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So this documents my sad experience with XDA's culminating in a regreful decision NOT to buy the HTC Advantage.
I have bought 3 generations of past HTC based XDAs including the Wallaby, Andes and Universal.
Primarily I need a phone and a PDA in a single unit with the promise of also using it as a media player in situations where I'm without my laptop or subnote.
The fastest media player that I have used always seemed to be the TCPMP player but this was too slow to play conventional DIVX .avi or other FULL SIZE movie streams.
I dont have the time to constantly convert movies from standard 700 MB .avi format to PPC pixel size. But the Universal was simply NOT fast enough to play the uncoverted movies. (Plus the Universal has some issues when it comes to slooowly receiving and making calls .. another story)
As a standby measure I use a Fujistu Loox N560 (and Nokia 7380 combo), with a 624Mhz Xscale processor. Wiith TCPMP IT IS fast enough to play movies on its VGA screen without really any noticable skipping.
This was a temporary measure until HTC could produce a phone PDA combo that I could again use as a do-it-all device.
BUT after much monitoring xda-developers I conclude that the HTC advantage with all its other features will not do this job. I really really wanted the Advantage to work for me but post after post have indicated that it just cant cut it for displaying videos.
How difficult can it be to produce a device and software that can do this! Like I say, I dont want to spend all my waking hours converting .avi files from one format to each other, just to play the regular 700MB / 2hour standard .divx file.
The x7500 is a phone and a PDA, not a video player. Yes, it can play Videos and movies, but they need to be converted as you already stated.
So if you want to watch videos in their native format, why would you think a phone would work as a video player.
Why not just go buy a mini-video player...And if you already knew the answer and you don't want to convert to a format that can be played on a PDA......
Why did you waste our and your time explaining the obvious!
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the HTC Athena, with it's dedicated ATI graphics chip, might have a chance to play the same videos he's able to play on the Loox (another PPC device that uses the same 624Mhz Xscale processor).
Hopefully either the CoreCodec folks will be able to work around the buggy ATI drivers driving the Athena, or we won't have to wait long until someone releases a device with better a dedicated GPU.
i see ur point...i have converted many videos and most took no more than 15-20 mins max. but thats due to my core 2x duo processor.hopefully we see some software upgrades to solve this.
mmh,... I do not really see the point you mentioned.
The TCPMP is not able to use the Ati drivers but with the RawFramebuffer and DIVX (XVID) converted movies it runs brilliant.
I also convert DVDs to approx. 600 video and 128 audio @ res of 640x480. with this I will come up
with about 500-600 MB per movie. Excellent quality and no lags...
And what is your exact problem with converting.... Du you want to
but a DVD content auf 4GB on your MD ? uncoverted movies on a mobile
device makes no sense... or didnt I get the point here ?
Definitly I can not confirm your statement mentioned. Also standard divx movies at 700MB CD size will run like a charm.
But now some experience from my side:
I used the SPB Mobile DVD to convert files directly from DVD... a big mess... audio/video goes out of sync and if paused the whole movie
become laggy. 5-10FPS .... I was searching the Inet and also XDA Devs for this problem...
At the end I had to find out the SPB Mobile DVD converting program is SH** !!!!
Now I use Pocket-DVD Studio... converting with the newest XVID drivers. Excellent performance as mentined before...
So maybe this is your problem... give try to another converter and see what happens. (Use one with not installed codecs... use one where you can make
setting and use the system installed codecs)
So from my side: The Athena is a good mobile movie player (with TCPMP)... my opinion
errr...
Hiya people,
I must say that this is a bit confusing to me. I use the ATI driver on my Ameo (advantage) with TCMP as long as you dont use the hardware acceleration it works perfectly. There are many threads regarding this subject.
All in all, any 700-800 MB movie that I err......come accross and copy directly to my Ameo plays perfectly for me. Xvid or Divx.....
I dont do any conversions or anything. I just download and play.
Maybe I get the odd frame skipped here and there but its not an issue for me. I watch many action films...no problemo.......all standard 700 mb+ Avi files....I have Simpsons amd Resi Evil extinction on my Microdrive now...both 700MB plus..
Example my copy of RE:E 717 MB
MPEG4 Vid
608 by 256
25 FPS
After 2000 frames, I had dropped 42...
Lol maybe I am just not fussy and this is a nuisance to everyone else. I have not found an AVI that I have been unable to watch yet....
Then again, I used to watch 160 X 120 movies on my HTC Voyager using Pocket DIVX encoder which really really sucked and I thought it was cool.
I can also confirm that no convertion is needed, I have a lot of convertions which are over 2gigs, I watch these on my pc, but have watched them on my Ameo.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=308952
amouses said:
So this documents my sad experience with XDA's culminating in a regreful decision NOT to buy the HTC Advantage.
I have bought 3 generations of past HTC based XDAs including the Wallaby, Andes and Universal.
Primarily I need a phone and a PDA in a single unit with the promise of also using it as a media player in situations where I'm without my laptop or subnote.
The fastest media player that I have used always seemed to be the TCPMP player but this was too slow to play conventional DIVX .avi or other FULL SIZE movie streams.
I dont have the time to constantly convert movies from standard 700 MB .avi format to PPC pixel size. But the Universal was simply NOT fast enough to play the uncoverted movies. (Plus the Universal has some issues when it comes to slooowly receiving and making calls .. another story)
As a standby measure I use a Fujistu Loox N560 (and Nokia 7380 combo), with a 624Mhz Xscale processor. Wiith TCPMP IT IS fast enough to play movies on its VGA screen without really any noticable skipping.
This was a temporary measure until HTC could produce a phone PDA combo that I could again use as a do-it-all device.
BUT after much monitoring xda-developers I conclude that the HTC advantage with all its other features will not do this job. I really really wanted the Advantage to work for me but post after post have indicated that it just cant cut it for displaying videos.
How difficult can it be to produce a device and software that can do this! Like I say, I dont want to spend all my waking hours converting .avi files from one format to each other, just to play the regular 700MB / 2hour standard .divx file.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i play "regular" 700 mb avi file on my uni without any lag.
what u smoking
dude what are u smoking video on the advantage is freaking sweeet. plus if u install projet athena 3 on it, the thing is a marvel of design and technology. they guys that made project athena put so much into it. infact i dont even need to use my hardware keyboard anymore. the teksoft keyboard works even better than the hardware one. but i digress, the tcpmp that is includded on the project athena uses the ati graphic card. i have never seen better video even better than the psp. no need to convert. i use full videos no conversion at all.
ok well im slowly getting to grips with my touch, now obviously it comes with windows media player, i have also installed core player.
on my pc i have total video convertor and pocket divx convertor. which program should i be using to convert various avi's that i have to get the best quality, what format should i be converting into, and what program should i be using on my touch to watch them, iv had a few attempts and everything i convert seems to come out rather jumpy etc and just not good to watch.
thankyou.
Please use the search function or atleast google. This has been addressed many times over. In fact, it's been discussed so much that several great xda members have even made various programs/applications which will convert whatever input to an output which performs best on the HD. Most of these are in the Applications part of the Blackstone forum.
In a nutshell, the built in TF3D player is the best way to go since it's the only player which uses hardware acceleration and will give best results when playing mp4.
sincere apologies, i was just being lazy
will search now and delete core player lol
Hello pugme
Go here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112 and download this free video converter it’s the best one out there. The Touch HD has its own player and the quality of these 2 apps together is superb. If you put the converted films on to your sd card in a folder called films or what ever you want then start/programs/album/albums/storage card/films then select to play or add albums to your programs short cut.
Quality when watching is like half hd
use Duttys ROM with coreplayer i can play pretty much anything i want without jumping, dont get me wrong the converting programs on here are very good but why convert if you dont have too!
I have tried several trials on video converters and no matter what I do I get great picture but the voice is way behind.
How do I get the voice to catch up with the film. ( sorry I know it is not techy language)
I use MediaCoder to transcode video. It's free.
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/
The even got the iPod Edition which u can use for simplicity reason.
Thank you, can you tell me what settings you have used on that programme.
Core player, THE best media player you can get imo.
Will even play .mkv!!!
mightycaz said:
Core player, THE best media player you can get imo.
Will even play .mkv!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He is talking about encoding the movie.
You can try Windows Media Encoder (from Microsoft).
It's also free, and does a good job on encoding movies.
hi guys,
i seem to be having the same problem with the whole audio and video out of sync. i have tried a range of format eg. wmv, mp4, 3gp etc but all are about half a second out of sync. i have even tried core player and tmpcp but with no luck. did anybody else have this problem and manage to fix it? any help will be much appreciated
Hello,
I use the HTC Touch HD Video Converter which is very good. He is especially for WVGA 800 x 480 screens, and the quality of the movie is very good.
HTC Touch HD Video Converter v1.21
DVDFab6
I have not (yet) seen the problem with the sound you describe here.
I use DVDFab6 since a while, originally to convert videos to my iPod, but now also to my HD2.
I have a Touch Diamond too, but the screen is a bit too small to watch for longer time and it drains the batteries also very fast. I haven't tried yet fully, but my first tests show me I can do 3-4 hrs of video on one battery and still have enough power left to use it as a phone. Which is very useful if you have to do a lot of short flights.
I use the PS3 settings in DVDFab6 and adjust the display to 800x444 size, depending on the original size. I found that I can not play them directly from Mediaplayer, but if I click on them in the FileExplorer they start playing without any problem.
BTW, also the iPod m4v files play nicely without delays on the HD2
Yeah i have the same problem, the video/audio file is perfect on my pc but about half a second out of each other on my HD2. You can adjust the audio/video sync in core player but it shouldn't be happening in the first place.
hi guys, thanks for your help. i called htc tech support but all they were able to say was perform a hard reset, which sadly didnt fix the problem! even mp4 videos downloaded straight from the net have the same problem. such a shame because apart from that its an amazing phone. will keep trying and post up if i have any luck
I just tried the one that Braakie suggested and although it converted my 700Mb AVI film to a 500Mb MPEG 4 film, when i tried to copy it to my SD card on my HD2 it said the MPEG 4 format wasn't supported. Can someone enlighten me as to what formats are supported and/or what movie player they use.
I'm having the same audio sync issues as others here. I'm encoding using handbrake and when I play it back on the PC it is perfectly in sync. However when I play it back on the HD2 using the HTC video player the audio lags slightly but noticeably behind the video. When I copy it to my wife's Touch HD it plays fine, so it seems to be a problem with the HD2 software.
I'm running the stock Vodafone 1.43 ROM with all hotfixes applied. Will a ROM update fix this? Anyone else with this ROM having/not having this problem?
I'd be very grateful for any input.
Chaps,
Somewhere on XDA is Chainfire's video driver update (or a reference to it) which you should find and install to help overcome the lip synch issue.
If you can't find it using Search...http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=+site:http://forum.xda-developers.com&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all then go onto the Modaco site and its there somewhere under the Toshiba TG01 device.
Good hunting.
WB
Thanks for your help - I've found the driver here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=592663
However, as far as I can see that's a 3D OpenGL driver and not something that I would expect to affect video/audio synchronisation. Unless, of course, you had the same problem and this fixed it for you? I don't really want to mess about with video drivers unless I'm sure it will fix it.
I was a little dubious and cautious myself but installing the driver did seem to make a difference, sufficient for me not to notice it as much.
Installation is a personal choice. You might want to make a full backup of your device using, say, SPB Backup, before you install. That way you can do hard reset and restore if you don't like the driver.
All the best,
WB
I have the same problem with youtube vids too, just had a replacement hd2, but it's just the same, skyfire, coreplayer, youtube you name it, audio lags the video...
Real pain in the butt for a device who's main feature is a huge screen...!!!
wacky.banana said:
I was a little dubious and cautious myself but installing the driver did seem to make a difference, sufficient for me not to notice it as much.
Installation is a personal choice. You might want to make a full backup of your device using, say, SPB Backup, before you install. That way you can do hard reset and restore if you don't like the driver.
All the best,
WB
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I installed the 3D driver, which was easy enough, but unfortunately it made no difference at all to the video/audio sync in either of the two driver modes so I uninstalled it again. (No need for a hard reset, thankfully). I'm using the video in this thread to test since you can easily tell whether it's properly in sync or not.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=612935
Oh well, it was worth a try - thanks for the suggestion.
Its well documented that Core player (this forums media player of choice) only uses CPU for play back and doesnt utilise any GPU acceleration.
Do you know of any players out there that use both GPU and CPU for vid processing?
Smart Movie from lonely cat games is pretty decent any one got an opinion on that as a media player?
Would I be right in assuming that using GPU over CPU to play back video will have a good effect on the battery life, or will powering that screen outweigh any benefits.
Windows media player and the htc album player both use gpu playback on the codecs they support i cannot remember the ones that definately have it. Im sure someone else will or go find the default ones, post and i may be able to remember from that list instead.
any way of installing "codecs" to the standard players then ? since they use both cpu and gpu wich coreplayer dosent ...
That's a very good question I have tried coreplayer and tcpmp and too be honest I am not that impressed by them.
+1 for being able to use additional codecs via WMP.
I just want to be able to play xvids!! Really shouldn't be too difficult in the days where Windows 7 supports them naively on my laptop
I'm using Touch HD.
I have used this tool to convert videos to MP4: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112
And play them using Album.
kengkaj.s said:
I'm using Touch HD.
I have used this tool to convert videos to MP4: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112
And play them using Album.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi there - thanks for the tip. However, personally I don't want to have to go to the trouble of converting etc. I generally have all of my videos in xvid format as this is a fairly universal format (sometimes play them on my Media Centre, sometime on others Xbox 360s etc), so just want to be able to play these on my HD2!
What program is used to play the Transformer movies? It does not have much options like CorePlayer but it did a good job of playing the Transformer movies.
Also, if I want to use it to play other movies that I encode using this same player, where do I put these new movies. Do I put it in the folder called "Transformers" in the SD card? But then how do the Transformer movies have their own icon? Still trying to figure this out.
It's the HTC video player, which is basically a reskinned Windows Media Player.
The Transformers icon is there because the TMoUS HD2 ships with a launcher app (which is basically just a list of two links, tapping on them opens the file).
The launcher app is not customizable, though it should be pretty trivial to build something similar.
Which would be a better player? The default one on the HD2 or CorePlayer (the latest version). I know that CorePlayer is not free but I just like to know which one performs better. CorePlayer can play .mkv files so that is a good advantage.
The HTC player (WMP) works well for some file types. I have CorePlayer installed for any odd media types, but the UI is pretty poor. Also give TCPMP a shot (it's the evolution of the open-source predecessor of CorePlayer, and now it has a new touch-friendly UI too).
Though to be honest I've personally sort of given up on high-quality video playback on the HD2-- the performance is just so inconsistent. Even the Transformers movies it comes with (which I've since transferred to my Class 6 16GB MicroSD) don't always play smoothly and sometimes stutter or slow down when I'm demoing them, so the only safe settings are lower quality, at which point it becomes useless because I don't have time to transcode videos (that's partially the point of having such a powerful processor, but it seems WM can drag down even a 1 GHz Snapdragon).
amb9800 said:
The HTC player (WMP) works well for some file types. I have CorePlayer installed for any odd media types, but the UI is pretty poor. Also give TCPMP a shot (it's the evolution of the open-source predecessor of CorePlayer, and now it has a new touch-friendly UI too).
Though to be honest I've personally sort of given up on high-quality video playback on the HD2-- the performance is just so inconsistent. Even the Transformers movies it comes with (which I've since transferred to my Class 6 16GB MicroSD) don't always play smoothly and often stutter or slow down when I'm demoing them, so the only safe settings are lower quality, at which point it becomes useless because I don't have time to transcode videos (that's partially the point of having such a powerful processor, but it seems WM can drag down even a 1 GHz Snapdragon).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmmmmm.... i dont know but transformers plays very smoothe on my hd2 and also i recommend latest TCPMP with custom setup.i also convert dvds to mp4 in my pc then sync it to my hd2 and it plays on windows mobile player and and TCPMP,but doesnt play well on my coreplayer though.
GHOST99K said:
hmmmmm.... i dont know but transformers plays very smoothe on my hd2 and also i recommend latest TCPMP with custom setup.i also convert dvds to mp4 in my pc then sync it to my hd2 and it plays on windows mobile player and and TCPMP,but doesnt play well on my coreplayer though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They generally work fine if I soft-reset and make sure Wifi, etc. are off and nothing else is running, but otherwise in normal operation, where I might have email open and 3G + Wifi enabled in the background, I often get less than perfect playback. Usually still watchable, but hardly impressive (and definitely not something I'd show to iPhone 3GS-toting friends, who instantly notice the frame drops and such).
amb9800 said:
It's the HTC video player, which is basically a reskinned Windows Media Player.
The Transformers icon is there because the TMoUS HD2 ships with a launcher app (which is basically just a list of two links, tapping on them opens the file).
The launcher app is not customizable, though it should be pretty trivial to build something similar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The HTC Streaming Media Player is not a skinned WMP. Its specifically developed by HTC to take advantage of the hardware acceleration for MP4 files with the Snapdragon processor. The video performance is far superior to Coreplayer or WMP.
You can convert your video files to take advantage of this hardware acceleration by using Touch HD Encoder (search
i recently synced mp4 movies to the "transformers file" and it plays as the same high quality as the transformers does.
GHOST99K said:
i recently synced mp4 movies to the "transformers file" and it plays as the same high quality as the transformers does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's pretty clear (to me, at least) that the native Video Player is the best player between the 3.
Video Player plays very limited file types, which is a minus. re-encoding video files to MP4 takes long time, and file size goes up, if you want to keep the same 'high-quality' video.
CorePlayer does a great job playing various file types, so it's easier to view movies, that's for sure.
being a video editor by trade, i have no problem re-encoding video prior to transferring media to my phone as i have the hardware and software to do so painlessly. starting from a high quality/high resolution video file and encoding down to an mp4 correctly yields in smaller filesize while retaining amazing quality. i've recently encoded a full 1080p 25min video (which started at 4gb) down to an HTC Video Player friendly video that was a hair over 300mb...with nearly no difference in quality. it plays perfectly in the native player...no problems whatsoever. i've considered doing a write up for the boards and may do so if i have time, but if you have any questions, fire away.
Transformers movies path
Hi, can someone write the exact path of the Transformers path in the SD card, so the application luncher can find them.
Thanks in advance
CorePlayer
fnuna said:
Hi, can someone write the exact path of the Transformers path in the SD card, so the application luncher can find them.
Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just make a folder named 'Transformers' on your memory card, install the files to it and it will find it.
Transformers looks wonderful, but converting is such a chore with getting all the settings right and such. Of course, I would want the exact conversion process that was used on Transformers. Coreplayer is the best for me. No converting, just play and the quality is very high. Plus, best music player and streams Youtube videos. It's the only app I've paid nearly $30.00 for and would do it again. I must have it.
ce_rob said:
being a video editor by trade, i have no problem re-encoding video prior to transferring media to my phone as i have the hardware and software to do so painlessly. starting from a high quality/high resolution video file and encoding down to an mp4 correctly yields in smaller filesize while retaining amazing quality. i've recently encoded a full 1080p 25min video (which started at 4gb) down to an HTC Video Player friendly video that was a hair over 300mb...with nearly no difference in quality. it plays perfectly in the native player...no problems whatsoever. i've considered doing a write up for the boards and may do so if i have time, but if you have any questions, fire away.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I would love to see a write up, the prob Im having is I have been trying different programs & settings for burning my dvd's to my phone and none have looked as good as the Transformers movies. Any insight would be appreciated