Database Users

Coreplayer/TCPMP Bliss...

That's right, blissful viewing on your VGA Athena. How?
Don't expect to run it in a full screen window, that's how. The CPU (powerful as it is) cannot handle native VGA 640x480 full screen encodes. Probably due to the many other things it has to do simultaneously.
For full screen 640x480, we need the ATI Imageon chip acceleration support, which as we all know is not yet available and ATI/AMD have not been forthcoming in helping CoreCodec in revealing the nature of their hard/software embedded implementation. Nuff said.
320x240 resolution with extremely high bitrates won't give you the sharpness a QVGA device can playing the same resolution.
On the Hermes with the ATI chip, they finally got a resolution/fix as there seemed to be some buffering issues regarding Audio (not entirely sure if these reports were accurate), so I've been playing with Audio codecs and lower bit-rates, to some benefit....but not enough.
The best 'in-between' results I have found till we get a fix for our Imageon hardware (if ever) is as follows.
P.S. I've tried playing with H264, X264, DivX 6.xxupwards, Mpeg 4 etc and various encoders from Virtual Dub and Guardian ... to DVDx and too many to mention to be honest (over 20-30 encoders over the last few years).
For movie clips or entire movies to look really good on a VGA screen IMHO and experience, you have to encode higher than QVGA but less than VGA unless like the Dell's you have a accelerator that actually work with TCPMP or Coreplayer. Our only works with the ATI software renderer, which is still miles better than any other option open to us.
So I now encode at:
Video: 480x320 at 850kbps
Audio: AAC @ 44100hz and 128kbps (if music video)
Audio:AAC @ 22050hz and 64kbps (for everything else)
I can only yield benchmark results of around 118% but
I've successfully played over 72500 frames with only 45 frames dropped!
Trust me..that is really good. 0 frames would be nice and very possible by encoding at 320x240 but the video looks to soft whereas at 480x320 it actually looks quite sharp indeed.
If you encode a genuine High def clip or movie at this resolution, the end result will look like the original HD clip or worst way, like a super-bit DVD.
1% frame 'droppage' = 725
45 frames dropped out of 72500 = less than 1/16th of 1% which = Bliss
You do the maths.
Depending on the source video, if it is full screen, so will the encoded video, but if it is in wide screen format, so will your encodes be.
For DVD conversion I got best results vs speed using (freeware) Handbrake v2.25 and Mpeg 4 decoder.
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
For individual files (VOB files), I use Any Video Converter (yeah, that's the name of the application). Same results.
For all other video files I love Smartmovie with the same setup as outlined above, except for the encoder..I use Xvid in Smartmovie.
I'll try to upload a sample video to rapidshare or something if anyone wants to view the quality and performance...but my time is somewhat limited at the moment.
P.S. The above mentioned apps are dummy proof and not too complex for noobs, so why not try it out and let us know how you get on.
Last but not least, in Coreplayer v1.1.1 or even TCPMP , if you suffer from lipsync problems, try adjusting
Menu/Tools/Preferences/Select Page/Advanced...scroll down and adjust the 'Manual A/V offset'. Mine is currently at:
-0.200 but depending on other videos I might have to adjust to -0.600...it works wonderfully (menu navigation in TCPMP might be slightly different to Coreplayer, but the option is still there).
Good luck and if you have better results than these, please post back and share your findings. Thanks

I found that the DiVx converter from DiVx works brilliantly if you set it to 'mobile'... I dont get any of these issues that everyone else seems to have - I use the official DiVx player on the Ameo and its great full screen.

adamelphick said:
I found that the DiVx converter from DiVx works brilliantly if you set it to 'mobile'... I dont get any of these issues that everyone else seems to have - I use the official DiVx player on the Ameo and its great full screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had tried that some months ago and wasn't that impressed, but maybe they have improved it. What version are you using?

mackaby007 said:
That's right, blissful viewing on your VGA Athena. How?
Don't expect to run it in a full screen window, that's how. The CPU (powerful as it is) cannot handle native VGA 640x480 full screen encodes. Probably due to the many other things it has to do simultaneously.
For full screen 640x480, we need the ATI Imageon chip acceleration support, which as we all know is not yet available and ATI/AMD have not been forthcoming in helping CoreCodec in revealing the nature of their hard/software embedded implementation. Nuff said.
320x240 resolution with extremely high bitrates won't give you the sharpness a QVGA device can playing the same resolution.
On the Hermes with the ATI chip, they finally got a resolution/fix as there seemed to be some buffering issues regarding Audio (not entirely sure if these reports were accurate), so I've been playing with Audio codecs and lower bit-rates, to some benefit....but not enough.
The best 'in-between' results I have found till we get a fix for our Imageon hardware (if ever) is as follows.
P.S. I've tried playing with H264, X264, DivX 6.xxupwards, Mpeg 4 etc and various encoders from Virtual Dub and Guardian ... to DVDx and too many to mention to be honest (over 20-30 encoders over the last few years).
For movie clips or entire movies to look really good on a VGA screen IMHO and experience, you have to encode higher than QVGA but less than VGA unless like the Dell's you have a accelerator that actually work with TCPMP or Coreplayer. Our only works with the ATI software renderer, which is still miles better than any other option open to us.
So I now encode at:
Video: 480x320 at 850kbps
Audio: AAC @ 44100hz and 128kbps (if music video)
Audio:AAC @ 22050hz and 64kbps (for everything else)
I can only yield benchmark results of around 118% but
I've successfully played over 72500 frames with only 45 frames dropped!
Trust me..that is really good. 0 frames would be nice and very possible by encoding at 320x240 but the video looks to soft whereas at 480x320 it actually looks quite sharp indeed.
If you encode a genuine High def clip or movie at this resolution, the end result will look like the original HD clip or worst way, like a super-bit DVD.
1% frame 'droppage' = 725
45 frames dropped out of 72500 = less than 1/16th of 1% which = Bliss
You do the maths.
Depending on the source video, if it is full screen, so will the encoded video, but if it is in wide screen format, so will your encodes be.
For DVD conversion I got best results vs speed using (freeware) Handbrake v2.25 and Mpeg 4 decoder.
http://handbrake.m0k.org/
For individual files (VOB files), I use Any Video Converter (yeah, that's the name of the application). Same results.
For all other video files I love Smartmovie with the same setup as outlined above, except for the encoder..I use Xvid in Smartmovie.
I'll try to upload a sample video to rapidshare or something if anyone wants to view the quality and performance...but my time is somewhat limited at the moment.
P.S. The above mentioned apps are dummy proof and not too complex for noobs, so why not try it out and let us know how you get on.
Last but not least, in Coreplayer v1.1.1 or even TCPMP , if you suffer from lipsync problems, try adjusting
Menu/Tools/Preferences/Select Page/Advanced...scroll down and adjust the 'Manual A/V offset'. Mine is currently at:
-0.200 but depending on other videos I might have to adjust to -0.600...it works wonderfully (menu navigation in TCPMP might be slightly different to Coreplayer, but the option is still there).
Good luck and if you have better results than these, please post back and share your findings. Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Mark,
A couple of things that might work...try running your video's with your advantage plugged in..
another thing...if you have 16:9 video convert it into 532x300
that consistently gives me good result...
and last but not the least...try splitting your video into smaller files...none larger than 600mb

The player on my Ameo is version 0.88 andthe DivX converter is version 6. Hope that helps.
It rips straight from DVD to my Ameo SD card too.... quite quick. Although I am having problems with no subtitles at the mo the rest is fine.

fallenczar said:
Hey Mark,
A couple of things that might work...try running your video's with your advantage plugged in..
another thing...if you have 16:9 video convert it into 532x300
that consistently gives me good result...
and last but not the least...try splitting your video into smaller files...none larger than 600mb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks my friend. I'll try those suggestions and let you know.

adamelphick said:
The player on my Ameo is version 0.88 andthe DivX converter is version 6. Hope that helps.
It rips straight from DVD to my Ameo SD card too.... quite quick. Although I am having problems with no subtitles at the mo the rest is fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cheers for that mate, Just downloading it now, will try it soon.

I stand by my findings...
1) Divx Converter Using Divx 6.6
1) adamelphick's Divx Encoder
80% Benchmark Result
Resolution 592x448 (original was lower than default VGA 640x480 Portable Profile - so kept orig. Resolution of 592x448)
over 350 frames dropped
Only 20.xxx fps vs mine @ 23.79 out of 23.975 Original
2) I Used Any Video Converter with fallenczar's recommended resolution for widescreen movies for full screen viewing
Benchmark Result 131.28% Excellent.
Resolution 532x300 (slightly vertically stretched, but very viewable)
only 9 frames dropped out of 3842! Excellent!
Superb fps playback of 23.920 out of 23.976
3)I Used Any Video Converter xvid codec!
125.11% Benchmark Result
Resolution 480x320
only 4 frames dropped out of 5690!
Superb fps playback of 23.959 out of 23.976
4)I Used Any Video Converter Mpeg4 codec. Visually not quite as good as xvid, but still very good.
123.06% Benchmark Result but the audio sounded extremely slowed down! ?!??!?
Resolution 480x320
only 5 frames dropped out of 5938!
Superb fps playback of 24.979 out of 25.000 Mpeg4 codec would not allow me to keep NTSC format & I was forced to use 25fps.
Sorry if all that info above is a bit confusing, so here's the bottom line.
I've tested the Divx Encoder and Divx Mobile Player.....sorry, but it's still seriously lacking compared to Coreplayer or TCPMP. Handheld profile encodes at low resolution unfit for VGA device if you're a quality freak.
Portable Profile seriously looks good. No doubt about it and so it should as its native resolution for encoding is VGA (640x480), but then you hit the performance issues related to non accelerated Vids on VGA devices.
Verdict? No good for Athena but probably excellent for quick encodes using QVGA devices. The Player is also only capable of handling AVI vids and the encoding specs had better match its Players ability else it won't play the file.
For Fallenczar's recommended Resolution for widescreen vids, I can only say..Nice & Thanks for the tip.
If you don't mind the original Video/movie being slightly elongated, you won't notice a performance hit at all. You'll even get slightly Benchmark results than by using my method. But the benchmark results is not the sum of its parts and should only be used as an indicator, not a 'actual playback' performance gauge.
Verdict? Great tip! I'm definitely keeping this in mind for future encodes of wide screen movies & Vids. Thanks again.
Lastly I used an application called 'Any Video Converter', but in all honesty, there are many others that can do the job as well and better if you don't mind the complexity of some of the more advanced apps. But as a quick solution, you'll be hard pushed to beat this for casual and quick video files conversion. For DVD encoding I'd definitely stick with Handbrake...it's bloody fast too and uses MSDOS and no fancy GUI for viewing the video as it encodes, hence it encodes a 90 minute movie in a third of the time of the entire movie. i.e. 90 min video encoded in just under 30mins.
As the results show in no 3 & 4, even though my benchmark results are slightly lower than with fallenczars resolution for widescreen format vids, it's hard to beat how little frames are dropped whilst retaing a visually HQ video/movie.
Verdict? I absolutely stand by my findings until someone finds a way of encoding videos at native VGA at HQ with virtually no hit on performance.
I want HQ with great performance. Don't get me wrong people, we can easily achieve benchmarks in excess of 500 - 600kbps but the quality of sound and video isn't worthy of such high end PPC's. We paid a lot of dough for these devices and I'll be damned if I can't get slick HQ video on the Athena. I refuse to get a dell or Archos or whatever just to accelerate video and games....if that was my priority I'd buy a PSP and a get myself another compact HTC Hermes.
Just wait till we get some support for our Imageon devices. Let the good times roll.
P.S. Divx Encoder can't encode whatever you throw at it, mostly AVI files. Any Video Converter and quite a few others can handle most formats including high def files.

mackaby007 said:
1) Divx Converter Using Divx 6.6
1) adamelphick's Divx Encoder
80% Benchmark Result
Resolution 592x448 (original was lower than default VGA 640x480 Portable Profile - so kept orig. Resolution of 592x448)
over 350 frames dropped
Only 20.xxx fps vs mine @ 23.79 out of 23.975 Original
2) I Used Any Video Converter with fallenczar's recommended resolution for widescreen movies for full screen viewing
Benchmark Result 131.28% Excellent.
Resolution 532x300 (slightly vertically stretched, but very viewable)
only 9 frames dropped out of 3842! Excellent!
Superb fps playback of 23.920 out of 23.976
3)I Used Any Video Converter xvid codec!
125.11% Benchmark Result
Resolution 480x320
only 4 frames dropped out of 5690!
Superb fps playback of 23.959 out of 23.976
4)I Used Any Video Converter Mpeg4 codec. Visually not quite as good as xvid, but still very good.
123.06% Benchmark Result but the audio sounded extremely slowed down! ?!??!?
Resolution 480x320
only 5 frames dropped out of 5938!
Superb fps playback of 24.979 out of 25.000 Mpeg4 codec would not allow me to keep NTSC format & I was forced to use 25fps.
Sorry if all that info above is a bit confusing, so here's the bottom line.
I've tested the Divx Encoder and Divx Mobile Player.....sorry, but it's still seriously lacking compared to Coreplayer or TCPMP. Handheld profile encodes at low resolution unfit for VGA device if you're a quality freak.
Portable Profile seriously looks good. No doubt about it and so it should as its native resolution for encoding is VGA (640x480), but then you hit the performance issues related to non accelerated Vids on VGA devices.
Verdict? No good for Athena but probably excellent for quick encodes using QVGA devices. The Player is also only capable of handling AVI vids and the encoding specs had better match its Players ability else it won't play the file.
For Fallenczar's recommended Resolution for widescreen vids, I can only say..Nice & Thanks for the tip.
If you don't mind the original Video/movie being slightly elongated, you won't notice a performance hit at all. You'll even get slightly Benchmark results than by using my method. But the benchmark results is not the sum of its parts and should only be used as an indicator, not a 'actual playback' performance gauge.
Verdict? Great tip! I'm definitely keeping this in mind for future encodes of wide screen movies & Vids. Thanks again.
Lastly I used an application called 'Any Video Converter', but in all honesty, there are many others that can do the job as well and better if you don't mind the complexity of some of the more advanced apps. But as a quick solution, you'll be hard pushed to beat this for casual and quick video files conversion. For DVD encoding I'd definitely stick with Handbrake...it's bloody fast too and uses MSDOS and no fancy GUI for viewing the video as it encodes, hence it encodes a 90 minute movie in a third of the time of the entire movie. i.e. 90 min video encoded in just under 30mins.
As the results show in no 3 & 4, even though my benchmark results are slightly lower than with fallenczars resolution for widescreen format vids, it's hard to beat how little frames are dropped whilst retaing a visually HQ video/movie.
Verdict? I absolutely stand by my findings until someone finds a way of encoding videos at native VGA at HQ with virtually no hit on performance.
I want HQ with great performance. Don't get me wrong people, we can easily achieve benchmarks in excess of 500 - 600kbps but the quality of sound and video isn't worthy of such high end PPC's. We paid a lot of dough for these devices and I'll be damned if I can't get slick HQ video on the Athena. I refuse to get a dell or Archos or whatever just to accelerate video and games....if that was my priority I'd buy a PSP and a get myself another compact HTC Hermes.
Just wait till we get some support for our Imageon devices. Let the good times roll.
P.S. Divx Encoder can't encode whatever you throw at it, mostly AVI files. Any Video Converter and quite a few others can handle most formats including high def files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey Mark!
Since you seem to have loads of free time why don't you try converting your video to .mov, try it with a small 20-40 mb movie clip first..
if my memory serves me right then you should be able to get better results with it...though converion to mov if time consuming

fallenczar said:
Hey Mark!
Since you seem to have loads of free time why don't you try converting your video to .mov, try it with a small 20-40 mb movie clip first..
if my memory serves me right then you should be able to get better results with it...though converion to mov if time consuming
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Blimey, I haven't used that format for years, except for downloads from Apple.com...thanks for the tip. I'll look into it once I get some more free time.

Test Clip for download...
Just in case you can't be bothered or have the time to test these settings, just download this test video and see what you think...it's about 8.5 MB in size:
DownloadLink: http://rapidshare.com/files/50811286/10000_BC_HD_xvid.avi

Will the Advantage play a 640x480 .wmv in Windows Media Player?

mackaby007 said:
That's right, blissful viewing on your VGA Athena. How?
Don't expect to run it in a full screen window, that's how. The CPU (powerful as it is) cannot handle native VGA 640x480 full screen encodes. Probably due to the many other things it has to do simultaneously.
For full screen 640x480, we need the ATI Imageon chip acceleration support, which as we all know is not yet available and ATI/AMD have not been forthcoming in helping CoreCodec in revealing the nature of their hard/software embedded implementation. Nuff said.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I discovered that TCPMP can not play full screen. As I have installed SmartMovie which can play full screen movie beautifully, therefore I do not bother to try run TCPMP to play movies, just use TCPMP to play music with enlarged lyrics appearing at the same time along with the pace of music. That is a joy forever.

juiceppc said:
Will the Advantage play a 640x480 .wmv in Windows Media Player?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Possibly, if the encoding specs match that of the ones outlined in the Athena Handbook, but I believe you will get better performance from using MP4 under WMP as it will use the Imageon Hardware decoder that Coreplayer cannot use.
However from my experience, WMP is far too restrictive, hence TCPMP/Coreplayer is the best on the market. .wmv is pretty crap for PPC playback IMHO compared other formats. .wmv is fine on Full blown PC though.

panvita said:
I discovered that TCPMP can not play full screen. As I have installed SmartMovie which can play full screen movie beautifully, therefore I do not bother to try run TCPMP to play movies, just use TCPMP to play music with enlarged lyrics appearing at the same time along with the pace of music. That is a joy forever.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No disrespect panvita, but you obviously have no idea what I've been talking about. Take any of those movies that you say is full screen in Smart Movie and run some test with it,(I use the latest version) and the Smartmovie converter cannot even encode at full VGA 640x480 by default and the PPC SmartMovie player doesn't like most videos encoded by other encoders (its limited).
What I'm trying to say is SmartMovie Player on the PPC is inferior by far to TCPMP and Coreplayer. Check the options in SmartMovie player to show framerate whilst a movie is playing and check the actual resolution too. I think you'll find that it is more often than not, Not real VGA res and when it is, your frame-rate will be terribly slow.
Then run the same movie file in TCPMP or Coreplayer and check your property settings after playing your movie file and you'll see again the frame rate achieved and how many frames were dropped.
Don't mean to sound arrogant or like a Mr Know-it-all, but it is pretty much common knowledge that Coreplayer and TCPMP is far superior to all other PPC based Video players on the market to date, even though 'It' still has its shortcomings.

mackaby007 said:
Possibly, if the encoding specs match that of the ones outlined in the Athena Handbook, but I believe you will get better performance from using MP4 under WMP as it will use the Imageon Hardware decoder that Coreplayer cannot use.
However from my experience, WMP is far too restrictive, hence TCPMP/Coreplayer is the best on the market. .wmv is pretty crap for PPC playback IMHO compared other formats. .wmv is fine on Full blown PC though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Core is good but if my main objective is to watch my movies(of which all are .wmv) full screen with no hiccups then why not just use WMP to do that. I like .wmv for it's simplicity. But that's just me.

juiceppc said:
Core is good but if my main objective is to watch my movies(of which all are .wmv) full screen with no hiccups then why not just use WMP to do that. I like .wmv for it's simplicity. But that's just me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't argue with that at all. Coreplayer is crap for WMV but that is exactly the format WMP likes to play.

TCPMP on x7501
I am using the TCPMP player on my new Advantage x7501 & it works perfectly!

I advise to use DirectDraw as an output! it's really better than that sucker ATI IMAGEON! Take a look at the configs and Benchmarks! (Configs in both benmarks are the same)
-Video
Video Output: DirectDraw
Video Quality: High
Smooth zoom: ON
Dither: • (on)
Accleration: ◘ (off)
-Buffering
Turned on to Micro Drive mode
Buffer Size: 32000kb
Start at: 2944
-Benchmark Using DirectDraw(File Size: 138 mb)
Average Speed: 183,86 % (!)
Video Frames: 8821
Audio Samples: 15598708
Amount of Data: 14443 KB
Codec: DivX
*PLZ PAY ATTENTION TO ANOTHER BENCHMARK USING ATI IMAGEON AS VIDEO OUTPUT*
-Benchmark Using ATI IMAGEON(File Size: 138 mb)
Average Speed: 58,71%
Video Frames: 8776
Audio Samples: 15488972
Amount of Data: 14354 KB
HOW IS IT MARK????

Try different settings...somethings wrong with yours.
hirad_sabaghian said:
I advise to use DirectDraw as an output! it's really better than that sucker ATI IMAGEON! Take a look at the configs and Benchmarks! (Configs in both benmarks are the same)
-Video
Video Output: DirectDraw
Video Quality: High
Smooth zoom: ON
Dither: • (on)
Accleration: ◘ (off)
-Buffering
Turned on to Micro Drive mode
Buffer Size: 32000kb
Start at: 2944
-Benchmark Using DirectDraw(File Size: 138 mb)
Average Speed: 183,86 % (!)
Video Frames: 8821
Audio Samples: 15598708
Amount of Data: 14443 KB
Codec: DivX
*PLZ PAY ATTENTION TO ANOTHER BENCHMARK USING ATI IMAGEON AS VIDEO OUTPUT*
-Benchmark Using ATI IMAGEON(File Size: 138 mb)
Average Speed: 58,71%
Video Frames: 8776
Audio Samples: 15488972
Amount of Data: 14354 KB
HOW IS IT MARK????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ooh do I detect a tone of anger or possibly sarcasm in that last statement/question? hehe
OK, the reason is probably that when you use Coreplayer or TCPMP, you have the Imageon Decoder activated...No good, NOT fixed to work with Coreplayer or TCPMP as yet.
Coreplayer: Under your video settings, ensure you have the following settings checked or enabled:
Video Output: ATI IMAGEON
Video quality: High
Smooth Zoom: On
Dither: Ticked
Acceleration: UNticked (else you'll be using the hardware decoder - no good)
Under Preferences select Direct Draw options page and select the following:
Overlay with colorkey - Ticked
Use blitting instead of overlay - Blank
Use device stretching for blitting - Blank
Overlay format - YV12
There you have it. Last but not least, don't encode videos much beyond 480x320 otherwise the Athena cannot handle it.
Try that my friend.
Same set-up for TCPMP:

video performances

Video benchmarks on coreplayer 1.25, default options.
Video 1 - Simpsons chapter
Video: XVID 512x384 25.00fps 756Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 131Kbps [Audio 1]
Average speed: 93%
Video 2 - Friends chapter
Video: XVID 512x384 23.98fps 845Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 130Kbps [Audio 1]
Average speed: 99%
Video 3 - Futurama chapter
Video: DivX 5 640x480 25.00fps 2097Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 120Kbps [Audio 1]
Average speed: 73%
Video 4 - Heroes.S03E08.HDTV.XviD-LOL 400mb
Video: XVID 624x352 23.98fps 1147Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 122Kbps [Audio 1]
Average speed: 90.11%
Video 5 - Californication.S02E07.HDTV.XviD-0TV 250mb
Video: XVID 624x352 23.98fps 1082Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 128Kbps [Audio 1]
Average speed: 95.57%
Video 6 - Simpsons chapter
Video: DivX 5 720x576 25.00fps 1111Kbps [Video 0]
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 128Kbps [Audio 1]
Average speed: 58%
Videos of the test: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2M95ZHD4
No 100% on ANY video, but close. Acceptable? Maybe in coreplayer 1.3.
For me, this is a total crap and a big failure of HTC again. BUY THE STUPID ATI DRIVERS F**K, ILL PAY 50$ FOR THEM

disappointment
Yes, I second that,
The poor video performance is a big downer and a very noticable thing watching your favourite smallville episode skipping frames all the time.

and the game of the ball is sloooooow and like playing a 10fps game.

I have to say I'm amazed by this. I remember when the whole Tytn II video debacle broke, we had these silly statements from HTC trying to justify the poor performance by saying it was a business phone, and didn't have video acceleration built in (which was a lie), but that future HTC devices might be "multimedia-centric" or words to that effect... well, surely the Touch HD is exactly such a multimedia device, advertised and sold as just that, so why are we still discussing lacklustre performance?
Is this gross stupidity or carelessness on the part of HTC, or is there something seriously wrong with these Qualcomm chips?
Let's just revisit the blurb on HTC's own website for a moment (before they start rewording it, as they did with the Tytn II) -
HTC said:
Enjoy music videos, films and streaming like you never thought possible on a mobile device. Experience internet browsing so exhilarating... it feels like you never left your laptop at home...
...3.8-inch wide, WVGA (480 X 800 pixel) display offering a cinema experience on the go
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm.

I find this quite dissapointing. I was hoping that due to the large screen they would have made sure it can play basic video files. Those sorts of file are exactly what i would be looking to play on it too.
Hmm The more I read the more i am sawying towards an iPhone which i fine frustrating

Guys try playing those files in WMP and you will see that it will play them perfectly thanks to the hardware acceleration which unfortunately still isn't fully used in CP! Wait till CC will crack the software part of the HW acceleration and you then you will be able to watch all those movies without demuxing on Touch HD.
To those who want to know how to make .mp4 from .avi/.mkv without converting PM and I will tell how to do it in 10 minutes and not 1 hour.

How we can play this files on a program that doesnt read that codecs?

xvid/divx are all the same it is simply mpeg4 video. If you take it out of the .avi file and mux it into .mp4 it will be recognised as mpeg4 video file. Its the same with h264/x264 if you take it out from .avi and mux it into .mp4 it will be recognised as h264 video unfortunately wmp only supports baseline profile which is rarely used at all.
Remember that .avi/.mp4/.mkv are all containers that can contain the same type of video or audio stream only .mkv is special cause it can easily contain subtitles stream of different format and almost every audio format which unfortunately isn't the case with .avi and .mp4 that is why .mkv is the most popular container for all those HD rips cause you can put almost every kind of thing.

update !

I hear the sound of a deal breaking....while this is a disappointment for sure the real crunch for me would be if the video suffered in ordinary performance as my polaris did (eg low screen rewrites pretty obvious in TT7).

I am not into benchmarks, just one of those "business users" that likes to have some multimedia on my device. Just watching ep 7 of se 4 of The Unit on Coreplayer 1.2.5 in fullscreen landscape from Divx 624x352, and find it plays really well, with no lag or performance problems. So for the occasional user like me the HD is doing just fine.

Wishmaster89 said:
xvid/divx are all the same it is simply mpeg4 video. If you take it out of the .avi file and mux it into .mp4 it will be recognised as mpeg4 video file. Its the same with h264/x264 if you take it out from .avi and mux it into .mp4 it will be recognised as h264 video unfortunately wmp only supports baseline profile which is rarely used at all.
Remember that .avi/.mp4/.mkv are all containers that can contain the same type of video or audio stream only .mkv is special cause it can easily contain subtitles stream of different format and almost every audio format which unfortunately isn't the case with .avi and .mp4 that is why .mkv is the most popular container for all those HD rips cause you can put almost every kind of thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what???
xvid and divx are codecs, not simply videos, if you mux a xvid/divx video in one container, it will be a mpeg4 container with xvid/divx video, and windows media player will not play it until you convert the video to another codec with loss of quality, bigger size and loss of time, so is not that easy and for us, say that "use windows media player" is a useless comment.

I uploaded the videos with that I made the benchmarks
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2M95ZHD4

Just tried Heroes Episode 8 on my i780, and here are the results:
GDI - 181,36%
Raw Framebuffer - 206,13%
Intel xScale - 213,59%
Direct Draw - 182,2%
However taking into account the difference in resolution from the older models and the Touch HD i think this could justify the difference in performance.
Also, maybe Core Player is not using effectively the architecture of the Touch HD.
But... this is a new machine and as such it should be ready to play acceptably the videos.

On the Omnia I can play a 700 MB AVI file almost perfectly smoothly without any conversion at all. I can simple place the original high-quality video AVI onto the Omnia and play it.
Is this the same case for the Touch HD? Can you do the same thing and it will play (even if you need to use WMP)? Or do you have to convert it down to a lower quality first like on previous phones?

The Omnia included by default a DivX player, this is not the case of the Blackstone, however with Core Player or the free TCMP you can watch virtually any movie without converting it.

The Omnia is also based around a different processor, not made by Qualcomm. I suspect that helps as well.

this is so disappointing...
my only wish is that CorePlayer 1.2.5 actually doesn't use the hardware acceleration of the touch hd as it should.
because if this is the actual performance of the hardware then, at least me, i wont spent 700 euro on this device which promises to be multimedia device but actually isn't.
can someone convert a file that is playable with the built-in video player or WMP but this file should be of relatively high resolution say 720x400 (wmv, mp4 whatever) and then see how's the performance?
maybe this is just a coreplayer poor performance issue here are we're just blaming the device for nothing...
ps. I had the omnia for couple of weeks, the video performance of IntelXScale is absolutely amazing even on high resolution videos, also I don't think the 240x400 resolution of the omnia plays a big factor here, i suppose that even if the omnia had 480x800 resolution, the performance would be the same (maybe bit slower, but definitely more than 100%)

Hi, I've just tryied this video: http://downloads.gamezone.com/demos/d24115.htm which is infact an 800x480 wmv file. Coreplayer 1.2.5 benchmarked at 46% with QTv, even less with other methods. Windows Media Player however managed to play it much much better, even if with some dropped frames.. definitely not a smooth playback but at least was not a slideshow like in CorePlayer...
downloading a 640x480 wmv video.. I'll report back with results..
Edit: the second video is this one: http://www.casadolcecasa.com/gallery/video/Natale2004_hig.wmv
WMP: watchable, first part kinda sluggish, then goes better (supposedly because most of the img is dark -> easier to decode)
CP1.2.5: unwatchable, frames slideshow.. 56% with QTv

mkMoSs said:
ps. I had the omnia for couple of weeks, the video performance of IntelXScale is absolutely amazing even on high resolution videos, also I don't think the 240x400 resolution of the omnia plays a big factor here, i suppose that even if the omnia had 480x800 resolution, the performance would be the same (maybe bit slower, but definitely more than 100%)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
and on what facts do you base this opinion? nobody know how fast it would play. the HD resolution has to display 4 times more pixel than the omnia

Video Quality AMAZINGLY good

Not used to making video's as all my previous phones
Universal,Hermes,TytnII,Raphael,Touch HD didn't make them too well.
So just tried out making video's while driving (as a passenger) and
they look stunningly good. There's lot's of sun/cloud changes
and it picks up beautifully.
Frame rate is above 20FPS average in MPEG 640x480. Nice.
EDIT : from comments below I see most people expect more. For once I'm on the satisfied side

What .. it too can't play 640x480 flawlessly ? I saw some benchmarks which played such videos at 200%.

Dr.Sid said:
What .. it too can't play 640x480 flawlessly ? I saw some benchmarks which played such videos at 200%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you read his comment???? where does it say it cant play 640x480
A sample recording would be nice

Smooth playback is 24 fps and beyond. if it's between 20-24, it sucks.

It's the recording rate in 640x480 not the playback speed.
It will almost always keep the 23.99 frames per second while recording
So I meant to say, it's a great video recorder.

I think the title of this thread is a little bit naive!
C'mon 640 x 480 has been on most high end phones now since 2006!
We now have alot of phones with 640 x 480, a fair few with 720 x 480 (D1?) and one or two with 720p recording.
The hardware in this phone is capable of 720p as is that of the Palm Pre, Iphone 3GS and probably others too.
So, in summary - I dont see 640 x 480 as amazingly good at all!
On the topic, do any devs think it would be possible to up the recording to it's 720p capabilities?

See above. I accidently posted twice.

jamuk2004 said:
The hardware in this phone is capable of 720p
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Qualcomm advertises Snapdragon (rather over-optimistically in my opinion) as being capable of 720p video playback - where do they say it's capable of 720p capture?

My bad !
I did not notice he talks about RECORDING, I thought he talks about playback.

lucid said:
Frame rate is above 20FPS average in MPEG 640x480. Nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So video quality is "surprisingly mediocre", then. Is there any non-HTC smartphone in the world that can't manage at least 30fps at VGA resolution? The Samsung i8910HD can almost manage 24fps at a resolution of 1280x720. If the HD2 could better that, then maybe you could describe it as "amazingly good".

The Snapdragon probably should be able to record in 720P from a hardware point of view. My currrent phone, the i8910, records in 720P at around 22-24fps, and its only packing a 600mhz Cortex 8 CPU.

So i went to the registry and messed with some values a bit. I set the bitrate much higher than the default. It would still capture video @ about 25 fps. Can't really tell the difference in quality, but the filesize has increased by a 100%. I'll try to see if there are more reg settings to mess around.

NZtechfreak said:
The Snapdragon probably should be able to record in 720P from a hardware point of view. My currrent phone, the i8910, records in 720P at around 22-24fps, and its only packing a 600mhz Cortex 8 CPU.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a lot more to it than CPU power, I think - it's a bandwidth issue rather than MIPS. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows Mobile imposes some limitations too.

Encoding MKV....always get lip sync problems?

I have tried loads of converters and can get GOOD quality videos if i like with no lip sync problems but i want EXCELLENT quality video like the encodes i had for my HD2 but just can't find a stable converter which works all the time.
The best video quality i can get is by using....
Winmenc then DVD Catalyst 3 then Any dvd Converter.
I can get stunning video from Winmenc but some clips either dont display the picture on the phone or have lipsync problems.
DVD Catalyst comes a close second for video quality and all clips play but still get lip sync problems.
Any dvd converter gives good quality video with no lip sync problems but picture is nowhere as good as Winmenc.
Anybody got any custom profiles or programs to get excellent quality video with no lip sync problems?
Thanks for any help

Try this..http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=478050
I absolutely love it

benko286 said:
Try this..http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=478050
I absolutely love it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks
I think i may have tried an older version of this.....will give it another go.
What profile are you using?
Cheers.

I've been using Super(c) for years with custom profiles and it works as perfect as anything I've yet heard about or seen. Plenty of such settings can be adjusted in it perfectly.
-------------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -

I use AnyDvD Converter Pro, playback is flawless using the following settings:
VIDEO
custom mp4
800x480 (or any other scaled resolution with 800px width that preserves the aspect ratio, unless source was low res to begin with, in which case i'll stick to the source's original res)
x264 video encoding
bitrate 2000kbps (again,provided the original bitrate was higher of course, otherwise,source's value )
25/23.97fps depending on source of course
AUDIO
aac audio encoding
bitrate 320kbps
sampling 48000/44100 depending on source
2 channels
I have converted uber quality 1080p rips ( 20-30Gb worth, 20-25Mbps video bitrate, 1536+kbps 7.1 DTSHD audio) with these settings, and the results are GREAT . I havent tried pushing the video bitrate any higher, but it might playback nicely with higher values as well.

MacCarron said:
I use AnyDvD Converter Pro, playback is flawless using the following settings:
VIDEO
custom mp4
800x480 (or any other scaled resolution with 800px width that preserves the aspect ratio, unless source was low res to begin with, in which case i'll stick to the source's original res)
x264 video encoding
bitrate 2000kbps (again,provided the original bitrate was higher of course, otherwise,source's value )
25/23.97fps depending on source of course
AUDIO
aac audio encoding
bitrate 320kbps
sampling 48000/44100 depending on source
2 channels
I have converted uber quality 1080p rips ( 20-30Gb worth, 20-25Mbps video bitrate, 1536+kbps 7.1 DTSHD audio) with these settings, and the results are GREAT . I havent tried pushing the video bitrate any higher, but it might playback nicely with higher values as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it possible for you to upload a sample video encoded with above settings to try on our desires??

Double Twist
Why don't you try to use DoubleTwist?
It looks like iTunes, and when you sync any type of movie or audio with Desire, it will convert to the format that Desire can play. Just like that, no need to configure anything.
It also run quite fast, and it's free!

jpopgt said:
Thanks
I think i may have tried an older version of this.....will give it another go.
What profile are you using?
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Diamond but changed a little bit, max res is 800x480, veryhigh, x.264 one pass
MacCarron said:
I use AnyDvD Converter Pro, playback is flawless using the following settings:
VIDEO
custom mp4
800x480 (or any other scaled resolution with 800px width that preserves the aspect ratio, unless source was low res to begin with, in which case i'll stick to the source's original res)
x264 video encoding
bitrate 2000kbps (again,provided the original bitrate was higher of course, otherwise,source's value )
25/23.97fps depending on source of course
AUDIO
aac audio encoding
bitrate 320kbps
sampling 48000/44100 depending on source
2 channels
I have converted uber quality 1080p rips ( 20-30Gb worth, 20-25Mbps video bitrate, 1536+kbps 7.1 DTSHD audio) with these settings, and the results are GREAT . I havent tried pushing the video bitrate any higher, but it might playback nicely with higher values as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1500 is more than enough, I use 1000kbps and video is fantastic
i will try with 1500, but I think that is overkill too
Does AnyDvD Converter Pro supports subtitles?

Thanks for the replies

th3 said:
I've been using Super(c) for years with custom profiles and it works as perfect as anything I've yet heard about or seen. Plenty of such settings can be adjusted in it perfectly.
-------------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You got some settings you could pass on for Super?....i have never got great results with it.
Cheers.

I have encoded this Lady Gaga clip using the settings mentioned here with Winmenc, Any DVD Converter Pro and MP4forHD
Winmenc i think still has much better picture quality but lip sync is way out, especially if you fast forward or back....
Any DVD looks great to but i think the lip sync is slightly out....
And MP4forHD looks great and plays fine when i set audio delay to 0.3.
Any DVD Converter....
http://rapidshare.com/files/389703402/Any.mp4
MP4forHD....
http://rapidshare.com/files/389712600/MP4ForHD.mp4
winmenc.....
http://rapidshare.com/files/389707134/winmenc.mp4
Maybe someone here could modify this profile for winmenc to get the lip sync sorted....
http://rapidshare.com/files/389723529/_0-HTC_HD2__MP4_H264_800x480_2000kbps_Sharpened__AAC_44Khz_96kbps.ini
All credit goes to the person that made this profile for the HD2.
Cheers.

Sorry for the late reply, here are the megaupload links to a couple of video clips i've encoded using the preset i posted yesterday. Souce was a 1080p BRrip in both cases.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V8TPXP3T
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3V318NMP
The Transformers' souce had a subtitle track and it was embedded in the rip, so that answers the previous question about subs. I have yet to check if subtitles can be disabled, but i guess it can be done (in my case, i am interested in plain english audio tracks, i don't even know what language is that )
edit: for some weird reasons the audio is noticeably out of sync WHEN PLAYED ON A PC...they are perfect on the Desire though. Pretty weird, last time i checked my pc kicks asses so the problem must be resting in the mp4 container..

You got some settings you could pass on for Super?....i have never got great results with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll upload the profile for you when I get back on the PC (by weekend). I change some things around with every vid though, depending on its properties. Too many internal coder settings you can tweak for slight visual/acoustic differences including how much to raise the sound in db and how much of the clip to cut out.
-------------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -

th3 said:
I'll upload the profile for you when I get back on the PC (by weekend). I change some things around with every vid though, depending on its properties. Too many internal coder settings you can tweak for slight visual/acoustic differences including how much to raise the sound in db and how much of the clip to cut out.
-------------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok Thanks

Just to quickly add - I don't tend to use automated profiles although I know it's what most are after (quickest).
What do you think of YouTube HD? Good enough quality for you or, you'd like better?
I had a quick look at your upload vid properties and they have different internal recode settings and different end file sizes. As such, a true cross-comparison is very difficult (all things kept consistent, the stream with the highest bit-rate and file size will have better visuals). The point of transcoding really is to keep the file size as small as possible with video and audio at your accepted levels -- that level differs for everyone depending on a variety if factors. Many YouTube HD vids are for instance only 480-560 Kbps streams. But all things which impact quality were not automatically kept fixed in these transcodes. Your vids were;
1) Any
Duration : 2mn 1s
Overall bit rate : 2,091 Kbps
Video
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 1,865 Kbps
Width : 800 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.194
Stream size : 27.1 MiB (89%)
2) MP4
Duration : 2mn 1s
Overall bit rate : 1,994 Kbps
Video
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 1,544 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 2,932 Kbps
Width : 800 pixels
Height : 448 pixels
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.172
Stream size : 27.0 MiB (93%)
3) Winmec
Duration : 2mn 1s
Overall bit rate : 2,713 Kbps
(missing vital info it would not show here)
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2,579 Kbps
Width : 800 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.269
Stream size : 37.4 MiB (95%)
So the Winmec transcode should have much better visuals than the other two here, even just looking at the empirical data, however, how much of that better-ness is perceptible to untrained and trained human eyes? Judging by mass-accepted online "HD" video, usually not much - and on portable phones - even less (perceptible difference threshold decreases with decreasing display size).
I'll upload a few transcodes using different settings... see which you feel is better (on the intended phone).
-------------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -

Thanks for the info.

Another update:
Looks like your A/V sync issues are caused by too high bit-rate video streams being too power demanding on the hardware of the phone and so the CPU can't keep up. While running some test encodes for the post I had promised, upon checking playback on the Desire, I noticed getting the same A/V sync problems which don't exist on the Desktop. Dropping the video bit-rate alleviated that problem completely albeit the visual quality dropped too. I better check the vids in the default player too just to be sure now (I use Act 1 or Meridian video players mainly). So do keep in mind that higher bit-rate video playback requires more hardware power and hence much higher battery usage than lower bit-rate.
At the moment, I'm stuck with the latest update I've just installed for Super(c) not changing internal codec settings no matter what options I choose (same Lady Gaga 1080p video taken from a Blu-ray rip). Very strange. Just working on getting that running before posting some transcodes. Bear with me, please...
-------------------------------------
- Sent via my HTC Desire -

sorry if this is irrelevant but how do i hardcode subtitles with mp4hd?

nikosrs4 said:
sorry if this is irrelevant but how do i hardcode subtitles with mp4hd?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You just need the srt file with the same name as the movie in a folder and have the srt option selected in the edit settings of MP4forHD.

maybe I forgot the language selection..I'm trying again now, thanks

Video - Notion Ink Adam vs Motorola Xoom

Quick Comparison of Notion Ink Adam vs. Motorola Xoom
check out the video!

Great Review comparing the two. Thanks for the effort.

Good review. I'm actually surprised the Adam's PQI doesn't look nearly as bad in comparison as I thought it was. Its a bit odd the Xoom's screen is that much larger..

Great review. thanks!

football0552 said:
Good review. I'm actually surprised the Adam's PQI doesn't look nearly as bad in comparison as I thought it was. Its a bit odd the Xoom's screen is that much larger..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure about the PixelQi viewing angles, but the LCD viewing angles are terrible compared to the Xoom. The viewing angles on the Xoom are top notch. I noticed that my buddy had his Xoom laying flat on his lap without his hands on the device. Unfortunately, I can't leave the Adam flat on my lap -- if I do, I can't see the screen. I find myself constantly having to hold the Adam in the right position just to get a decent view of the screen.
Additionally, the overall feel of the Xoom was much better than the Adam. The Adam just feels cheaply made to me... the plastic on the back feels like cheap plastic and the overall construction is a bit shoddy to me. The white edges don't have a clean, smooth edge where they meet the black plastic which isn't a big deal... but even the ViewSonic G-Tablet had a cleaner finish. The bigger thing that bothers me is the cheap plastic on the back -- I wish they would have used the rubberish plastic on the back like they did on the battery cover.
The Xoom (and even the G-Tablet) also have nice rounded corners which make the device feel a lot better in the hand. I was surprised to find that the square corners of the Adam bother me while I'm holding it -- it digs into your hand a bit. The overall build of the Xoom is also a lot nicer than the Adam. The Adam has way too much bezel at the top and the bezels are quite large all the way around the device. The Xoom on the other hand has very nice bezels that fit the device very well -- they're an even size all the way around the device and they are slightly smaller than the iPad, but not so small that it becomes hard to hold the device.
That being said, the internal hardware of the Adam seems to be just as good as the Xoom and it includes a full-size HDMI port and multiple USB ports. After using the HDMI port on the Adam though, it left me wanting something more. The videos on YouTube would slow down to the point where they're out of sync with the audio (only when the HDMI was plugged in) and the picture just seemed overall pixelated. I still think it would be really nice for watching videos on the big screen, so I'll need to test out a local video to see if it causes any slowdowns on local video or just YouTube. The USB ports are also really nice... I've never had an actual need for them, but it is convenient to have the ports available in case I ever want to plug in a USB Keyboard / Mouse or thumb drive... Oh, and the cameras -- I was really stoked about the swivel camera on the Adam, but I've found it's kind of cheap feeling... I didn't use the Xoom camera much, but the quality seemed pretty decent for the handful of shots I took (and the Honeycomb camera app is really nice).

Can anyone test and see if the Notion ink can play this file smoothly?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9502388/Pla...to.Pole.2006.720p.HDDVD.x264-ESiR (1)-001.mkv
Its a stress test for 720p video. Its the intro to the first episode of planet earth in high profile h.264. The key part is the ending of this video where the birds start flying and the bitrate spikes.
The reason I ask is that people in the Xoom section claim that the reason the Xoom cannot play high profile h.264 is that it hasn't received the proper codecs and optimization like the Notion Ink does. Before I buy a tablet I want to know that it can play at least 720p videos. I want to make sure that the Tegra 2 is capable of at least playing 720P, because my Epic4g Galaxy S phone plays this file flawlessly.
Thanks a lot.

As i said before on the video, great work inspiron

muyoso said:
Can anyone test and see if the Notion ink can play this file smoothly?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9502388/Pla...to.Pole.2006.720p.HDDVD.x264-ESiR (1)-001.mkv
Its a stress test for 720p video. Its the intro to the first episode of planet earth in high profile h.264. The key part is the ending of this video where the birds start flying and the bitrate spikes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried it on the Utopia Beta (GB) and it didn't work. The out of the box video player wouldn't even play it. RockPlayer and QQPlayer would load the video but it was playing back at a very low, unwatchable framerate.
Maybe someone with a stock Adam can test for you as they have a different VideoPlayer. The Tegra chip is known for having trouble with High Profile h.264 though. I'm tempted to convert it to Main Profile and see how it looks...

joshua.lyon said:
I tried it on the Utopia Beta (GB) and it didn't work. The out of the box video player wouldn't even play it. RockPlayer and QQPlayer would load the video but it was playing back at a very low, unwatchable framerate.
Maybe someone with a stock Adam can test for you as they have a different VideoPlayer. The Tegra chip is known for having trouble with High Profile h.264 though. I'm tempted to convert it to Main Profile and see how it looks...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for trying it. I am trying to see exactly what the limitations are for the Tegra 2 and if the Notion Ink can play media better than the Xoom. If it does then its a matter of codec support most likely. I figured if the Notion Ink could play this file, then it could play any 720p which would be good enough for me.

muyoso said:
Thank you so much for trying it. I am trying to see exactly what the limitations are for the Tegra 2 and if the Notion Ink can play media better than the Xoom. If it does then its a matter of codec support most likely. I figured if the Notion Ink could play this file, then it could play any 720p which would be good enough for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Per my original comment, I've converted the video to Main Profile x264. The download link for my version of the test file is below (note the MP4 extension):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17735781/Planet.Earth.EP01.From.Pole.to.Pole.2006.720p.HDDVD.x264-ESiR.mp4
Unfortunately, even this video doesn't play back properly on my Adam with the Utopia Beta Rom... I'm going to a little tinkering as this is something that has interested me as well...
Code:
[18:54:12] job configuration:
[18:54:12] * source
[18:54:12] + Planet.Earth.EP01.From.Pole.to.Pole.2006.720p.HDDVD.x264-ESiR (1)-001.mkv
[18:54:12] + title 1, chapter(s) 1 to 1
[18:54:12] + container: matroska,webm
[18:54:12] + data rate: 448 kbps
[18:54:12] * destination
[18:54:12] + PEMain.mp4
[18:54:12] + container: MPEG-4 (.mp4 and .m4v)
[18:54:12] * video track
[18:54:12] + decoder: h264
[18:54:12] + frame rate: same as source (around 23.976 fps)
[18:54:12] + strict anamorphic
[18:54:12] + storage dimensions: 1280 * 720 -> 1280 * 720, crop 0/0/0/0, mod 0
[18:54:12] + pixel aspect ratio: 1 / 1
[18:54:12] + display dimensions: 1280 * 720
[18:54:12] + encoder: x264
[18:54:12] + options: ref=2:bframes=2:subme=6:mixed-refs=0:weightb=0:8x8dct=0:trellis=0
[18:54:12] + quality: 20.00 (RF)
[18:54:12] * audio track 0
[18:54:12] + decoder: English (AC3) (5.1 ch) (track 1, id 1)
[18:54:12] + bitrate: 448 kbps, samplerate: 48000 Hz
[18:54:12] + mixdown: Dolby Pro Logic II
[18:54:12] + encoder: faac
[18:54:12] + bitrate: 160 kbps, samplerate: 48000 Hz

joshua.lyon said:
Per my original comment, I've converted the video to Main Profile x264. The download link for my version of the test file is below (note the MP4 extension):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17735781/Planet.Earth.EP01.From.Pole.to.Pole.2006.720p.HDDVD.x264-ESiR.mp4
Unfortunately, even this video doesn't play back properly on my Adam with the Utopia Beta Rom... I'm going to a little tinkering as this is something that has interested me as well...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm. I wonder if it could be an issue with the 6 channel audio. I chose this clip because its the 720p version of what is called the "killa sample", which is a 1080p clip that tests fairly accurately if your current computer setup can handle any 1080p you can throw at it. This video's bitrate spikes to 23,000Kbps during the bird scene for example, which is huge for an 720p video.
I figured that if the Tegra 2 could play this, it could play anything.

muyoso said:
Hmm. I wonder if it could be an issue with the 6 channel audio. I chose this clip because its the 720p version of what is called the "killa sample", which is a 1080p clip that tests fairly accurately if your current computer setup can handle any 1080p you can throw at it. This video's bitrate spikes to 23,000Kbps during the bird scene for example, which is huge for an 720p video.
I figured that if the Tegra 2 could play this, it could play anything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I re-encoded the video using the Apple Universal preset in HandBrakeCLI and the video now plays fine on my tablet. If I use RockPlayer Lite, it even allows me to select the second audio track which should be 6 channel audio (even though XBMC reports it as stereo?).
On the tablet, I don't really see a major difference in quality. I was surprised that on my 1080p 52", there is a difference but it was still actually pretty good quality. The downside is, that each video you have would have to be re-encoded if you wanted to watch them on your tablet.... this is definitely not something I'm interested in doing for all my videos.
I've linked to the Apple Universal sample below:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17735781/PlanetEarthiOS.mp4
Code:
[19:42:42] job configuration:
[19:42:42] * source
[19:42:42] + Planet.Earth.EP01.From.Pole.to.Pole.2006.720p.HDDVD.x264-ESiR (1)-001.mkv
[19:42:42] + title 1, chapter(s) 1 to 1
[19:42:42] + container: matroska,webm
[19:42:42] + data rate: 448 kbps
[19:42:42] * destination
[19:42:42] + PlanetEarthiOS.mp4
[19:42:42] + container: MPEG-4 (.mp4 and .m4v)
[19:42:42] * video track
[19:42:42] + decoder: h264
[19:42:42] + frame rate: same as source (around 23.976 fps)
[19:42:42] + loose anamorphic
[19:42:42] + storage dimensions: 1280 * 720 -> 720 * 400, crop 0/0/0/0, mod 0
[19:42:42] + pixel aspect ratio: 80 / 81
[19:42:42] + display dimensions: 711 * 400
[19:42:42] + encoder: x264
[19:42:42] + options: cabac=0:ref=2:me=umh:bframes=0:weightp=0:8x8dct=0:trellis=0:subme=6
[19:42:42] + quality: 20.00 (RF)
[19:42:42] * audio track 0
[19:42:42] + decoder: English (AC3) (5.1 ch) (track 1, id 1)
[19:42:42] + bitrate: 448 kbps, samplerate: 48000 Hz
[19:42:42] + mixdown: Dolby Pro Logic II
[19:42:42] + encoder: faac
[19:42:42] + bitrate: 160 kbps, samplerate: 48000 Hz
[19:42:42] * audio track 1
[19:42:42] + decoder: English (AC3) (5.1 ch) (track 1, id 1)
[19:42:42] + bitrate: 448 kbps, samplerate: 48000 Hz
[19:42:42] + AC3 passthrough

My own tests
I happened to have some original video handy, and a new Adam that showed up on Friday, so I did some testing. The original video was shot on a Panasonic HMC40 camcorder at 24Mb/s 1080/24p. I did a bunch of 2 minute encodings in Sony Vegas, using the Sony AVC CODEC. At 720/24p and 4Mb/s, I had baseline, main, and high profiles all playing perfectly. Going to 6Mb/s, I started to see issues, though on other 6Mb/s videos, no so much. By 8Mb/s, or 1080/24p baseline at 4Mb/s, I saw the same issues.
Not sure about the bitrate issues, I went to another encoder, MainConcept AVC. I encoded 720/24p in VBR, main profile (MC doesn't do high), average 6Mb/s, peak 8Mb/s. This played just dandy, no de-sync or glitches. So there's definitely something that's encoder dependent, which also explains why some of the tests with x264 and others folks have done may yield different results.
The issue is that the video player is taking a bit too long on some frames, for sure. but the real issue is that the player isn't dropping frames to compensate. This is actually true of three players on my system: the default "Gallery" player, the Notion Ink player, and the ES File Manager player, all of which I'm sure access the same OS component for their work. I tried a few other "players" from the Market, but they produce identical results.
Normal PC video players, satellite boxes, DVD and Blu-ray players, they all have the ability to drop frames to keep audio in sync. In the latter two cases, this is to get around errors: bitstream glitches, read problems, etc. But fact is, most people don't notice the occasional dropped frame. So this is the longstanding practice.
I think I'd find many more of these acceptable if the player could drop frames and maintain audio sync. It's actually kind of weird... looks like audio and video are totally different threads or something. On the higher bitrate videos, the audio finishes, the video keeps playing until it catches up ... very 1980, in computer video terms.