Windows Media Player and Aspect Ratio - Touch HD General

Hi,
Windows media player is playing my files fine, but its screwing up the aspect ratio, ie. it plays full screen without the black bars of top and bottom. I want the black bars
How can I fix this?
PS! I tried the option under video "Scale to fit window", but that doesnt help.

Same problem for me with WMP.
I use HTC Album to read video, with the "aspect ratio" button (bottom right during play).

WMP i useless if it doesnt have exactly 800x480 resolution or same aspect ratio as 800x480.
Use Album or use converters which can make black bars.

Nice tip to use Album. Dunno why CorePlayer doesnt play the file as well as WMP/Album.

K3yMaster said:
Nice tip to use Album. Dunno why CorePlayer doesnt play the file as well as WMP/Album.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because CorePlayer hasn't hardware support yet.

I have a different problem with WMP. Most WMV files I play in full screen I get black borders all around (top+bottom+sides) so I end up with a tiny video image. The size is not much bigger than when playing in portrait mode.

You can try to use the converter I wrote. It is in a sticky thread.
Regarding WMP:
It behaves very badly with anything that isn't the exactly right AR/Size.
I personally recommend album. It has more finger friendly controls and it uses the same rendering method as WMP, so you will not miss out on performance.

Related

Movie Conversion

Does anyone know of a good Movie convertor? I have all my movies already converted on my PC to full size Xvid for streaming to the TV (Pinnacle showcenter) but want ro reduce them down for my exec.
I have always used pocket divx and lathe in the past but can never get the audio in sync.
I have been trialling Pocket DVD studio but the playback is far inferior and choppy compared to pocket divx encoder!
You've got 2 options.
1. DVD to Pocket PC by Makayama Software Tokyo, Japan. Compress 2hr DVD to 128 mb only.
2. Canopus Pro Coder 2 also a good compressor to all formats and media type. http://www.canopus.us/us/products/procoder2/pm_procoder2.asp
I use both of them and very satisfied. All my memory cards were full of Movies or Music.
Or take the plunge and learn how to use VirtualDub for the best results. It takes a fair bit of learning, but once you know what you're doing it's quicker and produces better results than any other software.
Already posted in this forum..use Advanced X-Video Convertor or use the Smart Movie Convertor 2.76..yr problems will be solved...
hdubli said:
Already posted in this forum..use Advanced X-Video Convertor or use the Smart Movie Convertor 2.76..yr problems will be solved...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the help folks. These two look exactly what I am looking for.
I cant try them yet as I am doing a conversion using movie shrink & burn 2. I will post my results for all that I test later!
Hi question...
Coming from a P9 user, so please excuse my ignorance..
Isnt there any need to resize the screen/view? what's the dimension? When i converted movies for my p9 before, i had to make the movie smaller to fit my realplayer.. is there such a thing for Universal? What are the dimensions?
Thanks!!!
The screensize on the universal is 640x480 which is about the same as a 700MB XviD or DivX which may jitter a little and take up way too much storage.
I usually shrink down to 320 x 240 (maintaining the aspect ratio) or even less which doesnt present any noticeable loss of picture quality on such a small screen. For best playback result I use the free TCPMP (formerly Betaplayer) in full screen.
Try pocket DVD studio, simple easy uses wm codec, so you get good quality. Aslo allows you to output films, fo ppc, palm and other players. Bst thing is it does all the hard work. You can also cover pretty much all files. I have just converted all my south park series from realplayer to my m5000.
And you can resize screen to your hearts content from smartphone to vga size.
Hi, a quick question about video screen size. I have tried full screen mode on my o2 Exec and the playback is still the same size, with a dark boarder around it, what can i do to fix it? Thanks!
@keith
I think that for WMP to play at full screen the movie needs to be converted to 640x480 otherwise it will remain at 320x240 even when full screen, I think that betaplayer does not suffer this problem and will expand the movie to fill the screen.
So either convert your movie to 640x480 or change your movie player.
Don't quote me on any of this, I dont even have my Universal yet but from what I have read this seems to be the case.
Regards
I will try a different player; to convert them into 640X480 will be space consuming... thanks.
gooroo said:
@keith
I think that for WMP to play at full screen the movie needs to be converted to 640x480 otherwise it will remain at 320x240 even when full screen, I think that betaplayer does not suffer this problem and will expand the movie to fill the screen.
So either convert your movie to 640x480 or change your movie player.
Don't quote me on any of this, I dont even have my Universal yet but from what I have read this seems to be the case.
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had your same problem. I tried resizing videos (with no success).
I now use TCPMP. I can now play avi's and mpeg's in full screen (File sizes are a bit prohibitive though)
No offence if I can covert a 3hr long bolloywood film to fit easily approx 250mb at vga resloution? How can you not covet 2 hour films in high quality to tiny sizes?
Have you also tried pocket divx?
Can I say that the scale to fit function is not working for media player? Logically, I would assume that scale to fit means whatever the resolution, stretch it to fit the screen, even if that means quality lost, no? i am not a big fan of converting it to 640 if that means double the size...
Thanks!
Got it now... Im using TCPMP now and it's far superior than WMP. I never did use WMP after I installed this wonderful video player.. It even played smallville xvid... which i cant even play in my laptop without the codecs installed..
Really enjoying this phone.. well, despite of the bugs..
keithchk said:
Can I say that the scale to fit function is not working for media player? Logically, I would assume that scale to fit means whatever the resolution, stretch it to fit the screen, even if that means quality lost, no? i am not a big fan of converting it to 640 if that means double the size...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you use the right software to encode you can then also then play natively at 640 on your exec.
TCPMP includes Xvid/Divx codecs so it doesnt care what codec was used to encode and doesnt suffer from the WMP screensize problem. IMHO TCPMP is far superior to any other player. If you want a free encoder for your existing movies use pocketdivx encoder. I trialed about 5 commercial products a few months back but didnt have time to post my results. None of them were perfect and pocketdivx encoder produced the best picture/sound quality results but does suffer from time sync issues from time to time.
Its a bit like the cheap £30 asda dvd syndrome. They play anything whilst the top of the range Japanes brands play nothing except retail DVDs
I use Pocket DVD Player for Palm, yes for PALM, to convert a movie and use TCPMP to resize it to fit the screen of my O2 EXEC. So basically, I use the 5th setting where the black part on a wide screen DVD is automatically croped out, thus giving a a full screen effect by automatically taking out the black part of the screen found on the bottom and top part of a wide screen DVD movie.
I use the following settings:
Resolution: 464x224 (104kPixel)
Output Size: about 488 MB
Audio: 40 Kbps, 44 KHz, Mono
Video: 464x224, 15 fps
Duration: about 2:08:00
With the following settings I can convert any DVD and play it smoothly with no lags, skips, nor any miss in audio. As you can see, the only drawback is it uses up a huge amount of SD card space, about 488 MB. But I don't care, as long as it is easy and simple. I can easily delete and exchange any movie I want. I can also make the output size smaller, but it causes skips and the quality of conversion is not that good. With the above settings, my EXEC turns into a mini DVD player. Heck, it made my friends wonder and ask, "where did I bought such a small DVD player?" They were amazed to hear, "Ohhhh it's my phone."
Not only that, since I am using 464x224 size conversion, I can play it on my TH55/E1 and O2 XDA EXEC with one conversion and both running on TCPMP.

FULLSCREEN VIDS not postage stamp fullscreen please!!!

yes, yes, yes, i know every newbie gets told to search. i tried but this seems like a heck of a site with tonnes of posts.
In short could anyone kindly point me to a post or answer the que:
How do i get my videos to play on actual FULLSCREEN and not postage stamp fullscreen.
is there an option or is it small because of the limited processing power?
Cheers
Mark
If u wanna play them with the default WM player then upgrade to the AKU 3.2 version ROM or else try TCPMP player it's free and good enough for all ur multimedia player needs.
Thanks bud. i tried a few vids on the wmp player first and luckily one of them actually played on the FULLSCREEN. the vid had a much larger data transfer rate.
So is there any way to modify the files i have so that they have the same arrangement as this particular file.
Anyone had the same problem
Cheers
Mark
I'd really recommend installing TCPMP. The standard media player is pretty crappy (just like Windows Media Player, I guess). TCPMP is free and plays all videos in Fullscreen if you want. If also supports a lot more codecs than the standard player.
WMP that comes with the phone will not show a video to be any larger than it actually is. If a video is 64x64 pixels then it will occupy that much on the screen. It will however crush a 640x480 video to fit your 320x240 screen.
TCPMP WILL stretch videos to fill your screen. Get that!!
There is no way to edit the file like you suggested without making the file size much greater needlessly.
If I use the camera video capture function, it always plays in reduced size, even using the new ubeaut 3.2 ROMs. These ROMs have not fixed the full size video issue for videos captured in 320x240 using mp4 format.
Unless, of course, somebody can tell me where to look and the settings. I have been using AKU3.2 for a while both versions, and they do not play the video capture in full screen mode at all.
Maybe if I use AVI formats rather than MP4 might be an idea I havent tried. MP4 is a much more compressed format.
hey thanks for the help - cheers
guys, i just needed the reassurance that it was ok. i just downloaded it and as u say its a great full screen player - thanks again.
simon_darley said:
Maybe if I use AVI formats rather than MP4 might be an idea I havent tried. MP4 is a much more compressed format.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U r right as avi will take much of ur memory so thats not practical to use.

Alternative Player for AVI?

What are the player to play my AVI as i notice that it cant play my avi on wmp.
i use this - http://www.coreplayer.com/
however its commercial software.
im sure someone else would be able to recommend an alternative that is free.
Personally tried core player,it dropped frames. Played a Music video of 640*352 rsolution,24fps,.xvid encoded avi file,the result of first 45 seconds are like this-Played frame-25,Dropped frame-999. So how is that? I used the 1.30 version though,no idea about the latest version. I am selling it as soon as the Omnia Hd or Omnia 2 releases. I can't live without watching movies/videos on the go,so I need something where I will get the .divx and .xvid support out of the box.
Thanks.
I think it's a shame that CorePlayer don't do a demo since more than most software, you need to trial it before you know whether it will play your videos on your device, and no reviews or screenshots will ever tell you that.
Core media player (1.25) played a 23 fps 640*352 xvid (.avi) video file encoded at 133Kbps (about 90 minutes fo video in 700MB). This was downloaded as a "for PC" file and played like a dream.
Stu
I found that divx has a mobile player and it seems to work great for avi and divx files. I tried installing both coreplayer and the freeware version TCPMP player and both crashed when I tried to run. If anyone knows of a fix to either of them crashing please inform.
Heres the link to Divx mobile. http://www.divx.com/mobile/
Hi all. I'm using core player and haven't had any problems - vid playback is good. I did use the divx player for a while but somehow preferred core player. One thing I dislike about them both is the lack of finger friendly controls - always need the stylus sooner or later.
I'm also using Core player and it works absolutely fine for me...But I found that there are no controls and seek bar when in full screen landscape mode. As soon as I touch the screen, it goes to portrait mode. So to move the movie forward or backward, it has always to be done only in portrait mode.
Is this a normal behavior, or there is some bug in mine?
Core player alternative needed
Core player plays everything fine for me, but it is very non-intuitive. Making playlists in the old version, TCPMP, was as simple as selecting, etc. I have not seen this ease of use in the new version. The lack of any good documentation does not help either.
It may be that I just have not figured this piece of software out, but the new version takes the ipod and Windows media player approach. This approach requires that it must know where all your files are all the time and be updated each time you add new media, then you are willing to spend a lot of time setting up playlists. I wife bought it and never uses it because it is a pain in the a$$. It seems to have a learning mode, but this is really annoyong when you know what you want. I am not willing to spend the time required for setting up playlists in the required manner before getting in the car or going for a run.
A simple program like the old TCPMP would be greatly appreciated. They had a winner before.
MPlayer is not yet ready for prime time, but shows promise.
Any Player that supports subtitles?
pgu said:
I'm also using Core player and it works absolutely fine for me...But I found that there are no controls and seek bar when in full screen landscape mode. As soon as I touch the screen, it goes to portrait mode. So to move the movie forward or backward, it has always to be done only in portrait mode.
Is this a normal behavior, or there is some bug in mine?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I have the same issue. Whether we're calling this a bug , or normal behaviour is maybe up for debate, but in the real world its pretty annoying.
What I really want is a media player that intuitively knows when to play in landscape mode, can browse files easily and has finger friendly controls ... and if it's free, that's fine too
pgu said:
I'm also using Core player and it works absolutely fine for me...But I found that there are no controls and seek bar when in full screen landscape mode. As soon as I touch the screen, it goes to portrait mode. So to move the movie forward or backward, it has always to be done only in portrait mode.
Is this a normal behavior, or there is some bug in mine?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CorePlayer works in landscape for me. When I rotate the phone, it updates to match portrait or landscape.
I think I had to force it to do this with G-Config.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=487991
TCMP
Bothkill said:
Any Player that supports subtitles?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
There is a version of TCMP (search this forum) wich support srt subtitles.
I also use Coreplayer but I must say that if the user interface is better with Coreplayer, TCMP play the same avi files (standard 700 mb divx) much better than Coreplayer.
I think Coreplayer need more fine tuning to work right.

Coreplayer

I'd like to know if Coreplayer will produce noticeably better video playback than the Windows Media Player or HTC Album Player that are already built in to the phone.
I don't care about other features or the number of different formats supported. If I take a simple .mp4 and play that same file with all three players, will CorePlayer have a faster frame rate or any other noticeable improvement?
Thanks for any info.
Coreplayer in my opinion is a great piece of software that you will really enjoy. It is a must for PPC!!
IMissPalmOS said:
will CorePlayer have a faster frame rate or any other noticeable improvement?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Coreplayer will be a lot slower than the built in apps, as it is unable to make use of GPU acceleration. People like it because it allows playback of a wider range of codecs and file types. The best video peformance is got by transcoding to .mp4 format and playing with HTCAlbum.
I used core player a lot over the past 2 months. It does have acceleration for mpeg4. I used Handbrake to encode up to 1500kbps and 672x378 Resolution. You can go higher in resolution, but you than cannot multitask without stutter. If I try to do the same with h.264, I am lucky to get up to 480x272 at 100% video playback.
Coreplayer cannot handle 800X480 mp4 videos without stuttering really badly. I am re-encoding some of the videos to 624 X 352 to see if it's more compatible with Coreplayer.
One issue I have with WMP and HTC Album is that they play 2.35 AR movies with the sides cropped and no black bars. I don't know if there's something I need to do when I encode or if that's an issue with the player. I cannot find any options to change this.
Coreplayer will display these movies correctly, but again, the stuttering makes it unwatchable. I am hoping the lower resolution will rectify the problem.
I really can't see any big difference between 624 X 352 xvid files and 800 X 480 mp4 files WRT sharpness and clarity. I don't think screen is big enough to make the distinction between the two resolutions noticeable.
Anything below 700w pixels it will run fine on Coreplayer.
Try out handbrake. It is free. Use FFmepg Mpeg4 files. You can use whatever bitrate you want but I wouldn't go past 1500kbps.
is coreplayer available for free or do i have to pay?
I have a question... I have core player for my device, and I've downloaded hand brake. Im wanting to make mp4's from my dvd collection. what do I need to do, and does handbrake contain everything I need to do this?
nvgear said:
is coreplayer available for free or do i have to pay?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Core player is a pay application that is about 30 USD. It doesn't do mp4 videos as well as the built in apps as they use hardware acceleration. What core player does better is play other formats such as divx. I get 23 frames per second in high quality out of my 640x480 divx videos.
Although there is a Rhodium ROM on this site that does include it by default.
stupid question
sancmat said:
Core player is a pay application that is about 30 USD. It doesn't do mp4 videos as well as the built in apps as they use hardware acceleration. What core player does better is play other formats such as divx. I get 23 frames per second in high quality out of my 640x480 divx videos.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got Coreplayer and it does well with divx, as you say. I just tried some MP4 videos and indeed they didn't play well. How can I get the built in player (not WM Player) to play something? I've removed all file associations from Coreplayer, which allows me to play an MP4 by clicking on it in File Explorer or Pictures and Videos, but is there a way to get the built in player to play an AVI file?
pistou said:
I've got Coreplayer and it does well with divx, as you say. I just tried some MP4 videos and indeed they didn't play well. How can I get the built in player (not WM Player) to play something? I've removed all file associations from Coreplayer, which allows me to play an MP4 by clicking on it in File Explorer or Pictures and Videos, but is there a way to get the built in player to play an AVI file?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The stock player will only handle mp4, you just select your videos through the album and you're golden. I have a HD movie that plays with no stutter and DVD quality
chrisrj28 said:
The stock player will only handle mp4, you just select your videos through the album and you're golden. I have a HD movie that plays with no stutter and DVD quality
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
FAB, thanks: now I know.
side note (purely conversational) -- I created a test MP4 with HandBrake, but there was no picture on the device, only sound (it plays fine in QuickTime on the desktop) -- back to fiddling with settings!
I use coreplayer since most of my movies are AVI(xvid). I haven't had a glaring problems with coreplayer other then the flickering blue screen when using TV-OUT. I really hate to trans-code videos.
If I really had to use TV-OUT for a video presentation, I found these setting removed 99.9% of the flickering. See link below:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=4761775#post4761775
***edit: I have been using other ROMs and they run fine with the settings listed on the link.***
mda71 said:
I use coreplayer since most of my movies are AVI(xvid). I haven't had a glaring problems with coreplayer other then the flickering blue screen when using TV-OUT. I really hate to trans-code videos.
If I really had to use TV-OUT for a video presentation, I found these setting removed 99.9% of the flickering. See link below:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=4761775#post4761775
***edit: I have been using other ROMs and they run fine with the settings listed on the link.***
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have had the phone since day one and still havent got core player working right it just stutters along
all i want to is to be able to convert dvd into avi at setting that will display it as close to full screen as possible with audio and video in time
any suggestions would be great
Hanson68 said:
One issue I have with WMP and HTC Album is that they play 2.35 AR movies with the sides cropped and no black bars. I don't know if there's something I need to do when I encode or if that's an issue with the player. I cannot find any options to change this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've not tried this with a video that is wider than 16:9, but certainly one that is narrower than the screen aspect ratio is played zoomed to full-screen by default, but this can be overridden quite easily. In HTCAlbum if you tap the screen you get a row of buttons appearing at the bottom, including pause and stop. The right-hand button controls zooming and stretching. By default a video is zoomed and cropped to fill the screen. Tap the right hand button once and it switches to stretching the video to full screen; tap it a second time and it switches to the correct aspect ratio (with black bars).
@combat goofwing
Are you using the old free CP or the new, $$ one? The free one stutters. The paid one works fine, set to Qtv. No transcoding, no stuttering. I just shoot my vids over and I'm gtg.
barneypooch said:
@combat goofwing
Are you using the old free CP or the new, $$ one? The free one stutters. The paid one works fine, set to Qtv. No transcoding, no stuttering. I just shoot my vids over and I'm gtg.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its paid for and set to qtv but some files still stutter along
Shasarak said:
In HTCAlbum if you tap the screen you get a row of buttons appearing at the bottom, including pause and stop. The right-hand button controls zooming and stretching. By default a video is zoomed and cropped to fill the screen. Tap the right hand button once and it switches to stretching the video to full screen; tap it a second time and it switches to the correct aspect ratio (with black bars).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. That was so simple. And here I was looking in the menus.
Thanks for the tip!
Accessing the built in HTC Album Player
Can anyone tell me how to access the HTC Album player? It just comes into action when I open a Video file, but can we access the program itself and adjust any settings etc.? One post says it only plays mp4. It plays my 3gp files too. Does it play any other formats?

help with Mp4 video resizing ?????

I have downloaded an Mp4 film but the film is 320x240 so doesn't look good on the screen as its too small, is there any free software that I can change the resolution to a bigger size? also how do I go about doing it? I am not very techi minded so any help would be such a help, thanks.
320x240 mp4 files play fine for me. What are you using to play them?
Incidentally, you can resize videos both up and down, but there's no point resizing a small video to a larger size if your player will play it full screen. You can't get better resolution that way.
I am using core player, I have tried to get it to play full screen but I just can do it, it plays wide screen with black borders at top and bottom, I can watch it like that but would prefer to be able to watch it full screen..
tanzi said:
I am using core player, I have tried to get it to play full screen but I just can do it, it plays wide screen with black borders at top and bottom, I can watch it like that but would prefer to be able to watch it full screen..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touch the screen when it's playing
But, for mp4 files, you should use the in-built video player as it supports hardware acceleration, and therefore plays better.
I have tried touching the screen in the windows media player and its still the same, whats the best format in core player?
tanzi said:
I have tried touching the screen in the windows media player and its still the same, whats the best format in core player?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Play it in CorePlayer and touch the screen. In windows media, you need to go into the menu and select Full Screen.
Core player will play many formats. It's a massive discussion if you want to know what people think is the best.
So...
CorePlayer, touch the screen.
Windows Media, use the menu for fullscreen.
But, I'd recommend using the built in video player for mp4 files (just navigate to the file with file explorer and click it. If you've not changed any file associations, it will use the in-built video player).
I will go and try and see what happens, will update my thread in about an hour, thank you so much for your help....
tanzi said:
I will go and try and see what happens, will update my thread in about an hour, thank you so much for your help....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem mate - good luck
tanzi said:
I am using core player, I have tried to get it to play full screen but I just can do it, it plays wide screen with black borders at top and bottom, I can watch it like that but would prefer to be able to watch it full screen..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this is because the aspect ratio of the movie is different to that of your screen.
If you made the image fit the screen to get rid of the black bars you would be stretching the video height, this would make all people look tall and skinny, or you could fill the screen while maintaing aspect ratio but would loose some of the video of the sides where it cant be seen.
rumpleforeskin said:
this is because the aspect ratio of the movie is different to that of your screen.
If you made the image fit the screen to get rid of the black bars you would be stretching the video height, this would make all people look tall and skinny, or you could fill the screen while maintaing aspect ratio but would loose some of the video of the sides where it cant be seen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was actually because he was playing it in portrait, not landscape.

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