Media Playback 101 (Using MX Video - HW/HW+) - Shield Tablet Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I figure these threads aren't exactly popular as someone needs to have basic understanding of MPEG-4 Part 2, AVC and HEVC content, not to mention all lossless audio codecs avail today compared to a few years back when people sweared by FLAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio or even WavPack. Today I assume most still stick to FLAC or ALAC since they don't dare going elsewhere. But fear not! There are other alternative today such as Tom's lossless Audio Kompressor (TAK) and True Audio (TTA) that are quite popular in the east, namely Japan. But enough about this. You want answers correct?
Consider this thread an early alpha as I try to recover my excel sheets from way back when SD 800 was still fresh on the market.
I will namely cover AVC (H.264) and HEVC (H.265) content here as the MPEG-4 Part 2 standard is just too old to even be bothered with. As for the profiles, I will only bother posting playback results for Main (MP), High (HP) and High 10 (Hi10P) as it becomes quite complicated after these three.

Reserved

Related

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.
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.

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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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?

[Q] Video format support status?

What is the status of the Tegra 2 video decoding abilities right now?
I have been hearing about issues with high profile H264 video decode in 1080p. Does 720p H264 HP work?
Can someone test with the test cases and report back: http://imouto.my/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/
Under TEST VIDEO FILES
I read somewhere that it was ROM dependent as well?
I haven't gotten anything to work, video playback was a big reason for me buying this thing (I've since found other great uses for it though). I'd like to figure this out, I have a ton of 1080p h246 videos in mkv I'd convert if I just knew what to convert them to. I'd also run those test files for you but I can't download it b/c I'm not paying for a membership to some download site to get the files.
h264 high profile does not work on the Tegra 2, but h264 main profile works. The high profile issue is a hardware limitation in the Tegra 2.
You can check your mkv's with a tool like "mediainfo" (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en). It will show you your video details.
As for mkv's themselves, I believe that the device has issues with that container, as opposed to MP4. I can get standard def MKV's to run fairly well in Rockplayer, but haven't delved too far with high def. If you are going to transcode, you're probably better off with an MP4 container.
I'd also suggest that, if you are going to transcode anyway, probably stick with h263 as that will give you the least amount of headaches. I don't know how easy it is to pick the profile in h264 - every app I've tried (so far) encodes in high profile. You might have some luck with something like ffmpeg.
roebeet said:
The high profile issue is a hardware limitation in the Tegra 2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? My ZT-180 can play Blu-ray rips to 720p, but not the 1080p rips. It is a lot less powerful than a tegra2.
As for the the quality of my rips, I used ffmpeg, and don't recall using any "high profile" setting. The 720p rips were around 1.8GB in size. Since I found very little info on how to use ffmpeg, I chronicled my experiences in this thread, so others have something to follow.:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1219959
The last post contains info on how to re-map the audio tracks. The ZT-180 had trouble with the 6-channel sound tracks I encoded into my rips. I don't know what audio the tegra2 can play.
With regards to the ZT180 (Infotmic X210), the DSP offloading methods are adopted from mass produced MP4 products, so I am not surprised if they play well on that device.
So basically the Tegra 2 doesn't even do 720p high profile confirmed?
Is the MKV container issue a software or hardware issue? The Tegra 2 SDK is getting updated continually. Or should I ask this question over at Nvidia's forums
right now viewsonic tablet has problem playing high profile video. i guess rockplayer or vplayer are not yet optimized for tegra2.
vplayer doesn't even work for me. everytime i browse to a file and try to play something, it just throws me right back out to the app.
wasserkapf said:
Really? My ZT-180 can play Blu-ray rips to 720p, but not the 1080p rips. It is a lot less powerful than a tegra2.
As for the the quality of my rips, I used ffmpeg, and don't recall using any "high profile" setting. The 720p rips were around 1.8GB in size. Since I found very little info on how to use ffmpeg, I chronicled my experiences in this thread, so others have something to follow.:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1219959
The last post contains info on how to re-map the audio tracks. The ZT-180 had trouble with the 6-channel sound tracks I encoded into my rips. I don't know what audio the tegra2 can play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3912/boxee-box-the-inside-story/2
The high profile issue is why Boxee dropped the Tegra 2.
I saw that before, but that only pertained to 1080p and not 720p
roebeet said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3912/boxee-box-the-inside-story/2
The high profile issue is why Boxee dropped the Tegra 2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm thinking that it's a driver problem as nVidia's still claiming 1080p as are all the other Tegra 2 based devices... e.g. LG phone, various tablets, etc.
I did turn up a reference to laggy 1080p video in the nVidia forums, but they seemed to think it was a poorly encoded video as they had one that played fine while a second was laggy. Noone from nVidia commented in that particular thread though...

[Q] Can the Thunderbolt handle 720p HD video smoothly?

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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
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?

Video encoding

I'm going to be travelling on Monday and plan on tossing a couple videos on the phone to watch. My question is what format/codec should I encode them to for best battery life?
dotpkmdot said:
I'm going to be travelling on Monday and plan on tossing a couple videos on the phone to watch. My question is what format/codec should I encode them to for best battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't really find much info on codecs vs. battery life, but theoretically whatever minimizes CPU usage would be your best bet. All the video I've played on my Infuse runs the CPU at 400MHz, so the codec might be pretty negligible as long as the stock video player supports it.
Another factor would be your source material: what kind? Is it HD? Can your phone already play the videos as-is?
For 720p or higher content that I must re-encode, I use x264 on the 'slower' preset, constant quality with a crf of between 16 and 17.5. For 16:9 widescreen video, I resize with spline36 resize filter to 800x450 resolution. I use VSfilter to hardsub subtitles if necessary (using an AVS script). For audio, I use AAC constant quality @ q somewhere around 0.66 (keeping original sample rate up to 48KHz). You can downmix surround audio tracks using a variety of programs, or with filters in an AVS script. I mux everything into an MP4 container for maximum compatibility (MKV seems to give me sporadic seek issues with some files for some reason). I mainly use MeGUI with x264 and NeroAAC for my encoding and MP4box or mkvtoolnix for muxing.
Thanks for the help, I've got some time today so I might try a couple videos in different formats, try and see if CPU usage stays the same between them.
None of the videos are HD quality and all are with the xvid codec. The reason I initially asked was because if I remember correctly the iphone has a hardware decoder for x264 format videos to help ease pressure on the CPU, which in turn helps with battery life. I was curious if the same held for the Infuse.
dotpkmdot said:
Thanks for the help, I've got some time today so I might try a couple videos in different formats, try and see if CPU usage stays the same between them.
None of the videos are HD quality and all are with the xvid codec. The reason I initially asked was because if I remember correctly the iphone has a hardware decoder for x264 format videos to help ease pressure on the CPU, which in turn helps with battery life. I was curious if the same held for the Infuse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The phone should already play Xvid without wasting any more battery than H.264 (btw, x264 is the encoder, not the format). There's no benefit from re-encoding Xvid to H.264 unless the source is higher quality than the phone will display. But if your testing yields any interesting results, please share them
This is the guide that I follow and it works like a champ.
http://www.knowyourcell.com/samsung...d_transfer_them_to_the_samsung_infuse_4g.html

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