Database Users

streaming video from PC + 802.11b or 802.11g to wizard

guys,
i've got a really straight question which probably gets complicated by specific scenarios but i'm hoping to collect in this thread all your feedback and experience so that i can make my final decision whether to buy or not...
...can you STREAM videos from your computer / router ( mine is 802.11b but i can buy a 802.11g if needed ) to the K-JAM without experiencing saccades ?
...i'm talking about .avi ( divx,xvid, mostly, some .mpg too ) files NOT CONVERTED to low rez or specific PDA bitrates usually around 700MB long ( yeah, movie rips ) I DO NOT want to recode for PDA viewing.
is there a difference in playback performance with videos of "weird" resolution ( 99% of my videos are NOT 640x480 precisely or 320 x 240 either ) ?
...if it's hard to playback for the WIZARD, do you think it's possible ( better ? ) to run TERMINAL SERVICES and have the PC perform the playback while the WIZARD only receives the image stream ?
THANKS A LOT for your feedback on this matter; this is really the one "to buy or not to buy" feature i'm looking for in the WIZARD.
=)
PS - on a side note, how would you judge viewing a movie on your WIZARD screen ?
is it too small for you ?
THANKS !

croquette said:
...if it's hard to playback for the WIZARD, do you think it's possible ( better ? ) to run TERMINAL SERVICES and have the PC perform the playback while the WIZARD only receives the image stream ?
PS - on a side note, how would you judge viewing a movie on your WIZARD screen ?
is it too small for you ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure about the other questions but I can answer these.
You can't use Terminal Services to view video. It is far too slow, and only 16 colours so it would not work.
I am upgrading from the XDA Mini to the K-JAM, both of which have 2.8" QVGA screens, and viewing video on the 2.8" screen is fine. It looks better than my previous 3.5" QVGA screen because of the higher density of the pixels. You can't really see the black between the pixels. Its great!!
If you haven't purchased by Wednesday next week, I may be able to try it for you. I should get my K-JAM then

Without trying it, I would have to say that it's probably not possible to run full-size divx/avi/wmv from your wizard over wifi. It has a hard time just playing PDA-size videos off local storage.
It would be interesting for someone to confirm it with empirical evidence though.

I have only read good reports of video playback on the K-JAM.

Ive streamed many video files to my xd2i and now my exec...........occasionally it can slow up or re-buffer, but thats part of the the fun lol
You might need a different player to WM10 though, something like the Core player (TCPMP) does the job

Did anyone try to Stream Beyond TV to the Wizard ?????

can you see shared folders on your network? or do you just put in the URL/address manually to stream those videos?

i use www.orb.com
but i'd love to work out how the hell i can browse network shares via wireless on my wizard

you can see network folders if you have Resco File Explorer and then click on the file to play it. I don't think this works on WM file explorer and its a pain to enter a network address into the file field (to long). I haven't tried it with DIVX or MPG yet. but when I tried streaming with WMV I get an error. something about parameters. any ideas?

use pocketlan.
(or resco)
I can stream full size divx (movies from bittorrent) ok on my jam with wifi card but it does buffer quite a bit
the g might make a difference on the k-jam...

I have the same problem. Resco and Total commander can open shared "drive" but if I try to open *.wmv or *.wma by using WM10 I got an "error" from WM10.
But if I associate the wma mp3 avi to TPMC(Betaplayer) i will run!
Like if built in app will never open networked version...

adebilloez said:
I have the same problem. Resco and Total commander can open shared "drive" but if I try to open *.wmv or *.wma by using WM10 I got an "error" from WM10.
But if I associate the wma mp3 avi to TPMC(Betaplayer) i will run!
Like if built in app will never open networked version...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sounds like you get further than me then.. i just get a nasty error when i try to even open a share thats got full access to anyone

I have the same problem. Resco and Total commander can open shared "drive" but if I try to open *.wmv or *.wma by using WM10 I got an "error" from WM10.
But if I associate the wma mp3 avi to TPMC(Betaplayer) i will run!
Like if built in app will never open networked version...

Well guys let me tell you that you can stream videos or music from your pc to your pocket pc via wifi anyway you have to install Windows media encoder to do this process and you will be watching the videos or listening to music from the Media player on your pocket pc ;D

Hello,
Already tried with WMEncoder 9 always get this "error" I guess that it's something with DRM but it's not...
When I use other device (WM2003 with wifi) Pocket WM works well...with my brodcasting PC
I think it's something with WM5 (not able to do wifi with my 3th device 2020 with Buzz1.6c czuz I don't have Wifi SD...) or 9100 ROM..
If anybody can test "built in" (ROM) app using shared resource
it will be great ...

guys,
have anyone among you lucky owners of a K-JAM finally managed to stream an .avi movie ( 700Mb and not 640x480 or 320x240 ) from the PC to your smartphone through an 802.11b or 802.11g wifi connection without saccades yet ?
i still fail to find confirmation of this online, and i'm hurting everytime i talk on my dying cell unable to upgrade just yet because i couldn't find the answer to this question to make up my mind...
=P
...i'm hoping you have some good news.
THANKS !=)

no and even 320*240...

ok, a month and a half has gone by since my first post, and i was wondering if you guys have had enough time to play with your new cell to give feedback about this specific topic... :roll:
i'm stuck with an almost useless phone until i upgrade, and i would REALLY join the WIZARD group...
PLEASE HELP ME !!!

adebilloez said:
no and even 320*240...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope video stream is poor via my mda vario approx 50 %
Vario has only b wifi not g
ern

Just tried it with a 640*360 DivX file and its no good, but then having said that its prettymuch the same when i run the same file from the SD card. doesn't seem to like the decoding on the fly

how to stream movies from pc to TouchHD over wifi?

Hi,
I managed to access the shared folders on my desktop with resco explorer. I wanted to see if i could stream movies. On my previous device (Kaiser) there was a lot buffering & stuttering so i hoped the TouchHD would handle things better, but in fact it's worse. Windows media player says "cant play file" (for avi) and streaming mp3 is terribly slow. Coreplayer doesnt know how to find files when launched from resco explorer same goes for htc videoplayer.
Does anyone have a tip to get a decent stream? My wifi network is fast enough and the touch hd is perfectly capable of playing movies from the sd card so it should be possible, theoratically...?
Thanks in advance.

I just used the network cab (sorry in a hurry or would find the thread), browse to the file, and click on it, having set it to open automatically in CorePlayer. Results: Coreplayer loads and starts playing the file (and it's just able to keep up, through one thick wall
Although if people have better suggestions/settings, please share!

Use VideoLAN streaming to resize and reduce the bitrate on the fly. http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/streaming-howto-en.html

Personally I still use Orb as mentioned here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3370433#post3370433
In conjunction with Coreplayer it's certainly ftw.

welki1979 said:
Personally I still use Orb as mentioned here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=3370433#post3370433
In conjunction with Coreplayer it's certainly ftw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 for ORB
It'll also do TV if you have a tuner in your host PC.
It'll automatically set the stream bitrate depending on your connection speed, so streaming over 3G/HSPDA should also be possible depending on your provider.

djmc321 said:
+1 for ORB
It'll also do TV if you have a tuner in your host PC.
It'll automatically set the stream bitrate depending on your connection speed, so streaming over 3G/HSPDA should also be possible depending on your provider.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah the TV bit will take a bit of configuring but it's nothing too complicated. I have it installed on my media centre and it's quite clever in the fact that if media centre is using all the tuners it will even give you the option to shut down media centre remotly so you can watch telly from anywhere.
Mediacentre does not need to be shut down this way to watch/listen to/read any other files on the host though.
4 years running Orb with no issues.
Opera browser seems to struggle a bit so I've created an 'Orb.lnk' file on my start menu that calls Pocket Internet Explorer for loading Orb without changing the default PIE homepage.....I've even got an icon assigned to it thanks to SKTools Shortcut Manager and a .dll I created using GConvert 5.0.
(Also see this thread to edit menu icons)
EDIT: forgot to mention that they've now implemented another option to power on the PC remotely (currently via another download provided by Mycast on the Orb site).

But why is it so difficult for the device to stream over wifi while it can pay fine from the card? The speed cant be the issue.

plaktoets said:
But why is it so difficult for the device to stream over wifi while it can pay fine from the card? The speed cant be the issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I myself only have a cheap standard G wireless router and obviously experience serious playback issues trying to stream the original files without converting them to another format first....it can take up to 20 mins to start playing.
..however....if you stream the file(s) via VLC, ORB or something similar the stream is compressed better and playback begins almost instantly...and it also saves converting all your files prior to watching them.
Generally speaking....unless you have a N or N+ router then you will certainly get streaming problems with larger video files.
Also....another thing to note is that unless you've enabled it the wireless in the Touch HD (Blackstone) only works on Wireless B not G as standard.
There is a .CAB to enable wireless G or you can use HD Tweak to do it.

welki1979 said:
I myself only have a cheap standard G wireless router and obviously experience serious playback issues trying to stream the original files without converting them to another format first....it can take up to 20 mins to start playing.
..however....if you stream the file(s) via VLC, ORB or something similar the stream is compressed better and playback begins almost instantly...and it also saves converting all your files prior to watching them.
Generally speaking....unless you have a N or N+ router then you will certainly get streaming problems with larger video files.
Also....another thing to note is that unless you've enabled it the wireless in the Touch HD (Blackstone) only works on Wireless B not G as standard.
There is a .CAB to enable wireless G or you can use HD Tweak to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I already enabled it using hd tweak and my router is a wireless N so streaming should be no problem at all. I still believe it's a flaw of the Touch HD (and older htc devices) somehow that it's unable to stream files properly.

Coreplayer doesnt know how to find files when launched from resco explorer same goes for htc videoplayer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's worth trying to re-assign the file types to coreplayer with another application so that Core is used instead of the standard software. You can set more buffering options in Coreplayer than most other appliactions.
Thanks. I already enabled it using hd tweak and my router is a wireless N so streaming should be no problem at all. I still believe it's a flaw of the Touch HD (and older htc devices) somehow that it's unable to stream files properly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The router might be N but the other thing to bear in mind is that the HD is only Standard G so won't benefit from N speeds only the signal range.
How large are the files you're trying to stream? I just streamed a 350mb 1 hour recorded video straight from my mediabox to my HD by browsing to the file in Total Commander and opening it with Coreplayer with very little stuttering....took a long time to buffer the first part though has to be said I'll be sticking to using Orb for most of my streaming.
Also, what Radio do you have installed? As different Radio Roms (if thats the correct term!?) will perform differently, sometimes depending on where you are and what handset you're using. I use 1.14.xx and the only issue I have with it is the extra heat it generates.

welki1979 said:
Also....another thing to note is that unless you've enabled it the wireless in the Touch HD (Blackstone) only works on Wireless B not G as standard.
There is a .CAB to enable wireless G or you can use HD Tweak to do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the Option in HD Tweak ? I'm running 0.5.4 and under Wifi it only lists,
7.1 Wifi standby mode
7.2 Wifi certificate mode

It's in there somewhere...I no longer have it installed to check though.

welki1979 said:
It's worth trying to re-assign the file types to coreplayer with another application so that Core is used instead of the standard software. You can set more buffering options in Coreplayer than most other appliactions.
The router might be N but the other thing to bear in mind is that the HD is only Standard G so won't benefit from N speeds only the signal range.
How large are the files you're trying to stream? I just streamed a 350mb 1 hour recorded video straight from my mediabox to my HD by browsing to the file in Total Commander and opening it with Coreplayer with very little stuttering....took a long time to buffer the first part though has to be said I'll be sticking to using Orb for most of my streaming.
Also, what Radio do you have installed? As different Radio Roms (if thats the correct term!?) will perform differently, sometimes depending on where you are and what handset you're using. I use 1.14.xx and the only issue I have with it is the extra heat it generates.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i am running mirri's 6.5 manila 2.5 rom at the moment, but previous roms dealed with streaming the same way. I still believe the wifi on the hd is fast enough to stream a divx movie (650mb). I just downloaded a 9 mb pdf file to my phone and it was there in seconds! Also transferrings mp3s from my hd to my hd over wifi is quite fast.
But to be honest i cant tell how it streams movies really as long as i cant get coreplayer to play network files. The error i get is: File not found!\Network\my dir name
i tried it with Total Commander which also gives me a file not found error in coreplayer
any suggestions?

plaktoets said:
i am running mirri's 6.5 manila 2.5 rom at the moment, but previous roms dealed with streaming the same way. I still believe the wifi on the hd is fast enough to stream a divx movie (650mb). I just downloaded a 9 mb pdf file to my phone and it was there in seconds! Also transferrings mp3s from my hd to my hd over wifi is quite fast.
But to be honest i cant tell how it streams movies really as long as i cant get coreplayer to play network files. The error i get is: File not found!\Network\my dir name
i tried it with Total Commander which also gives me a file not found error in coreplayer
any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not the ROM thats the issue, what radio are you using?
The RADIO is not generally built into the ROM's Miri distributes and you'll need to do any Radio changes yourself.
As stated before I use 1.14.xx with the rilphone.dll and my HD does stream the files directly but it takes ages to start playing without any prior conversion, sometimes up to 20 mins with the rare occasion where I get a 'buffer overflow' error from Coreplayer.

my radio is 1.13.25.24

hmm. Mine is working fine from Network drive (NAS) with coreplayer, and resco explorer.
buffers very little in beginning, buffering set to microdrive mode. and set little higher buffer value.
no stutters unless going too far from hotspot.

plaktoets said:
my radio is 1.13.25.24
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never tried that one myself, it might be worth experimenting with others.
I would try to ask the advice of someone in the ROM development area....they do a lot of tweaking there with Radios as well as ROMs.
Maybe even Tunppi can help somehow. What Radio do you use Tunppi?
tunppi said:
hmm. Mine is working fine from Network drive (NAS) with coreplayer, and resco explorer.
buffers very little in beginning, buffering set to microdrive mode. and set little higher buffer value.
no stutters unless going too far from hotspot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Excellent information! Thanks everyone!

iplayer downloads?? Can't get them to work.

Sorry for the noobish question but my problem is as follows....
I know the BBC Iplayer site states the HD2 is not compatable and either way I thought I'd put some downloaded programmes on my phone to watch.
So I downloaded them as 'portable device download' from the iplayer site to my PC and then tried to drop them onto the card to watch. They're WMV files. But I get an error message stating "the device has either stopped responding or has been disconected".....not sure what I'm doing wrong and would be glad of some advice. All I'm trying to do is copy and paste them over to the phone card.

Anyone?

Can't explain that I'm afraid but I did read a while back that the files need to be synched through Windows Media Player and in the past that the file needs to pass a drm check before it will play - someone wrote even longer back that starting to play the fie on the PC so it checks drm, then moving it worked.
Do you get that message when moving anything else to your sd card?

jbh99blue said:
Anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a problem to do with transferring large files rather than the HD2's ability to play the WMV files. Try connecting the HD2 in Disk Drive mode - it worked for me.

You might want to try searching this site for an application called myplayer - it makes accessing iPlayer a lot less painful and allows higher-quality downloads.

Dark Fire said:
This is a problem to do with transferring large files rather than the HD2's ability to play the WMV files. Try connecting the HD2 in Disk Drive mode - it worked for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And has just worked for me as well. Many thanks

Shasarak said:
You might want to try searching this site for an application called myplayer - it makes accessing iPlayer a lot less painful and allows higher-quality downloads.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mPlayer download high quality videos in .mov format, for some strange reason it didn't want to play with my latest coreplayer. It was bit let down like

hassan said:
mPlayer download high quality videos in .mov format, for some strange reason it didn't want to play with my latest coreplayer. It was bit let down like
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really? Odd. Have you tried playing them in TCPMP?

Shasarak said:
Really? Odd. Have you tried playing them in TCPMP?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried that, and it just crashes my device when I try to play stuff.

Shasarak said:
Really? Odd. Have you tried playing them in TCPMP?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No i didn't really as i hate the UI, but if you thing it may work I'll install it tonight.
After downloading very long episode of East Enders other night and couldn't play it, it made me bit scared of trying again. I'll give it an other go any way.

Dark Fire said:
I've tried that, and it just crashes my device when I try to play stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you set the video renderer to GDI?

Shasarak said:
Did you set the video renderer to GDI?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't - do I need to? I've just reinstalled TCPMP and now it won't run at all...

This may not solve your problem but you can use the BBC iPlayer on the HD2 with a simple change of settings. See point number 36 in the *Leo Hints & Tips* - Things you may not have known.

Dark Fire said:
I didn't - do I need to? I've just reinstalled TCPMP and now it won't run at all...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
TCPMP is more likely to be stable (i.e. not crash or lock up the phone) in GDI or Raw Framebuffer mode. So is CorePlayer, come to that.
If TCPMP is crashing before it even lets get you into the menu, that may be because it's trying to display the opening frame of the video that you previously told it to play, and doing that in DirectDraw mode. You can get around that by temporarily moving or renaming whichever file it's trying to display.

I have myPlayer and Coreplayer.
With myPlayer you get the latest viewable content ... but can search for anything. If you have the iPlayer website open that may be easier to search.
Once you've found what you want, just use myPlayer to download over wireless to your device (you can also stream for instant playback (even over 3g).
myPlayer has a view downloads screen with all the programmes you've downloaded. You select one, say view now ... it launches Coreplayer ... and it plays perfectly.
Never had a problem. This is infact one of the most amazingly together capabilities of the HD2 with this huge screen. In the evening I choose something to watch on the train on the way to the city the next day ... love it.
Paul.

meegulthwarp said:
This may not solve your problem but you can use the BBC iPlayer on the HD2 with a simple change of settings. See point number 36 in the *Leo Hints & Tips* - Things you may not have known.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd rather download the videos than stream them, so I don't have to worry about signal strength while I'm watching stuff...
Shasarak said:
TCPMP is more likely to be stable (i.e. not crash or lock up the phone) in GDI or Raw Framebuffer mode. So is CorePlayer, come to that.
If TCPMP is crashing before it even lets get you into the menu, that may be because it's trying to display the opening frame of the video that you previously told it to play, and doing that in DirectDraw mode. You can get around that by temporarily moving or renaming whichever file it's trying to display.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK. I tried moving the file, but it's still crashing. I'll uninstall it again, later, and delete any settings that are left behind in the registry. And when I get TCPMP working again, I'll give those other modes a go.

Having got iplayer downloads to play on my HD2 having put them on the sd card I'm now having some playback problems.
Basically the quality of the picture and the sound is fine in principal but upon playback on WMP the programme pauses or sticks every second or so. The pause is only for a fraction of a second, just enough for the picture to momentarily catch or stick before continuing. I could live with this but at the same time the sound is also distorted making programmes unwatchable. If downloaded to my PC the same programmes are fine, it's not the download itself it's just once on the phone thats the problem.
Tried various programmes, all the same. Tried downloading direct from iplayer site to the card, still occurs.
Could this be a card problem. It's a sandisk 8Gb SDHC card. Any ideas?

I configured Opera to try direct streaming from iPlayer ... and it worked fine althought he picture was a little pixelated.
I know CorePlayer is a cost ... but if iPlayer is important to you, the combination of myPlayer and Coreplayer for iPlayer (and other channels) is incredibly simply ... live streaming is better quality ... and the download manager is completely seemless. Quality of downloaded video is genuinely perfect ... as good as anything at high bit rates I have on my Archos AV5100.
All I can say is that if you can stretch to Coreplayer ... I'd go with myPlayer.
Going through the website for either streaming or download (even on a PC) is so much more clunky.
Paul.

pgamble said:
All I can say is that if you can stretch to Coreplayer ... I'd go with myPlayer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't tried this on an HD2, but on my TP2 you can quite good results from myplayer without having to buy CorePlayer; I use Streaming Media Player for streaming, and TCPMP to play the .mov downloads.

Coreplayer 1.3.6 Judder - stock ROM 1.48 (SOLVED)

I've done a search and read many posts about coreplayer performance on the HD2. Most have no problems but some do and i'm one of them.
I have no problem playing the files using these settings from member Shasarak (thanks mate):
Options/Video and activate Dither, then "smooth zoom always" rather than "smooth zoom 50%". You will get substantially better performance if you then go into the DirectDraw settings page, choose "YUY2" as your overlay format, leave "use device stretching" checked, and uncheck the other two boxes.
I have tried all other settings and combinations but i agree the above gives the best performance.
However, i am still experiencing occassional judder and it's annoying me.
1). would upgrading to stock ROM 1.66 make a difference?
2). is there ANYTHING else i can do to stop the judder? i've already tried disabling background tasks, wifi etc
3). The audio is also very slightly out of sync, it's delayed, it's minor but i notice it. It happens on all videos, they are all .avi I've not seen anyone complain of this before.
Thanks

With regards to uadio sync:
Menu --> Tools --> Settings
Select the 'Advanced' page
Manual A/V offset let's you adjust the audio sync

The judder is most likely due to the format the videos are encoded in just eating too much CPU. How do you encode them?

kilrah said:
The judder is most likely due to the format the videos are encoded in just eating too much CPU. How do you encode them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't encode them, just downloaded movies in the common divx/xvid format. I played movies on my old N96but re-encoded them to mp4 as it didn't play avi and i never tried coreplayer on it.
Perhaps i should try re-encoding, but don't see why this phone couldn't handle a standard 700mb divx avi.

kr00t0n said:
With regards to uadio sync:
Menu --> Tools --> Settings
Select the 'Advanced' page
Manual A/V offset let's you adjust the audio sync
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
cheers mate, you are the man! putting a -0.300 has made it much better, not sure why it would be out like that on all movies? I'm very happy with that What do the other 2 settings do - soft drop tolerance & hard drop tolerance?
now just to fix the juddering.
I've found, and i think someone else suggested this in another thread, that if you pause it for a moment it sorts itself out. Would rather not have to do that but i don't see a way around it

jonbaker76 said:
Perhaps i should try re-encoding, but don't see why this phone couldn't handle a standard 700mb divx avi.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The standard ~1h30 700MB divx movies I've tried to play all worked nicely. But sorter ones of the same size (meaning more bitrate) could start being too much load. Just try and do a benchmark in coreplayer with a video that causes problems, if you have less than about 150% average playing speed you might start getting drops.

It may help to put the phone in "Airplane Mode"; if it's checking for email messages in the background while playing it will judder like crazy. Use the task manager to kill off any other running applications as well....

I come to the conclusion that this phone just can not handle playing divx/xvid in avi very well, and i'm not sure why it can't.
I have gone back to my old ways of converting the video to mp4 using winavi mp4 converter, this also cures the problem of any files that have ac3 audio as it converts that as well.
On my 8 year old computer it would take 30 mins to convert a 700mb film, i have since bought a quad core Dell running 64 bit windows 7 and it converts in less than 10 mins!!
Smooth as butter now but a shame i have to go back to doing this. But at least the files will play in coreplayer, windows media and htc's player so plenty of choice
If anyone wants the settings i use for winavi mp4 converter then just ask away. It's not free but mine was if you get what i mean
EDIT:
I HAVE FOUND THE REAL PROBLEM, IT'S MY COREPLAYER! IT STARTED STUTTERING THE MP4 FILE THIS MORNING, WHEN I SWITCHED TO WINDOWS MEDIA OR HTC PLAYER IT WAS FINE 9OBVIOUSLY COULDN'T DO THIS BEFORE AS NEITHER OF THOSE PLAYERS SUPPORT AVI)
I JUST TRIED COREPLAYER AGAIN AND IT'S PLAYINNG THE SAME MP4 FILE FINE NOW, MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY COREPLAYER, WILL GET ANOTHER VERSION.
WHAT A DRAMA AND SORRY FOR BORING YOU ALL WITH IT LOL

Video playback problems - Coreplayer, TCPMP : SOLVED/SOLUTION

PROBLEM SOLVED - CONCLUSION OF THREAD updated 9/3/10:
1). Coreplayer and TCPMP don't work well on my device when playing back avi (divx/xvid) because they don't support hardware accelaration, although others seem to have no problems which still confuses me. Playback is juddery dropping many frames. I have tried Shasaraks settings (which are the best) and all others with no luck.
2). Because WMP and the HTC player don't support avi (divx/xvid) converting to mp4 is the only option for me.
3). CONVERSION: I have tried many converters including: TMPGEnc.XPress, handbrake, xvid4psp, mediacoder and others. The ones that do work well for the HD2 all have the same problem and that is a delay in audio putting speech out of sync when played back on the device. Even when playing back avi's in coreplayer i had to manualy adjust the sync.
The only converter that works well and is fast and can put the audio in sync for playback on HD2 is winmenc available here (freeware) http://winmenc.blogspot.com/
Download my profile which has the audio sync tweak already in it (thanks to Kr00ton) and put it into the profiles folder. I have tweaked Kenkiller's original profile, see here for info: http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...7&postcount=38
I have changed Kenkillers profile from 2000 to 1000 kbps to save file size and have also got rid off the 2 pass encoding to save time (and lots of it!). You also need to tick FIT TO WIDTH AND SPEED & QUALITY CONTROL AND MOVE IT TO FASTEST. I done various tests and found no noticeble difference to SD videos doing it my way. This speeds up conversion time to around 30 mins for a 700mb avi and keeps the file size about the same as the original.
If you have more time on your hands and or you are converting HD then maybe use Kenkillers original profile, although i converted HD stuff in my profile and it looked great. It all depends if file size and conversion time is an issue for you.
4). For some reason the HTC player still judders for me, i'm pretty sure it didn't do that in stock rom 1.44 but it certainly does on my 1.66 ROM leaving only WMP that performs perfectly It's a shame that it isn't very finger friendly for srolling through the video etc but i'll live with that.
I can only report my findings and experiences, you may not have the same issues i have had. Conversion may wield different reults on other OS's. I'm using windows 7 64 bit and can confirm that when i used winavimp4 converter on xp it was perfect but used on windows 7 it puts audio out of sync. Having said that it is without a doubt the fastest converter i have come accross converting a 700mb file in around 10 mins on windows 7 64 bit. It was around 30 mins on my old xp machine.
5). I can now relax and enjoy my films on my HD2, which is the main reason i bought it!
ORIGINAL 1ST POST
I bought this phone because of its screen. I watch movies on my long journeys to work and i'm getting increasingly frustrated with the phones poor performance on playback.
Coreplayer judders with many dropped frames no matter what settings (tried shasaraks direct draw settings) or version of coreplayer i use and disabling sense and using plane mode makes no difference whatsoever. It will play flawlessly for a while then judder then be ok then judder on and on...
So i decided to convert to mp4:
coreplayer still has poor performance. HTC player was ok but since upgrading to 1.66 it's performing worse than coreplayer now (yes, i did a hard reset after flashing)
The only player that works is wmp. I now have some questions:
1). Is there an option in wmp to sync the audio manualy like in coreplayer? some films are slightly out of sync.
2). are there any other players that work well on the HD2 apart from tcpmp (tried that, same results as coreplayer)
3). CONVERSION:
What are the best settings for video conversion for the HD2? If I can't use coreplayer to play avi this is my only solution and aslo solves the problem of coreplayer not supporting ac3 audio. I'm talking bitrate etc for video and audio. If you are succesfully converting video what converter and settings do you use? PLEASE!
I tried searching but couldn't see a thread dedicated to optimum conversion settings for the HD2.
4). Could the problem lie with my 16gb sandisk sd card? i noticed another thread for the blackstone where a cab was designed to speed up the cards performance by 3 times, is there something like this for the HD2 and would me formatting it to fat 32 make any difference at all to my problem?
This is really winding me up now and i've spent hours messing with settings etc, the one function i really need and it wont perform which i find very surprising for a phone that has this super fast snapdragon processor.
PLEASE HELP ME
END OF ORIGINAL POST, PROFILE FOR WINMENC BELOW

1) no
2) none even close to that
3) can't tell, as I don't really do it much, coreplayer works well for me
4) could be, as coreplayer works well for me.

jonbaker76 said:
4). Could the problem lie with my 16gb sandisk sd card? i noticed another thread for the blackstone where a cab was designed to speed up the cards performance by 3 times, is there something like this for the HD2 and would me formatting it to fat 32 make any difference at all to my problem?
This is really winding me up now and i've spent hours messing with settings etc, the one function i really need and it wont perform which i find very surprising for a phone that has this super fast snapdragon processor.
PLEASE HELP ME
many thanks...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could well be the card, as it sounds like it gets to the end of a buffer, buffers, then continues, causing the lags.

I know that reporting my own experience is of relatively low usefullness to you as it's not step by step instructions on how to solve your problem, anyway:
1) I use TCPMP to watch AC3 audio-encoded series like frasier
2) I use Coreplayer to watch non AC3 encoded series like sex and the city
3) tcpmp is slower than coreplayer for those videos that coreplayer CAN play, I get ~120% bench for SATC in coreplayer and ~90% in tcpmp, but nonetheless I can watch everything (...that I tried until now) in tcpmp without noticing the slightest issues, and I always "zoom to fit screen", which means the video fills the entire 800x480 resolution
4) I watched videos on my old ipaq 214 as well, sure we're talking about a different device, but we're aso talking about a device with a 600MHz cpu and without an accelerated graphics subsystem (and I do have chainfire patch for the graphics subsystme of my hd2)... well I only used tcpmp on the 214 and no issue there... and I watched the whole Death note series, crappy bench results but no issues with jumps in the video
5) I have a 16gb class 2 sandisk microsd, and despite it being class 2, I get ~7mb/s transfers both ways in the sd reader of my laptop, so if we're using the same memory card, that should not be the problem...
6) probably you watch "heavy" encoded movies?

Look at this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5331497&postcount=38
Post Nr. 38 and download th profiles.
Use Winmenc 0.81 Beta (Freeware). Copy the downloaded profiles into Winmenc subfolder "profile".
Edit the profile like told in this thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5341496#post5341496 Post Nr. 32 from krooton.
Important ist to set the audiodelay.
With this solution you can get very good *.mp4 Files with audio in sync playable with Manila album or Mediaplayer.
I tried a lot of things but this was the only way to get good video with audio in sync.
Sorry, but english is not my first language.

For coreplayer i'm using v 1.3.5 build 7340 but the newer 1.3.6 build 7427 also performs the same.
What version are you guys using?
Failing that i'll format the card to fat32 to see if that makes a difference and have a look at that winmenc.
Any other suggestions are very welcome

ephestione said:
6) probably you watch "heavy" encoded movies?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
defo not this. I converted a film to the lowest spec audio and video wise and it resulted in 350mb file... It played the same as the 1.2g original!

I used handbreak to convert to MP4 and then used the built in player in sense.
Seemed to be HW accelerated as 45minutes of playback took about 8% of the battery charge and I would expect doing soft decode of H264 would take more than that.
Only downside was waiting 15minutes to go from 720p to iPhone profile in handbreak. I am going to experiment with remuxing
Jim

I have created a preset in handbrake specifically for the HD2 - Let me get home and post it back for you.
have been using this - converted about 20 movies and loaded up around 10 on the HD2 for a trip. All of them played perfectly in HTC album (Looks like it's hardware accelerated). Approx 4-5 hours on a single full charge (around 2 1/2 movies back to back).
Best part - converstion takes about an hour on a 4 yr old laptop - should happen much quicker on new ones.
Source files are all mkv (for Blu-ray rips) or iso (for standard DVD)

vivek310 said:
I have created a preset in handbrake specifically for the HD2 - Let me get home and post it back for you.
have been using this - converted about 20 movies and loaded up around 10 on the HD2 for a trip. All of them played perfectly in HTC album (Looks like it's hardware accelerated). Approx 4-5 hours on a single full charge (around 2 1/2 movies back to back).
Best part - converstion takes about an hour on a 4 yr old laptop - should happen much quicker on new ones.
Source files are all mkv (for Blu-ray rips) or iso (for standard DVD)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
please do mate, looks like a nice converter, if you post the sttings you are using i'll give it a bash tonight.
I don't know what is going on with coreplayer, i used it a while ago and it played lovely, about 2 drops in 10 mins. I just tried again, 11 drops in 10 seconds what does this tell us!?!?!?!?

Could also be that you have something running in the background that's using the CPU badly...

This thread is worth checking out for video settings: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=582122
A converter that is reasonably idiot-proof (although its maximum bitrate is a teensy bit too low, IMO) is MP4ForHD, which you can find here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=478050 I think it lets you incorporate an audio delay into the video (thus negating the need to do it in the player).

I've bought Core PLayer and Kinoma PLay but the only one i use to play my videos and series is TCMP, its litter and complete doing its tasks.
I prefeer TCMP.

kilrah said:
Could also be that you have something running in the background that's using the CPU badly...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is what i thought but no, everything is shut down. Does the same after a soft reset. Disabling sense and using plane mode also makes no difference.
But like i say, soemtimes it works and sometimes it drops like a mother f*****
it's completely random
what i will try is another sd card, i got the 2gig one indoors, i'll put the same vid on that and report back... all rather boring but it's doing my head in and i don't like being beaten

Shasarak said:
This thread is worth checking out for video settings: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=582122
A converter that is reasonably idiot-proof (although its maximum bitrate is a teensy bit too low, IMO) is MP4ForHD, which you can find here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=478050 I think it lets you incorporate an audio delay into the video (thus negating the need to do it in the player).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks, will take a look

I just don't see the point in encoding especially for a mobile device.
That's iphone madness, not ours
I've been watching videos encoded for proper pc's since when I had my ipaq hx2400 back then, after that I kept doing it with my ipaq 214, and now I am happily doing the same on the HD2. I am sure there's something that's preventing jonbaker from watchgin movies normally, and using an alternate encoder is not a "solution" but a complication. Occam would say the same.
More specific info on file size/length/codec/bitrate/tcpmp-coreplayer bench results/microsd transfer rate (tested with read/write operation in usb disk mode) would be useful.

If memory card access is causing the problem with CorePlayer then you could try increasing the amount of memory CorePlayer uses to buffer. You could also try out these registry settings which sometimes improve SD card performance: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5547319&postcount=8

Shasarak said:
If memory card access is causing the problem with CorePlayer then you could try increasing the amount of memory CorePlayer uses to buffer. You could also try out these registry settings which sometimes improve SD card performance: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5547319&postcount=8
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
any chance you can suggest what i increase the settings to in the coreplayer memory buffer? not sure what im doing there! wouldnt mind giving that a go.

jonbaker76 said:
any chance you can suggest what i increase the settings to in the coreplayer memory buffer? not sure what im doing there! wouldnt mind giving that a go.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm operating entirely on guesswork, so no, no chance at all!!! I guess it needs to still be small enough that there is no danger of running out of memory on the phone, but larger than the default value. Might not make any difference, of course, depends on what's causing the bottleneck.
Have you tried getting CorePlayer to play video and audio in the background and then opening up the task manager to see what the CPU usage is doing? That might at least tell you whether it's a lack of processing power as opposed to something else.

Shasarak said:
Have you tried getting CorePlayer to play video and audio in the background and then opening up the task manager to see what the CPU usage is doing? That might at least tell you whether it's a lack of processing power as opposed to something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
RIGHT i set coreplayer to play in background: BUILT IN TASK MANAGER:
mem - 7.94m CPU sitting around 45 - 65%, then will drop to around 20% then back up to 60%
RESCO TASK MANAGER:
mem - reports 2.68m
don't know why they give different results memory wise don't think resco task manger gives cpu usage
is all that normal?