so when downloadimg it not only download andit convert into ist bull**** special format.so won't play withx pr others.try another downloader or manual download yt videos i recomend.

[Q] Only Software Decoder for MKV Files?

I love using MX Player to watch shows on my Android devices. However I'm watching Psycho-Pass right now and noticed that only software decoder works for .mkv files, probably because of the way fansub groups encode their anime. Are there any intentions to add in a hardware decoder support for .mkv files in the future? Would help a lot with regards to how smooth the show is when I try to watch it on my phone, especially if it is 1080P. Would also help with battery life too.
Or is this more related with Hi10P? It seems that way but I am not sure since I know some of the anime I watch encode using Hi10P while others don't.
.mkv is just a container. What matters is video codec. H.264 will be decoded using h/w decoder (unless something in f/w is badly broken), 10-bit H.264 ("Hi10P") can't be decoded using h/w decoder and nobody can do anything about it.
(you can check the profile using MediaInfo on PC)

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