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Guys,
Can someone enlighten me on whether playing HD 720p hi profile H.264 files are a h/w issue (Tegra 2 limitation) or a s/w issue (Honeycomb drivers/video player app limitation)?
I keep hearing it's honeycomb (and hence s/w issue which should be fixable by s/w udpate) and then I hear it's Tegra 2 issue (and hence h/w issue which can only be fixed with Tegra 3 device).
If it is Tegra 2 issue, I am leaning towards canceling my order and waiting for Tegra3. I have a lot of videos which are H264 720p Hi profile that I was hoping to watch on the TF.
I currently have a SGT which will tide me over....
What I would like is some confirmation that is indeed h/w issue....
Here is a response from another thread from a member that thinks it is a h/w issue:
<quote>
Its not a honeycomb issue. Its a tegra 2 issue and it is not a software issue its hardware. H.264 does not work good or at all. You have to use MPEG4. I used a 720p video that plays great on my ipad 2 and had to convert to mpeg4. I tried to get good quality from MPEG4 and it increased the file size from 5.6 to 9 gigs. I swore to never buy a tegra 2 device again after testing other tegra 2 tablet & phone but I keep getting sucked back in by the hype. I hate apple but I have nothing but good things to say about the ipad 2. Everything just works and its way way faster.
</quote>
But this says it is supposed to support hi profile 720p and base profile 1080p:
http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/item/21330-tegra-2-can-play-all-the-hd-you-can-imagine
Some think it is a s/w issue:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-968308.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=977100&page=2
Any definitive answer?
KG
As far as my understanding goes, there are 2 HD playback issues here.
1) Issue with choppy playback of HD video files 720p or 1080p, its a Tegra 2 hardware issue, not a Honeycomb issue.
2) Issue with choppy playback of Youtube HD 720p videos using Flash, its a Honeycomb issue, which is expected to be fixed soon via an update.
Srikar_NBK said:
1) Issue with choppy playback of HD video files 720p or 1080p, its a Tegra 2 hardware issue, not a Honeycomb issue.
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And how do you know this? nVidia itself has stated that Tegra 2 is able to play up to 1080p main profile, let alone 720p main. If it can't, then the most logical reason is software not taking advantage of this. I highly doubt nVidia is shipping the Tegra2 with chip features turned off.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but isn't it a codec issue? I know moboplayer has codecs for the T2 but I'm not sure which codec to use since they have a bunch.
Srikar_NBK said:
As far as my understanding goes, there are 2 HD playback issues here.
1) Issue with choppy playback of HD video files 720p or 1080p, its a Tegra 2 hardware issue, not a Honeycomb issue.
2) Issue with choppy playback of Youtube HD 720p videos using Flash, its a Honeycomb issue, which is expected to be fixed soon via an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Srikar,
I am only talking about 720p Hi profile movie files that I will want to copy to the transformer for playback while traveling etc.. I am NOT talking about playing youtube HD playback in browser or via youtube app.
I know this is HC issue and will be fixed with the new Adobe bundled into next version of HC.
So we are only talking about issue 1 here...
It reference to the Ipad, its easy for Apple to optimized the OS to be very efficient because they control the hardware, they dont need to make the OS compaitible with different hardware, they can tailor the OS specifically for a processor to get the best performance
While on the other hand their is android, and Honeycomb was also rushed out, it may not have the best optimization for Tegra
I'm just speculating,
I am going to see what is announced at google IO in the couple weeks
Nvidia said the first Tegra 3 tablet is going to be coming out this August, and i have not heard anything yet, so my guess is we might see a Tegra 3 device towards 2012
Also note that performance can vary depending on software
On the MoDaCo ROM you can get over 3000 in quadrant, while stock Transformer from Asus can get around 1900
http://android.modaco.com/content/a...-custom-rom-for-the-asus-eee-pad-transformer/
Overall, i think the Tegra 2 is capable of playing HD video quite well, it is just the lack of optimization in the OS
edge929 said:
And how do you know this? nVidia itself has stated that Tegra 2 is able to play up to 1080p main profile, let alone 720p main. If it can't, then the most logical reason is software not taking advantage of this. I highly doubt nVidia is shipping the Tegra2 with chip features turned off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is exactly what I have been thinking, according to the fudzilla article I linked earlier, it clearly is supposed to be able to play 720p Hi profile..
Nvidia's own specs page doesn't give details on profile:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html
but the wiki says 1080p main is supported, which I take to mean anything UPTO 1080p Main. (which includes all 720p), maybe that's where I am wrong?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Tegra
Tegra2 can't decode main profile 1080p. It can decode files encoded with SOME of the main profile options though. What that means? That you can encode a video using specific options from main profile that are compatible with Tegra2 and it will play. The problem is - most of the videos available are not even main profile - the are all high profile. And on high profile Tegra2 just chokes.
Motorola had a fine specification what Tegra2 allows and how to encode videos for it. It's probably it: https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63258/kw/video/p/7901,7906
Magnesus said:
Tegra2 can't decode main profile 1080p. It can decode files encoded with SOME of the main profile options though. What that means? That you can encode a video using specific options from main profile that are compatible with Tegra2 and it will play. The problem is - most of the videos available are not even main profile - the are all high profile. And on high profile Tegra2 just chokes.
Motorola had a fine specification what Tegra2 allows and how to encode videos for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Magnesus, understood on 1080p, but I am mainly concerned with 720p hi profile. i can live without 1080p until Tegra3. As you said, most available videos are hi profile.....
I'd love to see what the CPU and GPU usage levels are when playing back 720p main/high profile. Is there a widget that shows this?
I will experiment with the existing Handbrake profile to get the best performance/quality/file-size tonight based on that Xoom article. 4GB for a 1.5 hour 720p baseline is horrible. I have many 720p high profile 2 hour movies under 1GB, MP4, H.264, 2chan AAC, subs.
I'm pretty sure it is a hardware related issue. It's has been how many months now that Tegra 2 devices have come out? Nvidia would have release an update by now if it was software related. Also, look at the tegra wiki page, isn't it pretty obvious the tegra 2 has no high profile and neon support. If it did it would have been listed like in the Tegra 3 section.
From what I gather around the net, the problem seems to point at the weak GPU found in Tegra 2.
So I had the G2X and returned it within my 2 week period because of software glitches and such. I was contemplating getting it again today because Costco has it for $100 for upgrades, but the coupon expires today.
Anyway, one feature affecting my decision is the G2X not natively playing .mkv formats, and market software isn't good enough to play HD videos in .mkv format smoothly. Is there a possibility that this might be changed in the future (for example, is current software not utilizing GPU or something of the sorts)? Or is it hardware limitation?
From what I've heard, it's a hardware limitation--the Tegra2 is not capable of decoding HD h.264 HP4.1 and beyond (most HD MKVs fall into this category, unless you're encoding them yourself.) The Samsung Galaxy S II is capable of doing 1080p HP4.1 with GPU acceleration, I believe.
The Tegra2 supposedly has hardware support for decoding HD 1080p VC1, though there aren't any applications taking advantage of this as far as I'm aware.
zenstrom said:
From what I've heard, it's a hardware limitation--the Tegra2 is not capable of decoding HD h.264 HP4.1 and beyond (most HD MKVs fall into this category, unless you're encoding them yourself.) The Samsung Galaxy S II is capable of doing 1080p HP4.1 with GPU acceleration, I believe.
The Tegra2 supposedly has hardware support for decoding HD 1080p VC1, though there aren't any applications taking advantage of this as far as I'm aware.
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If you check Optimus 2X forums they seem to have gotten an update that supports both mkv and 720p HP4.1. I would assume we would get a similar update eventually.
i could have sworn i was able to play my mkv files using rock player and one other video player couple weeks ago using both hardware/software option.
Has there been any progress with the tegra2 limitations on high profile HD videos, especially with 3.2 or will this never be fixed?
there are way too many high profile hd videos out there for this to not work on any name brand tablets (except Archos ironically and jailbroken ipad1/2).
For 720p try diceplayer. Works for most MKVs and is the best we'll get probably...
akaria said:
For 720p try diceplayer. Works for most MKVs and is the best we'll get probably...
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Click to collapse
is it hardware acceleration for high profile 720p videos?
superflysocal said:
is it hardware acceleration for high profile 720p videos?
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Yes. It is. There's a thread in the app section somewhere where the dev is actively talking to people on xda. It's worth the $4. I play 720P high profile videos often, but it takes either a really good SDcard, or use the internal memory. A slow (aka <10 mbps I think...my 6mbps usd card doesn't play well) card will make it not work. For obvious bandwidth issues.
superflysocal said:
is it hardware acceleration for high profile 720p videos?
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Hi I just installed it and it works!
My high profile 720p mkv files are playing very smooth.
But I cannot understand WHY this the DicePlayer is the only player
that can play such files smoothly. Maybe it uses hardware decoding for video and software decoding for audio?
chaykee said:
Hi I just installed it and it works!
My high profile 720p mkv files are playing very smooth.
But I cannot understand WHY this the DicePlayer is the only player
that can play such files smoothly. Maybe it uses hardware decoding for video and software decoding for audio?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thats exactly what it does.
darkhawkff said:
Yes. It is. There's a thread in the app section somewhere where the dev is actively talking to people on xda. It's worth the $4. I play 720P high profile videos often, but it takes either a really good SDcard, or use the internal memory. A slow (aka <10 mbps I think...my 6mbps usd card doesn't play well) card will make it not work. For obvious bandwidth issues.
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class 10 is 10 megabytes per second... in order for video content to exceed that bandwidth, it'd be 600 megabytes per minute of video, or 36gb per hour of video. Bandwidth is not an issue.
also keep in mind classes are WRITE speeds, not read, read is almost always faster than write.
I can't get the demo to play without sticking after a few seconds. Tried various 720p MKV's. Running off a class 6 MicroSD.
I tried this and now about 1/2 to 3/4 of my 720p files can be played smoothly.
Wondering though, the ones that do play, have a slight pixelated appearance to them, I was dissapointed in its visual appearance. I don't think its related to this player but the Tf in general? Perhaps bitrate is not high enough and that's why it was able to play?
The thing is if I play this on my archos 70 or ipad1 with XBMC, the picture quality is perfect, HD looking.
Anyone noticing this?
I find that curious as well. Noticed the same thing which wonders me since 720p should be mapped 1:1 on the transformer screen. But you can really notice the difference to a (baseline) encoded 1080p Video!
Can Dice Player play movies from NAS drive? And if you need thread about dice I think it is this one: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=16273817#post16273817
superflysocal said:
I tried this and now about 1/2 to 3/4 of my 720p files can be played smoothly.
Wondering though, the ones that do play, have a slight pixelated appearance to them, I was dissapointed in its visual appearance. I don't think its related to this player but the Tf in general? Perhaps bitrate is not high enough and that's why it was able to play?
The thing is if I play this on my archos 70 or ipad1 with XBMC, the picture quality is perfect, HD looking.
Anyone noticing this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I played Rango in a 720P DiVXHD the other day (in MoboPlayer I believe), and I was really impressed with the quality (playing over the network nonetheless)... I'l have to go back and try it again and really pay attention to the visual quality of it. Overall though, I thought it looked great, and noticeably better than any of the 480p videos I play on it.
When I was saying that video playback gets stuck I meant I was using the Diceplayer 3 day trial version. Everything I played that contained a AC3 or DTS track caused the video to freeze after a few seconds of playback. FF a bit and it plays then freezes again.
deadman3000 said:
When I was saying that video playback gets stuck I meant I was using the Diceplayer 3 day trial version. Everything I played that contained a AC3 or DTS track caused the video to freeze after a few seconds of playback. FF a bit and it plays then freezes again.
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Because the player is only using the cpu to decode the ac3 audiostream. Combine this with the load from the video-decoding and there is not enough cpu power. Even at 1500Mhz i have not enough power for all my mkvs.
I tend to forget that when I ran a 2.4Ghz AMD CPU on my desktop the highest res I could play were 720p MKV's most of the time. I am guessing some sorta hardware acceleration needs to be achieved in the codecs for it to play them smoothly?
I recorded a Full HD MP4 video with my Samsung Galaxy S2, where I can play back it absolutely smoothly. Then I copied it to my TF's internal SD card and it stutters like hell with the same player.
I would never have expected this, because both devices should have pretty similar performance hardwarewise.
Aymara said:
I recorded a Full HD MP4 video with my Samsung Galaxy S2, where I can play back it absolutely smoothly. Then I copied it to my TF's internal SD card and it stutters like hell with the same player.
I would never have expected this, because both devices should have pretty similar performance hardwarewise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Full HD is not good.
Tegra 2 only supports Baseline for Full HD. You should check the video and which profile it has.
sontin said:
Full HD is not good.
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But it should be. If you search Google for "Tegra 2 Full HD Video" you'll find several hints, that it should work like a charm, like in THIS product presentation video. I wonder, which player they are using in this demo.
Aymara said:
But it should be. If you search Google for "Tegra 2 Full HD Video" you'll find several hints, that it should work like a charm, like in THIS product presentation video. I wonder, which player they are using in this demo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tegra 2 is able to play Full HD but (and this is a big but) only Baseline Profile.
And that's the problem: Baseline is dying which makes Full HD on Tegra 2 a useless feature.
I think it's this device/Honeycomb. I had no issues playing main profile with B-frames (no CABAC/Weighted-P or B-frames) on my Elocity A7 (Froyo). Same files do not play on Transformer.
I could never get CABAC to work, but even 2.35 cropped 1080p files played.
I'm really impressed that Dice can do mkv. It's very computationally intensive as far as containers go. Might have to give it a try.
Something's jacked up and one day it will magicly fix itself.
The main info thread said that 3.2 was supposed to have better media support. What works better?
I'm looking to a upgrade from my current handset, an old school Nokia 6120c.
What is most important to me is that the new phone (HTC Desire S) be able to play videos encoded at a "High:L5.1" level within a mkv container, or at least High:L4.1 as most 720p tv shows i got downloaded are at that encoding level.
Thee videos will not be played from local storage (Phone/SD Card) rather they wil be streamed from my NAS which is running TwonkeyServer.
The toss up over what phone to get came down to which had the better chipset, more specifically the better gpu in terms of hardware acceleration to play these 720p videos without a single stutter.
Not wanting to blow too muh dosh, im keeping it to a simple single core cpu, so I found myself stuck in deciding between the "MSM8255 Snapdragon" and the "Humming Bird" chipset.
The 2nd generation snapdragon has a snappier cpu however the humming birds gpu seems much better still.
So, heres hoping some of you guys have already given this a thought.
1. At what most encoding level does the HTC Desire S play videos stutter free?
2. Does Diceplayer offer hardware virtuasisation for mkv files (xvid/x264) on the Desire S?
3. Since Videos are being streamed by TwonkeyServer from my NAS, is their "less effort" for the Desire S to play these videos? As apposed to playing them from local storage?
I don't have an answer for your question but I do have a question for you.
Why do you need to watch 720p video on a screen that is less than 4"?
I have never understood this need for devices with such small screens to playback such high rez video other than that which has been filmed on it.
Surely a standard xvid would look just as good on the small screen.
^ not to mention that both the Desire S nor the Galaxy S have a horizontal video resolution of 480, so watching a 720p video would be scaled down significantly anyway.
stonedandhappy said:
I don't have an answer for your question but I do have a question for you.
Why do you need to watch 720p video on a screen that is less than 4"?
..
Surely a standard xvid would look just as good on the small screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeh it sure would, however i dont have the time or effort to be re-encoding videos all the time. I have "Sickbeard" download all the TV shows i have subscribed to my NAS box daily, so i would just like to stream the videos directly to my phone without messing around all the time with encodes and re-sizing videos everyday..
bseos said:
I'm looking to a upgrade from my current handset, an old school Nokia 6120c.
1. At what most encoding level does the HTC Desire S play videos stutter free?
2. Does Diceplayer offer hardware virtuasisation for mkv files (xvid/x264) on the Desire S?
3. Since Videos are being streamed by TwonkeyServer from my NAS, is their "less effort" for the Desire S to play these videos? As apposed to playing them from local storage?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want playing 720p H.264 [email protected],5.1 video, buy Smasung(Hummingbird,Exynos) , Dual core snapdragon.
QSD8255 is not good at playing 720p H.264 [email protected]/5.x video.
1. 3.1 is Shutter free level.
2. YES
3. Subs have some problems. UPNP(DLNA) is not good for subs.
I recommand CIFS export + cifs mount using cifs.ko
juami said:
If you want playing 720p H.264 [email protected],5.1 video, buy Smasung(Hummingbird,Exynos) , Dual core snapdragon.
QSD8255 is not good at playing 720p H.264 [email protected]/5.x video.
1. 3.1 is Shutter free level.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Isnt that for the 1st generation snapdragon "QSD8250" (The 1st Desire with hard buttons)?
diceplayer.inisoft.co.kr said:
Supported devices
* Samsung Galaxy S2 : 1080p H.264 [email protected]/MPEG-4,1080i AVCHD MTS
* Samsung Galaxy S and variants : 720p H.264 [email protected]
* HTC Nexus-1,Desire and QSD8250 baesd devices : 720p H.264 [email protected]
=> May need libOmxVdec.so patch.
* HTC Sensation,Evo 4G+.Evo 3D : 720p [email protected]/1080p [email protected](some 1080p files have shuttering)
* HTC Desire HD,ThunderBolt : 720p [email protected]/4.0(some Level 4.0 file have shutter problem)
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2nd generation snapdragon "MSM8255" with Adreno 205 GPU as opposed to Adreno 200 should be ~4 times quicker. So in theory shouldn't it be able to play videos of higher level encoding?
EDIT: Oh my bad, seems you were right about High:L3.1 being the highest shutter free level
As i turns out The HTC Desire S has the same chipset as the HTC Desire HD, which is actually included in the above supported list of devices. Well im **** outta luck then
Still dont understand how even with the 205 Adreno GPU it failed to play anything higher :S
I really liked the look of the HTC Desire S, and its dimensions closely resembled the iphone4 which i believe is just the perfect size for a phone.
I had previously bought and returned tf700 because playback was choppy when playing my mpeg2 1080i video's. This is the format my videos are in and i dont want to re encode. I was also only getting 2 hr's. Battery life while watching my mpeg2's. Does that sound right? Ipickf i was to root and overclock would it make video playback much smoother? If so and im on ebay looking for tf700, do i need to ask anything to know its android compatible?
That doesn't sound right to me at least. Tegra 3 should support MPEG2 just fine (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=28677759), but I can't say for sure because most of my movies are encoded in H.264. If you have a sample video, I would gladly give it a double check. Btw, just to be thorough, what player did you use? Did you play your videos with hardware acceleration? You will definitely drain your battery faster if you use software decoders to play videos (using the CPU) instead of hardware decoder (offloading the task to GPU).
As far as i know mpeg2 does not support hw acceleration. i use mx player. Basically im looking for a 10 inch display for the cheapest i can find that can handle my 1080i mpeg's, taken from TiVo. I thought tf700 might fit the bill?
leif2 said:
As far as i know mpeg2 does not support hw acceleration. i use mx player. Basically im looking for a 10 inch display for the cheapest i can find that can handle my 1080i mpeg's, taken from TiVo. I thought tf700 might fit the bill?
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Click to collapse
If you look at Tegra 3's spec sheet on Nvidia website, it is stated that Tegra 3 fully support MPEG-2 decoding, so I don't think what you say is true. Regardless, why don't you provide a sample video or at least other information regarding your videos like bit rates, formats, profiles, etc...? And btw, MX Player has its own decoder called "H/W+", have you tried it? You should also give Dice Player and BS Player a try if you haven't.
If all else fails, just get a Nexus 10, people have played really high bit-rate videos on the Nexus 10 that far exceed any videos you encounter normally.