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:

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...
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- 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

PMP side of Evo

I wasn't sure which forum to put this in. I am using my Evo as my primary PMP as well as my phone. I wanted to have a thread with tips/info/help on video coversion formats, bitrates, resolutions to optimize space and maintain great viewing. I use FormatFactory to convert my videos. I did some reading and converted a lot of my videos again but this time to a 720x480 res with 1024bitrate H.264 format. I had some videos that were already H.264 but 480x272 600bitrate. I have found that these smaller videos look just as good to me on the Evo as the larger bitrate counterpart. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just my eyes?

I'm very interested in getting some specs/guidelines for encoding also. Currently I just throw any avi file in there and it works great. But most of my library is h.264/x.264 HD in mkv format. I would love to be able to get some of that stuff working on this phone. Work is boring and I need something to keep me awake lol.
sent from my nintendo 64

All of my H.264 files are in mp4 format.

Not all H.264 format will play on the EVO. They cannot play H.264 format that uses a high and/or some main profiles. The baseline profile always seem to work though. If you download a program called "mediainfo" it will show the the H.264 profile that the video is encoded in.
Rockplayer is good for playing all kinds of media on the EVO. Unfortunately I find the audio lag (most of the time) very annoying and thus ruining the experience.

whatsitsnamenow said:
Not all H.264 format will play on the EVO. They cannot play H.264 format that uses a high and/or some main profiles. The baseline profile always seem to work though. If you download a program called "mediainfo" it will show the the H.264 profile that the video is encoded in.
Rockplayer is good for playing all kinds of media on the EVO. Unfortunately I find the audio lag (most of the time) very annoying and thus ruining the experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah! That is great to know. I couldn't figure out why some of the h264 stuff I had would work and some wouldn't. Now I just gotta check to see if that's the reason. And I love rock player, plays just about anything.
Only gripe I have is that it seems to have trouble with mkv files. They're very blocky and distorted. It could be the way they are encoded, but I'm not sure
sent from my nintendo 64

I have found that having 2 media players is better than one. My past experience was that while one player has audio lag, another will not have lag when playing the same file.

I am currently testing a conversion using a smaller bitrate. I have been using 1024 for the h.264 bitrate. I am converting a video using a bitrate of 768 but I am using a 2 pass encode instead of a single pass. I will post the results.

Its pointless to do two pass as you can't really tell the difference on an evo. You might be able to see the difference on a 40+ inch TV. If I plan to use the video on the evo and tv I usually go with a 1200 bitrate for standard videos and 1400 bitrate for action videos. All my videos are one pass only. For the evo 700 bitrate should be enough.

I just use Rockplayer, no need for transcode--it just plays! (720p stuff stutters though)

I transcode my files to save space on my sd card. I have found that the 768 bitrate works good for me. I have always done the 2 pass encode on any action films even at what I call "normal" bitrates. Everything looks great on this phone.

I haven't experimented with video much, but for audio, i use 40 kbit/s. I have 11k songs on my phone with plenty of room to spare (18/32gb used), and noone notices the quality if i play the songs on a stereo or receiver at a party.

You can definitely hear a difference in a 40kbs mp3. Are u sure it is 40kbs? I would imagine that would sound awful.

If you are an audiophile, you wouldn't be happy. I keep my computer audio at 320 if at all possible, but honestly, 40 done right is considered "telephone" quality. I'd be dumb to professionally DJ at that low, and yes you'd hear a difference in a comparison, but I assure you if you busted out your evo in any social situation and played a few tracks at 40 on speakerphone alone, most would be impressed... unless said friends were audiophiles.

And by telephone, I mean the quality of audio you'd expect to hear on a landline telephone conversation. You could always experiment and use 80 96 or 128, I found 40 was nice for me and 32 too low.

i find rockplayer very good but none of my 500+ 720p mkv files will play without stutter it could be that the audio decoder cant handle the audio more then likely i havent tried remuxing with stereo AAC audio yet because most times i prefer avi divx rips on phone since only thing i watch on phone is latest tv episodes i usually download hdtv rips from like FQM or LOL and they work flawless no encoding necessary and there small and i can download right to phone while at work without having to plan ahead but one program i have found that works great with mkv is
Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate
Code:
Output Device Support
Apple iPod touch 4, iPod nano, iPod classic, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 HD, iPad, iPad HD, Apple TV, Apple TV HD
HTC Droid Incredible, Droid2, Droid Eris, Desire, Hero, Legend, Wildfire, Magic Tattoo, Dream T-Mobile G1, Mytouch 3G, Diamond, HTC HD2, EVO 4G, Android OS, HTC Aria
Motorola Droid, i1, XT720, Milestone, CLIQ, CLIQ XT, DEVOUR, Flipout, BACKFLIP, DEXT, Quench
Nokia N900, X6, X3, 5800 XpressMusic, E63, 5230, E72, N97, N95, N73
BlackBerry Tour series, Storm series, Bold series, Curve 8900, Curve 8500, Curve 8300, Curve 8310, Pearl Flip, Pearl 8800, Pearl 3G, Pearl 8100, Blackberry Torch 9800
Game Hardware PSP, PS3, PS3 HD, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 HD, Wii, NDS
Microsoft Zune Zune, Zune HD
Mobile Phones Nexus one, Samsung i7500, 3GP, 3GP2, Pocket PC, Palm Pre, HP IPAQ, Palm Pixi, Samsung Behold, Samsung Moment, Samsung Galaxy Spica, Sumsang Vibrant, Sumsang Captivate, LG Prime, LG enV touch VX1 1000, LG Xenon GR500, LG KP500, Sony Ericssion XPERIA x10
Archos Archos 7, Archos 5, Archos 605/704/705, Archos 504/604, Archos 404/405, Archos AV500/AV700, Archos 105, Archos Player
Creative ZEN ZEN X-Fi, ZEN X-Fi2, ZEN VPLUS, Creative Version, Creative MX
Sandisk Sansa E200 serise, View, Fuze
Media Players SONY Walkman, Dell Player, iRiver P7, iRiver SPINN, iRiver E100
i ripped all of Battlestar Galactica season 1 from 720p mkv (2GB per episode to around 400 MB per episode)and was amazing quality with this program
heres some programs for you to check out if u want to get into encoding
tsmuxer
mkvtoolnix
avisynth
ripbotx264
StaxRip
AlltoAVI
MP4Box
Gotsent
MEGUI
these are itunes hd settigns and un drmed itunes hd plays flawless on evo
if u encode to these settings depending on source it works perfect on evo
another tip if u buy tv shows on itunes and want to undrm use requiem or tunebite
then just drag and drop onto sd and your set
Code:
Overall bit rate : 4 664 Kbps
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : drmi
Duration : 43mn 40s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 4 116 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.186
Stream size : 1.26 GiB (88%)

use Handbrake to encode it using the Iphone/Ipod Touch presets. It comes out PERFECT every time.

I've found that I can get decent, watchable quality MP4 files with the following Handbrake settings. And by watchable, I mean, just having something to look at while traveling. I won't be routing video out via hdmi.
Picture tab:
Anamorphic - None
Keep aspect ration - checked
Width - 480 (let height take care of itself)
Video tab:
Codec - H.264
Framerate - Same as source
Constant Quality - Drop the slider to 50%
Audio tab:
Sample rate - 44.1
Bitrate - 96
All other tabs and settings remain at their stock defaults.
I'm getting 4Gb DVD .vob files shrunk down to about 250Mb. So there's plenty of room for quite a few full length movies on the SD card.
Using Rockplayer, I don't get any video pauses/ripping or audio skipping at all.

I use format factory to create my H.264 videos and it works great as well. I use these custom settings:
VideoCodec=AVC(H264)
VideoBitrate=768000
Width=720
Height=480
FPS=23.976
AspectRatio=0.000
AudioCodec=AAC
AudioBitrate=160000
SampleRate=44100
Channel=2
Volume=3

I am trying to find the perfect bitrate to filesize ratio. The 768 bitrate single pass encoding gives very good quality when viewed on the Evo. I am going to try to test 640 single pass and 512 2-pass and see how the quality compares. I want to find the lowest bitrate that still looks good on the Evo(no pixelation or blurry images) in order to maximize the disc space. If I am going to be using my Evo for my pmp as well as my phone/internet device/part time game system, I need as much storage space as I can get.

High profile 720p answers.

I'm a new Xoom owner and am for the most part pleased with the device.
My only sore spot is with the inability to play high profile or even main profile h.264 720p videos. Hell it can't even play high or main profile 480p videos without a certain amount of stuttering.
All over the Xoom forums we're hearing everything from "it's impossible because of Tegra 2 limitations" to "it just needs a new codec/video player", and many people saying that the Notion Ink Adam had the same issue, but that it was solved with a firmware update.
What I'm looking for is a straight answer, from someone who both owns a Notion Ink Adam and who knows enough about h.264 to know what high profile means.
Did the Notion Ink Adam receive a FW update that allowed it to play high profile 720p video.
I saw a video of the notion ink adam playing very choppy 720p (the bird scene from Planet Earth) but that video was poorly encoded and an unrealistic benchmark for any mobile device. (9 reference frames? Come on!)

No its laggy at the moment, tried every mkv player out there and everyone had its own issues.. from not starting to locking, to not able to play the file to finally I had one play but it was laggy and overall not enjoyable.

I think software decoding optimized for the tegra is probably the quickest solution for now. I don't think anyone saw android moving onto tablets this quickly or people trying to playing a 2-3 gb files this quickly

Btw I would love to see a PC video player like PowetDVD make a real video player for android

no6969el said:
No its laggy at the moment, tried every mkv player out there and everyone had its own issues.. from not starting to locking, to not able to play the file to finally I had one play but it was laggy and overall not enjoyable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which ROM / NI version were you using?

joshua.lyon said:
Which ROM / NI version were you using?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Utopia beta 1. I didnt do as much testing on stock roms....i saw that video vs the xoom and he was able to do it but i didnt catch what player he was using....he just set it to software decoding mode as mentioned above...
I did get one my files to play with sound but it still was laggy. High def robot chicken episode.

Just tested with the latest build NIA920040311 and the stock VideoPlayer
It plays the following H.264 720p very choppy and no sound:
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Muxing mode : Container [email protected]
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 47mn
Bit rate : 3 913 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 528 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.35:1
Frame rate : 24.000 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.241
Stream size : 2.93 GiB (88%)
Language : English
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 1h 47mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 344 MiB (10%)

i played a 720p mpeg4 file from my usb 500gb hard drive and it played fine using stock video player

Can anyone read mkv files here? :-$
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

div3r5ity said:
i played a 720p mpeg4 file from my usb 500gb hard drive and it played fine using stock video player
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you check with MediaInfo and post details of the media format?

If you change the extension of the file from .mkv to .avi you can see the video, but as said above the decoder to mkv is not properly optimized.

No rename is required, the stock video player read .mkv but I am not sure if it use software or hardware mode to play it. It's like slow motion and without sound for a 720p h.264 L3.1 High Profile 4000Kbps video.

Dr.Preston said:
I'm a new Xoom owner and am for the most part pleased with the device.
My only sore spot is with the inability to play high profile or even main profile h.264 720p videos. Hell it can't even play high or main profile 480p videos without a certain amount of stuttering.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure about the Xoom... a buddy of mine on a video forum (Creative Cow) has a Xoom, and found it was ok with base profile 720/30p at 3Mb/s or less, but started choking much beyond that. I've only had my Adam since Friday, but grabbed a bit of handy video to test it out myself. From a plain old USB stick, the Adam did a 720/[email protected]/s file perfectly, both MP4/AVC and WMV9. I tried another file I had around, 720/[email protected]/s, but it only played at 30fps... thus, slow motion.
Dr.Preston said:
All over the Xoom forums we're hearing everything from "it's impossible because of Tegra 2 limitations" to "it just needs a new codec/video player", and many people saying that the Notion Ink Adam had the same issue, but that it was solved with a firmware update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No question the Xoom seems to have some issues, and some of that could be the incompleteness of Honeycomb fine-tuning. Given that the problems I had heard previously were seen with fairly low bitrate 720p, I would at least check the speed on your Xoom's memory (internal?). Shouldn't be an issue... SD Tools benchmarked the Adam's internal "SD Drive" at 160MB/s-200MB/s reads (10MB/s writes). Android 2.2 is still unsophisticated about devices at the GUI level -- cannot yet point the same benchmark at external flash or USB. Probably not an issue, but worth eliminating as one.
Dr.Preston said:
What I'm looking for is a straight answer, from someone who both owns a Notion Ink Adam and who knows enough about h.264 to know what high profile means.
Did the Notion Ink Adam receive a FW update that allowed it to play high profile 720p video.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I made a bunch of AVC files. All come from an original AVCHD track, 1080/24p, 24Mb/s, shot on a Panasonic HMC40 camcorder. All rendering using the Sony Vegas 10 and the Sony AVC CODEC.
I rendered 720p and 1080p files, put them on a USB stick, and played them on my Adam. None of the 1080p stuff played perfectly on the Adam.... 1080/24p baseline at at 4Mb/s was just a bit off. All of the 720/24p videos did just dandy at 4Mb/s, even the High profile. Going to higher bitrates, I have some 720/24p baseline holding together at 6Mb/s, some lagging behind the audio -- sure looks like the player (NI player, Android default, and the ES File Explorer video player work identically -- they're all accessing the same OS components) doesn't drop frames when it can't keep up. So the audio walks away from the video. It gets worse at higher bitrates... presumably, more frames are not staying in sync.
So it looks jittery... just a little off from being "real". I'll wager most people would be completely happy with 6Mb/s, or even the 4Mb/s 1080p baseline, if the player did a proper job of staying in sync... you don't notice the occasional dropped frame, but at least if you're a musician, you'll be bothered by audio being off even a few milliseconds. Didn't help that my subject was my friend Pat playing guitar... pretty obvious when mouth and fingers don't match the sound... and when the sound ends, but video keeps going (the files are, of course, in sync on the PC). I started with a USB stick, but got the same results on the "external" SD Card, which on my system is a 32GB Class 10 card, plenty fast enough for this.
So I think a properly encoded 720/24-30p video at 4Mb/s or so is the sweet spot for today's Adam, and in theory other Tegra2 systems. You might manage a bit higher bitrate, but not too much. If they fix the player with a proper frame drop trick play function, higher bitrate video would probably look just dandy, even if it's dropping the occasional frame to stay in sync.

I wonder if Tegra2 processor is fast enough to decode 720p high profile in software. It's a two core 1Ghz processor - I remember that my Duron 1000 was almost certainly not able to decode h264 but Athlon 1400Mhz (one core) was close if I remember correctly. ARMs are probably much slower than Athlons but in decoding videos the difference shouldn't count as much (because it's probably straight forward computing without many conditional instructions)...

My Blu-Ray Ripper Reveiws

My Blu-Ray Ripper Reveiws
Okay so I spent hours playing with different options for ripping blu-rays into a format that could be transferred to my Xoom and I would like to share what I have learned.
The Rippers
I started with some research and downloaded six or seven different programs designed for ripping blu-rays that were recommended some where on the web.
I almost immediately discarded all but three rippers. Two were immediately ruled out after just examining the UI and noticing the lack of customization options. Another three were ruled out based on the fact they required a separate program called AnyDVD to run at all. This didn't bother me too much but further investigation found that AnyDVD costs $60+ in itself and does not offer the most user friendly experience.
It's also worth noting I did not try out the beta of DVD Catalyst because it also requires AnyDVD or a similar program running in unison both of which would be added cost and added hassle. If your only looking to rip DVDs then DVD Catalyst for only $10 is the way to go from what I hear.
What I ended up with were three blu-ray ripping trials.
DVDFab Blu-ray Ripper - $60
Pavtube Blu-Ray Ripper - $49
Aunsoft Blu-Ray Ripper - $49
At first glance Pavtube and Aunsoft seemed almost identical in UI but they performed very different.
Customization
DVDFab was the first ripper I tried and I was very disappointed with the lack of control when ripping the blu-rays. There were nine different profiles to choose from when selecting .mp4 output format. Five of which had either 'ipad' or 'iphone' in the name and had very low max resolution outputs. In the end the only profile that was workable was the basic profile for h264 and for some reason did not support 1920x1080 resolution.
Pavtube and Aunsoft had, like I mentioned, identical UIs and actually shared identical customization options. In addition to having many more built in profiles for everything from different Android phones and IPhones to gaming consoles and even power points, it also had basic profiles for common video formats.
Where both Pavtube and Aunsoft set themselves apart from DVDFab was in the customization of these profiles. While DVDFab attempted to give me control of resolution, frame rate, bit rate, and audio, Pavtube and Aunsoft actually allowed me to change these to an assortment of options including 1920x1080 at multiple frame rates.
Testing
In order to get a good base line of these programs I popped in Avatar on blu-ray into my blu-ray rom and selected a chapter to use as testing so I didn't need to rip the entire movie every time.
From here on you will see me post settings in the form:
Codec: [codec used, file type always .mp4]
Resolution: [resolution]
Bit Rate: [bit rate]
Size: [file size generated]
Speed: [time it took to rip, in minutes]
In DVDFab I was only able to make one good base test due to the lack of customization. I set the settings to:
Codec: h264
Resolution: 1680x946
Bit Rate: 5000
Size: 130mb
Speed: 9:33
This test led me to believe that DVDFab was a possibility because the picture looked phenomenal with good 3d depth and very little artifacting around moving objects. The problem was that it was laggy. It took 10-15 seconds for what appeared to be buffering before the clip would smooth out and then I would get bullet lag quiet often.
I was confident this would be improved if I played with the settings but found that quality had to really be reduced in order for the clip to smooth out.
DVDFab was essentially ruled out.
I then put together some test batches for both Pavtube and Aunsoft. I chose to go with four different profiles for each program. h264 with HD standards, h264 base standards, MPEG 4 (xvid) with HD standards, and MPEG 4 (xvid) with base standards. These were the final settings and results:
Note: The chapter I chose was 3:34 long and my computer is using an Nvidia GTX 570 paired with an Intel E6750 2.66GHz dual core processor. You can use this information to judge the speed it took to rip these files. CUDA acceleration was on for all but the first video, CUDA is an Nvidia technology that speeds up the encoding and decoding of h264 files which is the reason the h264 files were significantly faster than the xvid files.
PavTube
4 files
Codec: h264 HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 230mb
Speed: 12:57 (CUDA acceleration was off)
Codec: MPEG(xvid) HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:40
Codec: h264
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 232mb
Speed: 3:20
Codec: MPEG(xvid)
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:40
Aunsoft
4 files
Codec: h264 HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 232mb
Speed: 3:19
Codec: MPEG(xvid) HD
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:40
Codec: h264
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 9000
Size: 232mb
Speed: 3:20
Codec: MPEG(xvid)
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bit Rate: 12000
Size: 307mb
Speed: 8:47
As you can see the file sizes and speeds were almost identical between Aunsoft and Pavtube. Except of course for the first one where I forgot to turn CUDA acceleration on for the ripping.
Quality
Now here is where it got difficult. I know right off the bat people would ask me why I even tried the xvid codecs and instead just accepted that h264 would be the better codec. But I actually found the quality of the xvid looked better than the h264. After watching these clips over and over again both on the Xoom and hooked up to my HD TV, I settled on either the h264 with the HD standard and the xvid with the base line standards. Don't ask me why these two because I couldn't tell ya.
I like to think I have a pretty good eye for video quality, I currently sell HD TVs and can see the difference between 100k contrast and 120k contrast if that gives me any sort of justificaton.
I eventually agreed (with my girlfriend who was helping me judge) that the MPEG 4 with the xvid codec ripped by Pavtube was the best quality of the bunch. The colors were much more vibrant on my 42 inch plasma while the edges of moving objects were not blurred at all.
Results
What was important to me:
Quality of the Video
Compatibility with the Xoom
Usability of the program
What was not important to me:
Time to rip (I'm happy doing one movie overnight every night if need be)
Size - to an extent (quality is more important)
After reviewing every aspect of these programs that was important to me I can honestly say that Pavtube gave the best quality and also the best user experience. The reason it beat out Aunsoft is the fact that Aunsoft would convert some of my videos (the ones with the HD standards) to a 4:3 aspect ratio and also four tests made by Aunsoft failed to load on the Xoom while only one Pavtube test failed to load.
So I will now begin ripping my entire blu-ray collection into MPEG 4 formats at 12000 bit rate. But note at these settings your probably looking at 10GBs per movie so these settings are for people who share what is and isn't important for me. Even if this is not what your looking for I would still recommend Pavtube as the ripper of choice but instead of the xvid codec at 12000 bit rate I would go with the h264 codec at 9000 bit rate because you won't sacrifice clarity, just color.
Tips
If you are looking to test video quality for yourself look for a chapter when under Title Mode (on the Pavtube UI) that is rather short but has a good display of colorful moving objects and rip that chapter into different formats and settings.
When ripping the full movie switch the UI to File Mode and rip only the main file. The reason I recommend switching to File Mode is because if you rip both the title and all the chapters under Title Mode it will actually rip the movie twice. If you read my previous edits you will have seen how this doubled my file size.
Manually set the frame rate to what your looking for, I recommend matching the source. But do not use original frame rate when ripping the full movie, for me it got it wrong and played my movie in what appeared to be fast forward.
Epilogue
I need to note that I'm in no way affiliated with any of the above programs and did this testing because I couldn't find any reviews that were not sponsored by the programs themselves.
I'm entirely new to compression and ripping so this was a learning experience for me and hope that my terminology and assumptions of how the process works is accurate.
As a CS major I'm looking to get familiar with technical writing and I hope this review was readable, informative, and to the point.
Everything above is simply my opinions based on the time I spent with these programs