Database Users

So How is the Video Playback?

I've been using the TD2 for almost a week now. Really really happy with it,but I haven't tested any videos yet,though it was one of my major priorities behind buying this phone. Actually I am bit concerned after some reviews of the phone by some websites,they stated the Video playback is not up to the mark(Like-Skipped frames,Sound cracking etc.). If this is true then the large 3.2' screen will make no sense and I would be very SAD. So please vote and input your comments.
BTW-By Video I mean AVI files(either .xvid or .divx encoded) for PC playback(VGA or above quality),please don't say anything about .mp4,3gp and Conversion of videos. Maybe CorePlayer is the option,I don't have it as it's not free.
Thanks in advance.

IME the device on its own barely plays any video formats and doesn't even play them so well. I bought CorePlayer and it plays most things and quite well too. Sometimes you just have to pay for stuff. Shame the UI is a bit ropey though.

convert the video first to smaller resolution..it will be better..and yes coreplayer is my favourite player too..

Without saying anything about certain formats we've been asked not to mention , I have converted some films (they had to be converted, they were DVDs to start with!) and have got to a place where I'm happy, extremely, very slight lip-sync issue, but watchable, and on the 3.2 screen they look great, no issues with Video, just need to get the Audio-Video sync sorted.
BTW-Haven't used an existing files, converted films specifically for TD2 (the ones converted for my XDA Orbit were a bit on the small size due to the screen size.
PS Only use HTC Album to view, WMP doesn't seem to want to play anything I give to it.

I have excellent quality with PocketDivxEncoder to make my movie smaller.
On my TD2/Topaz i use CorePlayer because it's WideScreen.
TCPMP won't run on my phone and WMP doesn't have the codecs.

Ok,so I got one thing-A conversion is a must for higher qualities. But I will not see high qualities/resolution on my TD2,I'll rather choose my 22" HD Dell monitor for that,but I thought I atleast can watch the DVD rips(the popular xvid encoded <=700mb)on my TD2 by Core player or else when I am on the go..haven't had a clear idea about it..anyways thnx for voting.

ithehappy said:
Ok,so I got one thing-A conversion is a must for higher qualities. But I will not see high qualities/resolution on my TD2,I'll rather choose my 22" HD Dell monitor for that,but I thought I atleast can watch the DVD rips(the popular xvid encoded <=700mb)on my TD2 by Core player or else when I am on the go..haven't had a clear idea about it..anyways thnx for voting.
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I'm guessing you are looking for a bit more clear answer, so I will try to give you one. The answer is - YES, you can easily watch DVD rips WITHOUT any conversion, on the go, by Coreplayer of course To me personally, any conversion at all is a misunderstanding. Sure, a phone isnt a PC, but if I pay so much for it, I demand that it can handle unconverted videos. And Topaz really does that very well As an example, I can tell you that I watch a lot of my favourite TV shows and series on the go without any compression, I just download my show (which has a resolution practially the same as DVD) and put it on my SD card. As far as You do not want to watch videos with more than 700x... resolution, you dont even have to convert anything. All in all, I'm very satisfied with my Topaz's video playback capabilities

oh and to be even more clear - all <=700MB xvid encoded movies running superb smoothly, WITHOUT any compression

jgal said:
I'm guessing you are looking for a bit more clear answer, so I will try to give you one. The answer is - YES, you can easily watch DVD rips WITHOUT any conversion, on the go, by Coreplayer of course To me personally, any conversion at all is a misunderstanding. Sure, a phone isnt a PC, but if I pay so much for it, I demand that it can handle unconverted videos. And Topaz really does that very well As an example, I can tell you that I watch a lot of my favourite TV shows and series on the go without any compression, I just download my show (which has a resolution practially the same as DVD) and put it on my SD card. As far as You do not want to watch videos with more than 700x... resolution, you dont even have to convert anything. All in all, I'm very satisfied with my Topaz's video playback capabilities
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Just to be clear, the ripped DVD can't just be a standard file, it has to have been converted first, even if that conversion keeps the resolution and size intact, even Coreplayer can't play vob files.

Coreplayer also doesn't support AC3 audio which is a huge limitation and disappointment This means that any video files with DD are no go.

watched the pilot of Caprica. The file was downloaded for PC viewing. was a Xvid encoded .avi file resoloution 624 x 352 and encoded with 23 fps with a data rate of 133 Kbps (It says 133kbps for audio as well, so I assume that is the total ofr both streams).
Played perfectly on Core player

Thank you guys for voting and commenting. I decided to test the topic by myself. And I am so unlucky to say that I got stunned by it. I copied a .xvid encoded .avi music video file(71mb),24fps,640*352 from my Desktop Pc to the TD2,played it with the CorePlayer 1.30(6213) and the result was TERRIBLE. It just didn't play anything at all. The sound was there but the video lagged all the way. So,what to do now? Huh,I decied that's it,as my major priority was watching video without any conversion has failed and failed so badly,so I am selling it. But except all this I liked it.
Thank you guys,bye.

I think 1.3.2 build 6909 is the current release so maybe the version you are using is a bit old. It should play xVid avis no problem at that resolution. You could alos try the free TCMP from which coreplayer was derived. http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/

ithehappy said:
Thank you guys for voting and commenting. I decided to test the topic by myself. And I am so unlucky to say that I got stunned by it. I copied a .xvid encoded .avi music video file(71mb),24fps,640*352 from my Desktop Pc to the TD2,played it with the CorePlayer 1.30(6213) and the result was TERRIBLE. It just didn't play anything at all. The sound was there but the video lagged all the way. So,what to do now? Huh,I decied that's it,as my major priority was watching video without any conversion has failed and failed so badly,so I am selling it. But except all this I liked it.
Thank you guys,bye.
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What was the data rate? My version of Core is older (1.25) and the same res file flew for me. It was a 700MB file for 90 odd minutes of video.

I tried two videos(music),here are the detail:
The First one,(a Taylor Swift video),72mb
The details from my PC- Time-4 mins 37 secs,Resolution 640*352,Audio format-Lame MP3,Audio Bit rate-192kbps and Video Frame rate-23fps/sec, Video Date rate-2099kbps, Video Sample size-24bits, Video compression-FFDS
Now when I tried to play that by Core Player 1.30 on my TD2,it didn't run at all,
Now the details of the Video by Core Player-
Video- AVC aka H.264,Codec-Core AVC and I played it for first 30 seconds and it played 67 frames and Dropped 985 frames,the rate was 1.527
Now the second music video,98.6mb
Resolution-512*384,Runtime-18 mins 57 seconds, Frame rate-23fps/sec,Data rate-710kbps,Video sample size-24bits,Video compression-XVID
Now Core player played this video well,very well infact,the Details by Core player,
Video-MPEG4,Codec-Core ASP,I watched it for first 6 mins and it played 744 frames and dropped 7,Played FPS-23.88
Thanks

I'm guessing that You copied your file to the memory card. If so, did You install SDTuneUp drivers? It looks like they are a must have.

Sir,I don't know what is SD tune up driver and where to install from. BTW-I don't have a memory card on my TD2,it didn't come out of the box and so lazy to buy a seperate one.

hi, I am wondering how the performance is watching football (soccer) highlights from youtube or www.footytube.com , does anyone have any ideas? I have tried this on sony Ericsson w995 and the ball is invisible :s

I know it has been mentioned before but converting using he HTC Touch HD ‘Encoder’ program works well using HTC Album playback on my stock ROM TD2 playing back from the SD Card.
I understand that some of you are resistant to converting files and do not want to go this route but I thought it might help some of those reading this thread that smooth HQ playback from the SD card is absolutely possible without paying any money if you spend the time converting files on a PC (or Mac).
Tony

Rhodium Video very very poor

I am trying to play downloaded DVD movies on my Rhodium and i presume its using Windows Media, the playback is sluggish and the sound is not in sync with the playback, is this the best i can expect after spending £500 or is it just that i need another media player? Shooting video and playing back seems fine the problem is when i convert a DVD the playback is pretty appalling, ANY HELP FROM ANYONE WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.
tHANKS
Allan

What format are the movies you're downloading? What are you using to convert them? Are the downloaded movies in sync? How about the converted ones? If you play them on your PC, are they synced up?

Check the resolution of the movie. Make sure it is 640x480. You don;t want to have the CPU doing all the resizing as the movie is being played. Some format may be better than the others too. And try with WMP. I believe it has hardware acceleration built-in.
Still I would love the phone be able to play HD 720p videos natively. Maybe one day.

Lord_BlackAdder said:
Still I would love the phone be able to play HD 720p videos natively. Maybe one day.
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amen! lol anyways ya you just arent formating the dvd'rips very well then cause i have a few full dvd's playing in perfect quality and timing on WMP and that's not even the best player to use

Use core player, it works fine with most videos (far better than the standard app)

Vio
try VIO Video Converter for your DVD conversions and select full quality. The file sizes are large but the quality and audio/video sync is superb.

Core Player is great and I consider 640x384 to be the optimal resolution for playback. Get a good video encoder and experiment for yourself though.

Use Super C to resize the video and then coreplayer to play it, no problems at all!

I can play 800x480 AVC @1.2Mbit/s through HTC Media Player smoothly. In Coreplayer I can't even get 1 FPS out of that file. I use MEGUI with the Zune settings to convert the video from a Bluray format.

As far as I can see, there isn't a good option right now, unless someone can say/prove otherwise.
For example: I have an AVI encoded with Divx 5 636*346, avg bitrtate 900, mp3 stereo. I can get this to play smoothly on much older hardware (a Palm TX), without conversion, via TCMPC.
So, WHY can't I find a player that works smoothly on the TP2?
I've read that the TP2 can handle avg bitrates up to 1,400 kbps; and it doesn't make sense to re-encode at a screen res lower than the bloody device.
Does anyone have any thoughts?

Kloc said:
I can play 800x480 AVC @1.2Mbit/s through HTC Media Player smoothly. In Coreplayer I can't even get 1 FPS out of that file. I use MEGUI with the Zune settings to convert the video from a Bluray format.
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What is the HTC Media Player? Anyonehave a cab?

barneypooch said:
As far as I can see, there isn't a good option right now, unless someone can say/prove otherwise.
For example: I have an AVI encoded with Divx 5 636*346, avg bitrtate 900, mp3 stereo. I can get this to play smoothly on much older hardware (a Palm TX), without conversion, via TCMPC.
So, WHY can't I find a player that works smoothly on the TP2?
I've read that the TP2 can handle avg bitrates up to 1,400 kbps; and it doesn't make sense to re-encode at a screen res lower than the bloody device.
Does anyone have any thoughts?
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What I don't understand is that Coreplayer on my device has a verry low FPS. BUT when selecting the Benchmark function, the movie will play beautiful... (Only the movie and sound synchronisation is not so best...)
Anybody a working solution? On a different forum, i've read that HTC Album has the best hardware acceleration. They adviced to play movies with thc album (In the mp4 format)
Greets, Ranney

tech_e said:
What is the HTC Media Player? Anyonehave a cab?
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It come on the device. HTC Album

i just can't imagine that there is no possibility to play normal divx/avi movies on my tp2 .. just like on pc.
i don't want to waste my time converting all videos just to watch it on tp2 ..
same prob with subtitle support .. can't be that difficult ?! only tcpmp can play them with an extension .. (and that video playback isn't smooth!)

http://kinoma.com/
give that a try and let us know if you are happy or not please

kinoma doesn't support divx/xvid

i use a free program called handbrake and my settings are 480x320,mpeg4,480 biterate-Audio,AAC 160 biterate. i actually used these settings on my G1 originally but when i got my TP2 i tried a few of the movies out since they wur already on my memory card and they all play and sound great on the default player.

im using coreplayer and ive not had a problem playing any movie downloaded from the net. anything from 700mb to 1.6mb dvd rips, ive watched probably 60 odd and they've all played perfectly. never had to convert anything.
coreplayer is definetely the best thing to get supports pretty much everything
i only use the album player for converted hd content (using the converter someone made on this site) = that plays excellent as well, and looks better (i might be ight in thinking album uses hardward acceleration as well)

ranney said:
What I don't understand is that Coreplayer on my device has a verry low FPS. BUT when selecting the Benchmark function, the movie will play beautiful... (Only the movie and sound synchronisation is not so best...)
Anybody a working solution? On a different forum, i've read that HTC Album has the best hardware acceleration. They adviced to play movies with thc album (In the mp4 format)
Greets, Ranney
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Click to collapse
Menu > Tools > Preferences > Select Page > Video
Change "Video Output" to GDI if the player is choppy/crappy. On my Telus (CDMA) Touch Pro 2 the QTv Display works fine but I know other HTC devices have required GDI instead.

The playback on this phone sucks big time! Not sure what it is .... coreplayer GDI does not work and Tcpmp with all kinds of tweaks settings does not play videos smooth at all. You can tell there are frame skipping in my phone. My wing plays videos better than this. GEEZ!!!!!

"Perfect" HandBrake settings for TP2?

So is there such a thing as "perfect" handbrake settings for TP2?
I've been playing with it a couple of hours, and these are the settings I'm down to using:
Output Settings, Format: MP4 file
Picture Settings tab: 640 x 400 (what are you guys using?)
Video Tab: Video Codec MPEG-4 (FFmpeg), framerate 29.97, 2 pass encoding, average bitrate (kbps) 600
Audio&Subtitles tab: Automatic Source, AAC Audio Codec, Mixdown Dolby Pro Logic II, samplerate Khz Auto, Bitrate (kps) 160
I haven't really touched anything else, but with these settings I seem to be getting the slightest lag where sometimes I can perceive the frame rate, for lack of a better term. It's as if the smoothness is about 90% - 95% there, but not quite. Anything I can do about that? I tried making the width x height numbers smaller, but it didn't seem to work.
What are you guys using for handbrake settings? Are you touching any other settings than the ones I mention above?

I've tried all sorts of setting with HandBrake (including yours, just now) and there always appears to be a bit of a stutter. I've had much more luck using SUPER encoder (encoding to AVI).

I just reencoded a divx file to MP4 using x.264 compression and it plays smooth as silk using the HTC album application. That was on the latest 6.5.1 (504) Valkyrie (sp?) ROM as of a couple of days ago. I am probably going to flash to the new 28002 Energy ROM tonight so we'll see if it still works there.

Avatar28 said:
I just reencoded a divx file to MP4 using x.264 compression and it plays smooth as silk using the HTC album application. That was on the latest 6.5.1 (504) Valkyrie (sp?) ROM as of a couple of days ago. I am probably going to flash to the new 28002 Energy ROM tonight so we'll see if it still works there.
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What were you other settings on handbrake? I guess you selected h.264(x264) under the video tab. What did you use for avg. bitrate on the video tab and what did you use for width/height or anything else under the "picture settings" tab?
I'm not familiar with the ROM stuff you're referring to.
Thanks for the info. I'm still playing with these handbrake settings!

ualdriver said:
What were you other settings on handbrake? I guess you selected h.264(x264) under the video tab. What did you use for avg. bitrate on the video tab and what did you use for width/height or anything else under the "picture settings" tab?
I'm not familiar with the ROM stuff you're referring to.
Thanks for the info. I'm still playing with these handbrake settings!
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Sorry, the site freaked out and I couldn't finish my post. Anyways, I actually used the free version of Any Video Converter and not handbrake (I got them both about the same time. That theoretically shouldn't make that much of a difference though when using the same settings. It just seems a bit easier to me to use.
I went with the original size. It might not make a difference but I have this nice, high-res screen, might as well take advantage of it, right? Original size in this case was 592x320. Video bitrate was set at 768k and the audio was 128k AAC. Windows shows them slightly lower in the file properties for whatever reason, though, 749k and 125k respectively.
My final file size was around 554 MB compared to right around 1000 MB for the original xvid. This was for an hour and a half movie.
I think you could approximate the settings by using the xbox 360 profile and changing the target bitrate for video and audio to something closer to the values I used.
Edit: This is the link to the ROM I was using. You will note that it appears to have updated D3D drivers so that might make a difference as I have heard of people having stuttering issues with WM 6.5 using the HTC album player in Manila. I point that out because the HTC player is apparently one of the only ones capable of taking advantage of the GPU accleration in the phone to handle the video decoding. Other players are more likely to stutter due to doing CPU decoding.

Presets
I haven't used Handbrake in about a month. I used 0.93 for Windows. When I converted something for my phones, I would use the Iphone/Ipod Touch preset. It's converts to a h.264 MP4 file. I would dial back the resolution for my Tilt. With my Tilt2 I raise the preset resolution to 800 instead of 640. I play it with the latest Coreplayer or TCPMP GF5500 Edition. The videos are amazing. I have been trying the GUI posted earlier because it's much faster.

bennyj71 said:
I haven't used Handbrake in about a month. I used 0.93 for Windows. When I converted something for my phones, I would use the Iphone/Ipod Touch preset. It's converts to a h.264 MP4 file. I would dial back the resolution for my Tilt. With my Tilt2 I raise the preset resolution to 800 instead of 640. I play it with the latest Coreplayer or TCPMP GF5500 Edition. The videos are amazing. I have been trying the GUI posted earlier because it's much faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks!
Avatar28 said:
I went with the original size. It might not make a difference but I have this nice, high-res screen, might as well take advantage of it, right? Original size in this case was 592x320. Video bitrate was set at 768k and the audio was 128k AAC. Windows shows them slightly lower in the file properties for whatever reason, though, 749k and 125k respectively.
My final file size was around 554 MB compared to right around 1000 MB for the original xvid. This was for an hour and a half movie.
I think you could approximate the settings by using the xbox 360 profile and changing the target bitrate for video and audio to something closer to the values I used.
Edit: This is the link to the ROM I was using. You will note that it appears to have updated D3D drivers so that might make a difference as I have heard of people having stuttering issues with WM 6.5 using the HTC album player in Manila. I point that out because the HTC player is apparently one of the only ones capable of taking advantage of the GPU accleration in the phone to handle the video decoding. Other players are more likely to stutter due to doing CPU decoding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok thanks. I'll have to try the x264 setting. I thought I tried that once with handbrake when I was playing with a 10 minute DVD trailer, but for some reason my TP2 wouldn't play it. It might have been just a bad file conversion that particular time, but I assumed at the time it was just an unusable conversion type. I have been using the MPEG4 (FFmpeg) file and that seemed to work every time. I haven't a clue what the difference is.
I think I'm still using WM 6.1. I'm relatively new to this stuff and I'm not too sure about what a ROM is. I know it means "read only memory," but how it applies to my phone or how I can modify it and what the consequences are of changing it- I don't understand.

Ive used Super to convert a DVD rip of Iron Man to my TP2 @ 720x 480 resolution @ 1200kbps in MP4 h246 and it looks sexy! you have to make sure all other apps are closed and surprisingly enough, Windows Media Player handles this file with ease(Windows media player actually works now!It only took 10 years!lol) and framerate is movie speed @29.970. Even more surprising is the fact that this is playing on a virgin device( running the stock ATT ROM till tomorrow....) and the current ROM is incredibly bloated.

"Avidemux" is an awesome program to easily convert your movies. I use "Handbrake" to RIP but I find "Avidemux" much better for movie/video conversions. it has presets but will also let you setup formats, crops, etc. anyway you want. It has enormous capability and still easy to use. I use it to convert to 640 x (?) (xvid) mp4 @ 700 kbps with 128 kbps AAC audio for use with the Album player and it is sharp with no stuttering. I am going to use it to convert to x264 mp4 @ 1000 kbps and see how WMP handles it as a test but I generally despise WMP.

Handbrake
I've never posted here before but after trying Core Player and its stuttering after I installed Mighty Rom i found that using the standard IPod Touch and Iphone settings showed video clear as all hell with no stutter (changed resolution - increased a little).
Try it?

NH3MAN said:
"Avidemux" is an awesome program to easily convert your movies. I use "Handbrake" to RIP but I find "Avidemux" much better for movie/video conversions. it has presets but will also let you setup formats, crops, etc. anyway you want. It has enormous capability and still easy to use. I use it to convert to 640 x (?) (xvid) mp4 @ 700 kbps with 128 kbps AAC audio for use with the Album player and it is sharp with no stuttering. I am going to use it to convert to x264 mp4 @ 1000 kbps and see how WMP handles it as a test but I generally despise WMP.
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Click to collapse
omarmir said:
I've never posted here before but after trying Core Player and its stuttering after I installed Mighty Rom i found that using the standard IPod Touch and Iphone settings showed video clear as all hell with no stutter (changed resolution - increased a little).
Try it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks guys, I'll try them.

omarmir said:
I've never posted here before but after trying Core Player and its stuttering after I installed Mighty Rom i found that using the standard IPod Touch and Iphone settings showed video clear as all hell with no stutter (changed resolution - increased a little).
Try it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Damn! Finally. I posted about this 15 days ago. You should update to the new Handbrake. It's much faster.

The Best Settings and the best CONVERTER For TP2
In 2 weeks I've tried it all. 8 converters to be exact. The best one out there worth anyones time is a converter call AVS Video Converter 6.3(not free but reall worth it trust me). It has it all! It's pretty quick compare to the rest, but most importantly pumps out excellent video quality with smooth framerate. There's a few that's faster but most of them has bad famerates, bad quality, or both. Yes bad framerate playing on my super computer. The best settings that work for my TP2 is the following:M4vipod at 415 bitrate, 24fps, 640X384. Plays smooth looks great can't ask for more!
Converters I Tried: Handbrake 9.3 too slow
Handbrake 9.4 got sound no video?
Iwisoft choppy framerate looks very promising waiting for a newer version
Ultra mobile 3gp not enough settings file comes out to big and to slow
Any Video Converter when it works it very good, freezes to often during conversions plus to slow.
And a few others I don't remember.
Thanks hope I can help.

how come I only got the sound with no video from the H264 files I converted with Handbrake on max OS X....

I have been trying to get my new Sprint Touch Pro 2 to run movies smoothly using Windows Media Player Mobile. This is a very difficult task... I think I have just succeeded. At first, I was using Handbrake to encode my DVD using the 640 resolution setting. This worked great for playing on my home computer, but after using Mobile Device Center to Sync my TP2 and playing the MP4 in Windows Media Player Mobile, I only got video to play and NO AUDIO.
This was very frustrating for a long time. I finally solved the problem. I increased the video resolution to 720 in Handbrake (leaving the audio settings as is), and bingo....the audio and video both play using Windows Media Player Mobile. I used the 23fps, 16:9 setting and 768 bitrate and it plays pretty well. Not sure why audio is not playing using the 640 resolution...any ideas???
-Chris

So I must be doing something wrong. Im using a failry new pc (Acer Iconia Tablet PC) and I started to convert a file in Handbrake last night around 12, 8am this morning its still converting.. what is the deal here?
I am trying to convert a .m4v file to .mp4 and the issue is that the file has subtitled I need to have burned in. I typically use videora but it didn't recognize the file.
I did the settings here (iphone settings) and i actually queued up 2 versions one with ac3 audio and one with aac, not sure which one i was supposed to choose.
Everything else was standard (subtitles burned in).
the movie is a 2.5 hour movie why is it taking so long.
I wish I was better with using vlc's conversion settings.

Double post on accident

I don't know the perfect settings, but these at least get you going with good results. They require modifying a profile which is x264 level 2.1 before I found this out I had some hit and miss results with 0.9.3 occasional green screen with sound in the Album player and consistently no video in the higher versions.
I'm using 0.9.5 now. The first thing you want to do is uncheck "always use iPod friendly file extension (.m4v) for mp4" in Tools>Options>General and maybe enable Query Editor tab in Tools>Options>Advanced/Other.
Then you want to pick the level 2.1 Apple preset: iPhone & iPod Touch
Change the Audio Mixdown to Stereo, Samplerate to 48
Change the Video to Avg Bitrate 1000 for lower res, 650 for near or full 800x480
Preset>Save Preset
Minor changes to the new preset can now be saved by right clicking on it.
MDavisiw said:
So I must be doing something wrong. Im using a failry new pc (Acer Iconia Tablet PC) and I started to convert a file in Handbrake last night around 12, 8am this morning its still converting.. what is the deal here?
I am trying to convert a .m4v file to .mp4 and the issue is that the file has subtitled I need to have burned in. I typically use videora but it didn't recognize the file.
I did the settings here (iphone settings) and i actually queued up 2 versions one with ac3 audio and one with aac, not sure which one i was supposed to choose.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Encoders need raw power your tablet PC has a specialised processor. I don't think you can burn in subtitles yet in Handbrake unless the source is DVD and they're VobSub (unsure about BluRay source) and the Audio must be set to AAC.
I think you will need to use Avidemux which has support for burning in many subtitle formats. I didn't have much luck with it up to now as it appears the Windows stable version r7200 is quite broken, partially rendered VobSubs, and crashing during encoding. So far so good using the latest beta r7317 hosted by Gruntster on the iPod preset.

What program is used to play Transformer movies?

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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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

Can't watch Avatar on the HD2

Hi Folks-
I know there are several threads on video encoding, but I think I am asking something new. I am using the retail version of Winx DVD Ripper which does a nice job overcoming encryption from my store bought DVDs so I can rip to my computer and then transfer to my HD2. Problem is I have workable mp4 files on my computer that I can watch after the process, but I am having mixed success watching them on the HD2.
Just recently, I ripped a nice mp4 version of Avatar that played fine on my computer, but when I transferred it to the phone, it would show the circle for the video player for half a second and then go back to my file explorer. This also happened with Black Hawk Down. I've had success with other movies such as Iron Man, etc. Am I running into some form of copy protection? If so, I'm annoyed as these are 100% retail DVDs I have purchased.
Specific settings for Winx include 800x480 resolution, sound to at least 160, using high resolution mode, even safe mode the second time I ripped Avatar to see if that would help.
Any ideas would be most appreciated, thanks!

Try the HTC Video Encoder. I've encoded 1080p .mkv files with no playback issues on my HD2. It's free, so can't hurt to give it a shot.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112

i view my movies using a divx player with no problems at all.
Mike

Try TCPMP player , install it then open the program and hit file than open and select the movie! let me know if this works.

xeebot said:
Try the HTC Video Encoder. I've encoded 1080p .mkv files with no playback issues on my HD2. It's free, so can't hurt to give it a shot.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112
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Its just called video encoding GUI (saying htc implies they made it, when they didn't). But yes, I can highly recommend using it.
Also using tcpmp doesn't allow for full hardware acceleration.

ibeQuint said:
Its just called video encoding GUI (saying htc implies they made it, when they didn't). But yes, I can highly recommend using it.
Also using tcpmp doesn't allow for full hardware acceleration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good to know what player do you recommend?

core player and tcmp player work all the time.. Dix player"sometimes work" but has small keys and audio issues but at least you can adjust sound and timeframe in fullscreen.

I will try the other encoding program. I downloaded pocket divx player and I couldn't figure out how to open up a new file and I tried to follow the directions in the program. Is it possible that I am having a hard time with my mp4 files because I transferred them not via Activesync but by the other option that pops up when you first connect your phone to a computer? Will post in a bit when I try the new encoder.
Edit: Tried the new encoder, but all sorts of error messages when I showed them the contents of my Avatar DVD. I have 33 files on the actual DVD, which ones am I trying to encode?

Don't use the video encoding GUI as it is awfully slow and doesn't even give you a great image quality due to the settings being made suitable for a Touch HD.
Just head over to doom9 and download MeGui. A bit harder to use, but at least you'll be able to encode them in under an hour with great IQ.
Just did an encode of my Avatar Blu-Ray(45Gb) that took a little under an hour and ended up with a 3Gb file with a bitrate of 2453Kbps and max at 10Mbps. Split it into two files of 1500Mb and the HD2 played them like a champ without a stutter in sight.
I also recommend you download eac3to(for audio ripping) and yamb(mp4 splitting).

Will try meGUI, guess people are thinking it has to do with the encoding huh? Even if it works ok on my computer but not HD2?

did you try the tcpmp player?

tgerbracht said:
Will try meGUI, guess people are thinking it has to do with the encoding huh? Even if it works ok on my computer but not HD2?
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Click to collapse
Yes. Just because it plays on the computer doesn't mean it'll play on the phone. Your computer's hardware is substantially "faster" than the HD2's. Optimizing the video through encoding is usually the answer.

Toss3 said:
Don't use the video encoding GUI as it is awfully slow and doesn't even give you a great image quality due to the settings being made suitable for a Touch HD.
Just head over to doom9 and download MeGui. A bit harder to use, but at least you'll be able to encode them in under an hour with great IQ.
Just did an encode of my Avatar Blu-Ray(45Gb) that took a little under an hour and ended up with a 3Gb file with a bitrate of 2453Kbps and max at 10Mbps. Split it into two files of 1500Mb and the HD2 played them like a champ without a stutter in sight.
I also recommend you download eac3to(for audio ripping) and yamb(mp4 splitting).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oof, this program does look confusing. I'm going to go through the help files and try to get a grasp of it all, but if you have some preset settings or a streamlined bit of advice, I'm all for it. So far I'm trying one-click method and I've been able to show it where the .vob files are and create a directory to place the file and working directory. There is a hick-up with something about the chapter titles and it looks like it needs a file but it shows nothing when I explore my DVD drive. The Megui wiki isn't very clear here...though the program looks promising!

try using dvdfab, select iphone/ipod encoding and after transfer your encoded avatar to your sd card.. i did it like that.

juwan de leon said:
try using dvdfab, select iphone/ipod encoding and after transfer your encoded avatar to your sd card.. i did it like that.
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Click to collapse
Will try this-along with tcmp and will report back.

xeebot said:
Try the HTC Video Encoder. I've encoded 1080p .mkv files with no playback issues on my HD2. It's free, so can't hurt to give it a shot.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wow.... cool app! Thanks for the link!!!

juwan de leon said:
try using dvdfab, select iphone/ipod encoding and after transfer your encoded avatar to your sd card.. i did it like that.
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Click to collapse
THANKS! The ---only--- DVD encoder that just worked!
Edit:
Tried Handbrake (couldn't reliably read DVD to burn), Winx DVD Ripper (couldnt play on HD2), couldnt figure out meGUI and the other encoder linked here, and I didn't have to use any other player other than the nice HTC one. Thanks again.

tgerbracht said:
Hi Folks-
I know there are several threads on video encoding, but I think I am asking something new. I am using the retail version of Winx DVD Ripper which does a nice job overcoming encryption from my store bought DVDs so I can rip to my computer and then transfer to my HD2. Problem is I have workable mp4 files on my computer that I can watch after the process, but I am having mixed success watching them on the HD2.
Just recently, I ripped a nice mp4 version of Avatar that played fine on my computer, but when I transferred it to the phone, it would show the circle for the video player for half a second and then go back to my file explorer. This also happened with Black Hawk Down. I've had success with other movies such as Iron Man, etc. Am I running into some form of copy protection? If so, I'm annoyed as these are 100% retail DVDs I have purchased.
Specific settings for Winx include 800x480 resolution, sound to at least 160, using high resolution mode, even safe mode the second time I ripped Avatar to see if that would help.
Any ideas would be most appreciated, thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot of standalone players worldwide need a firmware update to make it work because Avatar BD uses a new encryption scheme called BD+ 5. I recommend u a blu ray ripper named PavTube. I think the Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper Software is currently the best ripping software and surprisingly it can rip both DVDs & Blu-Ray Discs without the need of having a different Undo-Protection program. I have tried many brands of ripping software with poor results. PavTube Blue-Ray Ripper is a real "Swiss Knife". Download a demo version and you will find it is definitly worth buying.Experience Blu Ray Avatar in the center of your Home Theater System