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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
Hello guys at xda
This question may have been here before, and if it has here it is again.
Is there a video player that is optimized for honeycomb, or at least a player that take advantage of the tegra 2 cpu?
Otherwise i like to know if there is an video player that support dlna devices, so i can browse the dlna server directly from the video player app it selfs, sonthere is no need for a second app to do that.
Last thing, and i dont know if tisnis redicilus, but is there a player that support iso files an so on ?
Hope you can help le, and sry for my english !
Regards Fisken
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
moboplayer is tegra2 optimized now. though be warned, like all other tegra2 players, HD mkv files have issues playing.
http://moboplayer.com/moboplayer_en.html
so which codec pack should we use, the NEON?
and what do i do with the .apk file?
sorry, i'm a noob
edit: nvm, took me 2 seconds on google...
Vplayer was updated for tegra or honeycomb I forget which, but it works pretty well for most file types on the eee pad.
stuntdouble said:
Vplayer was updated for tegra or honeycomb I forget which, but it works pretty well for most file types on the eee pad.
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+1
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
i've tried every notable media player out there, but i still haven't found one that plays my hd .mp4 file [1280x720 3000kbps @ 29fps] smoothly...
dnaL0R said:
i've tried every notable media player out there, but i still haven't found one that plays my hd .mp4 file [1280x720 3000kbps @ 29fps] smoothly...
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Click to collapse
As a workaround, if you have firmware update1 installed, it means you have splashtop. Run the file on your pc and stream it via the splashtop app to your tablet. Should be fairly smooth if you have a good wifi connection. Doesnt help if you are nowhere near your pc of course, but good if you want to watch it in bed or something. You can even switch your pc off remotely this way too.
yea, i gave splashtop a try just to see how it works and all, but it's not too useful for me... i'll wait 'til these media players get updated.
I ave tried rock player and mobie player but, they kinda work. Subtitles dont appear while the files plays
my vote goes for moboplayer
i used to use rockplayer, but too many FC's
I love how moboplayer saves where you last left off on multiple videos
Fisken said:
Is there a video player that is optimized for honeycomb, or at least a player that take advantage of the tegra 2 cpu?
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Click to collapse
Just to be clear about this:
The Tegra2 CPU is a fairly standard dual core ARM v7 core, This is a fine mobile CPU but nothing special and it will _never_ be able to soft-decode HD main profile h.264 video.
However the SOC includes a general purpose GPU that also includes hardware to decode h.264 in an accelerated fashion. This _should_ be able to play 720p main profile and 1080p main with limitations. However the only way to use this acceleration is via the Nvidia OMX plugins that are part of the "StageFright" media system that Honeycomb uses. This system is not exposed to the NDK, and is only available via the MediaPlayer object in java. (It is also limited to baseline profile and under-performing compared to the froyo version for these libs)
The MediaPlayer object is what the default player uses, hence you either use something virtually identical to the default player (With all the limitations it has) or you decode 100% in software (on the CPU not the GPU) and thus can't play HD content due to a lack of horsepower.
Optimising a video player for the Tegra2 CPU will do very little (Like compiling for SSE or 3DNow), perhaps make it a few percent more efficient but nowhere near enough to play HD content.
dnaL0R said:
i've tried every notable media player out there, but i still haven't found one that plays my hd .mp4 file [1280x720 3000kbps @ 29fps] smoothly...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What profile and level is your video file? (MP4Box will tell you if you don't know)
So, which is better? moboplayer or vplayer?
freeza said:
So, which is better? moboplayer or vplayer?
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moboplayer is free and much more popular based on download numbers and ratings
SilentMobius said:
Just to be clear about this:
The Tegra2 CPU is a fairly standard dual core ARM v7 core, This is a fine mobile CPU but nothing special and it will _never_ be able to soft-decode HD main profile h.264 video.
However the SOC includes a general purpose GPU that also includes hardware to decode h.264 in an accelerated fashion. This _should_ be able to play 720p main profile and 1080p main with limitations. However the only way to use this acceleration is via the Nvidia OMX plugins that are part of the "StageFright" media system that Honeycomb uses. This system is not exposed to the NDK, and is only available via the MediaPlayer object in java. (It is also limited to baseline profile and under-performing compared to the froyo version for these libs)
The MediaPlayer object is what the default player uses, hence you either use something virtually identical to the default player (With all the limitations it has) or you decode 100% in software (on the CPU not the GPU) and thus can't play HD content due to a lack of horsepower.
Optimising a video player for the Tegra2 CPU will do very little (Like compiling for SSE or 3DNow), perhaps make it a few percent more efficient but nowhere near enough to play HD content.
What profile and level is your video file? (MP4Box will tell you if you don't know)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So...long story short...the GPU can handle 1080/720, but right now players aren't taking advantage of it because the required code/plugins aren't in the NDK. Right now all the players are forced to use software decoding which uses the weaker cpu.
So release the damn plugins!
I'm tired of stuttering video.
Sorry to revive oldish thread... does anyone know if DTS audio is not supported on the TF? I was trying out some sample mkv in 720p and 1080p to see how they looked/sounded. After the 3.1 update the 720p videos are smooth, but I am not getting any audio on the videos in mobo or rock or stock player. In Rockplayer I opened the video with software support instead of hardware and got audio, but mega choppy playback.
Any ideas?
Unfortunately AC3 audio (used in most rips) is not supported by the TF chipset (and the tegra2 chip in general).
This means either fluid video and no audio in hardware mode, or choppy video and out of sync audio in software mode. Very disappointing actually but afraid there aren't any alternatives out there yet.
You'll have to transcode the audio to AAC but that means an extra step in the process. The original galaxy tab seems to play everything, but well... that's not really an option either.
newtybar said:
So...long story short...the GPU can handle 1080/720, but right now players aren't taking advantage of it because the required code/plugins aren't in the NDK. Right now all the players are forced to use software decoding which uses the weaker cpu.
So release the damn plugins!
I'm tired of stuttering video.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, that's not what I'm saying. The "plugins" are exposed using StageFright which is used by the standard MediaPlayer object which moboplayer (et al) can and does use but only for the normally supported codecs/containers. There will never be anything better than that.
Any app that "adds" either a container or a codec to Android will be doing it via pure CPU decode, that will _always_ be that case (for the foreseeable future).
That said, the 3.1 update has improved h.264 playback massively, I can play high profile 720p quite nicely now. But if you want MKV container support _and_ h.264 hardware accelerated decoding you'll have to get Google/ASUS to add the MKV container into StageFright at the platform level, no video player app will fix that. (Or wait until we get the platform source, there is already a Matroska container parser in the AOSP repo that could be ported to Honeycomb, hell Matroska parsing is needed for WebM playback and Honeycomb already does that)
dagrim1 said:
Unfortunately AC3 audio (used in most rips) is not supported by the TF chipset (and the tegra2 chip in general).
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Click to collapse
Additionally: AC3 is patent encumbered so it costs money to include even if the chip supports it
Honeycomb optimised video player
I have found MX Vidoe Player the best player to use on my Vega running HC 3.2 Build 9n Update 2. Unlike Mobo Player the screen image can be zoomed to any size to fill the screen, not just stretch the image.
Do not know about HD, but depending on your video file resolution the image quality is great.
Dice
Sent from my TBolt using my f***king thumbs...
dagrim1 said:
Unfortunately AC3 audio (used in most rips) is not supported by the TF chipset (and the tegra2 chip in general).
This means either fluid video and no audio in hardware mode, or choppy video and out of sync audio in software mode. Very disappointing actually but afraid there aren't any alternatives out there yet.
You'll have to transcode the audio to AAC but that means an extra step in the process. The original galaxy tab seems to play everything, but well... that's not really an option either.
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Click to collapse
False!!!
Mxplayer suports AC3 and is optimized for honeycomb
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : ac-3
Duration : 30mn 8s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 96.6 MiB (23%)
Title : Imported with GPAC 0.4.6-DEV (internal rev. 5)
Encoded date : UTC 2011-01-12 17:33:12
Tagged date : UTC 2011-01-12 17:33:13
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I can play the video smoothly and I have no problems with audio
With new ICS update, android devices with 4.0+ OS version will support MKV natively. Does it mean all MKV profiles will be supported?
Thanks in advance for your help.
MKV is a container format containing audio and video, not an audio or video format per se.
(let's say it's like a .zip file for multimedia, even if technically the comparison is wrong)
What you're referring to is the video codec H.264.
And I truly hope it will support every profile.
Though the problem with Honeycomb not supporting high profiles was hardware and not software (Tegra 2 CPUs don't support high profile H.264 videos)
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium
Thanks
Thanks aavan,
I did not know much about MKV codec. I was just hoping that with MKV support and 2D native hardware acceleration, we can smoothly navigate around and play full 1080p HD videos.
That depends entirely on your hardware capability as aavan advised. If your hardware is capable then a software update will allow it but if it doesn't it won't. Imagine a DVD drive, no amount of software updates will allow it to play Blu-Ray unless it has the hardware capability to do so
Thanks man. I appreciate your input. Lol sorry for late reply.
Hey guys
i m always having the problem of playing High Quality videos on my xperia miro...
I know About my phones limitation..but if there is any way i can play those videos or convert them to playable quality from the phone itself then please advice me...Thank You
Libinbabu53 said:
Hey guys
i m always having the problem of playing High Quality videos on my xperia miro...
I know About my phones limitation..but if there is any way i can play those videos or convert them to playable quality from the phone itself then please advice me...Thank You
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mx player is the only option
Libinbabu53 said:
Hey guys
i m always having the problem of playing High Quality videos on my xperia miro...
I know About my phones limitation..but if there is any way i can play those videos or convert them to playable quality from the phone itself then please advice me...Thank You
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could be one of the five tries this option :
MoboPlayer
Any respectable discussion about free media players will honestly not be complete without mentioning Moboplayer, as it has been one of the most popular free media players out there for quite a bit of time now. MoboPlayer supports a lot of the video file formats that are rampant in the Internet, including ones that your device might not normally support, this through a feature called software decoding. The player itself also supports multiple audio tracks, subtitles – even multiple onscreen subtitles, and media streaming to media and home entertainment servers. The player takes some time in opening HD video files – especially 1080p ones – but it is rarely more than 3 seconds. With our Samsung Galaxy S3 Alpha (SC-03E) test bed – 4.8-inch 1280x720 screen, 1.6Ghz Exynos processor, Mali-400MP graphics, 2GB RAM – there was no visible lag opening a 1080p MP4 file.
Download from Google Play Store
MX Player
One of the more substantial free media players out there, great for general purpose video viewing, is MX Player. Using this app, you get a feeling that the developers chose to put in just that right balance between ease-of-use and robust features. The video viewer itself is sleek and logical, and the app supports most popular formats. For better format support, there is a codec download available, both from the developers, or you may choose to use any other codecs out there. There are gestures galore, and pinch-to-zoom. You have access to subtitle options, aspect ratio control and other stuff just from the main screen, while a lot more tweaks can be discovered in the settings menu. No lagging on this one as well, the software and hardware decoding holds up well. And since this is a free version, there will be ads, but the experience was altogether unobtrusive and tolerable.
Download from Google Play Store
Vplayer
Vplayer is a simple approach to a media playing. It lacks the bells and whistles of most premium players and even like Moboplayer and MX Player, but if you want a straight up video player, this is one of the “lighter” media players out there. It supports the common file formats, and then some. Vplayer will also detect all your folders that contain video files and display them in folder view, but there are no ways of filtering or organizing your content. One of the cool things about Vplayer is that it lets you copy and paste links out of Youtube and Vimeo and play them on Vplayer.
Download from Google Play Store
DicePlayer
DicePlayer is another feature filled player that leverages on a streamlined and uncluttered viewing window, with some straight up features available. When viewing your movie, the controls for view lock, playback speed controller, audio track and subtitle support, and aspect ratio adjustment is immediately available. DicePlayer even has controls for subtitle sync calibration, for those times when annoying subtitles are just not synced with your movie file. Finally, Dice Network playback support allows users to push their device-based media to media servers and home networks over Samba filesharing, FTP, and other such processes.
Download from Google Play Store
BSPlayer
Our last media player on this list is definitely not the least of them all, as the BSPlayer is a solid all around media app as well. Robust to the core, BSPayer offers software and hardware decoding in what seems to be a pretty uncluttered viewing pane – and we do realize that an uncluttered and simple viewing pane is one of our main considerations in a video player. One of the major selling points for the BSPlayer is that it lets you customize the interface to your liking with a variety of skins available. The app has support for subtitles, even built-in subtitles in video container files such as MKVs. As an added feature, the BSPlayer can even automatically find subtitles for your files online – very neat. The BSPlayer also has a “pop-out viewer” where you can keep your video on top of any app you may be running at the moment. As with everything here.
Download from Google Play Store
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Hey all, anyone noticed that the P11 doesn't seem to support hardware HEVC decoding?
The 622 itself does support it for both playback and camera capture, going by the product brief.
Snapdragon 662 Mobile Platform | Qualcomm
With astonishing AI performance and dynamic camera capabilities, users will capture and connect in brand new ways. Snapdragon 662 is first in our 6-series to support the HEIF format, allowing you to store high-quality photos at half the size.
www.qualcomm.com
Tried in Plex, MX Player etc. Looks like no codec support for it on the stock ROM.
I've played HEVC files on mine with no issue, using both Plex and VLC media player
Mine stutters and breaks into rainbow blocks on anything over 4k30. This is on vlc and native gallery. Wonder if the hardware support is there and just need to keep trying other players.