Database Users

Playing Divx/Xvid and Mkvs on Tmo Tab

I can barely play any codecs on my tmobile tab. Is it suppose to play Divx or xvid out the box? or do different carriers' tabs have different video codecs?
Also is there a stock video player app installed or can you only play out of the Gallery app?
I've already tried rockplayer and vplayer, both have video and audio lag for divx 720i videos.
ANd if other carriers tabs have more codecs can i install thme in my tmo tab?

The Tab plays more video out of the box than any other Android (or Apple) device I've ever used, and I've used most.
Now if you're trying to play videos you've (ahem) gathered from around the net, you will certainly find some that won't play properly. "Found" videos can have a truly phenomenal combination of audio codecs, video codecs, and bitrates, any of which might prevent proper playback.
While you cannot directly add codecs to Android (as yet), there are third party video players that will handle just about anything.
Rockplayer is one of these third party players. While it will play nearly anything thrown at it, it's not hardware accelerated (doesn't use the GPU) so it is largely limited to lower bitrate, standard definition videos.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/rockplayer-universal/com.redirectin.rockplayer.android.unified

if you actually read all that I posted you will see that i have tried RockPlayer.
And trust me I know enough about video codec, bitrates, and depths (Visual Effects/Graphics Artist) to tell you that I'm trying basic Divx and Xvid codec at a decent to low Bitrate and they are not working on Stock Video player and will not run smooth enough on rockplayer do to lack of graphic acceleration.
ALso, No the Samsung tab is not the Leader of COdec in the ANdroid Tablet market. The ARchos tablets (70,101 etc) lead in stock codecs by far (I own both a samsung tab and a 101).
Thanks... I guess

The only codec that is accelerated is h.264 in any container. So, mp4 and mkv work fine even at 1080p resolution.
If you encode your movies in h.264 and set Rockplayer to use hardware decoding mode down low in the settings, you'll have no problem viewing it.
Sent from my GT-P1000 using XDA App

synplex said:
ALso, No the Samsung tab is not the Leader of COdec in the ANdroid Tablet market. The ARchos tablets (70,101 etc) lead in stock codecs by far (I own both a samsung tab and a 101).
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Click to collapse
It's true that the Archos can play a lot of video formats, but I don't put it in the same category as other top Android devices because it's so lacking in other areas.
Sorry I just perused your previous post, but I've truly had very few problems in playing video on the Tab, even with "found" videos.
In fully reading your post, my question to you would be, Why Divx? If you're encoding video specifically for use on the Tab, why not encode to h264?

I have the Sprint SGT, and I have zero problems with 720 mkv and avi files, regardless of who encoded them. The stock player renders them as smooth as silk. It also has a 5.1 mobile mode for AC3 audio tracks. And the control lock means I can wipe fingerprints off the screen off with my shirt without disturbing playback. My only complaint with the player is the lack of a skip button.
I have read other complaints from other SGT users about poor or stuttery playback, and I'm quite baffled. The only file that would play were 720p mov files. Other than that, I've had zero problems.
Rockplayer was awesome on the Evo, but its useless for me on the SGT. Its now useless for me on the Evo, but thats because I don't even bother watching videos on the Evo anymore.
Wait... I did encounter one problem. I downloaded the newest version of mkvmerge to split mkv files into <2GB parts, and those files will not play on the SGT. But I mostly watch TV and those files top out at 1.5 GB. But xvid avi is no problem. Dunno about divx for sure, I never really use it.

well i have problems with sound playing 1080p BRRip H264 AAC-.mp4 files i get no sound,does anyone know why?

Is this your own rip or did you... uh... find it laying around?

Thank you all for the replies.
Im using Divx and Xvid because those are the native file formats I'm downloading from a sever/email at work on to my SGT on the go. If I could I would convert to mp4 or h264. Is there a android video converter app that can do did?
Yes I heard that the Sprint SGT can play Divx and some MKV out the box (my friend has one), why is that? Different native video player? If so can I get it extracted for my Tmobile Tab?
ALso I never said Archos are on the top on android Tablet List, I was pointing out that they have Much more codecs out the box "Leaders in Codecs out-the-box"
Lastly Rockplayer is studding on me, giving me about 20-25fps when my video files are 30fps. Also audio sometimes lags on Divx and mkv files.
What is the latest version Rockplayer app out there or is there a better video app for SGT??

Have you tried VPlayer??? I prefer it over Rockplayer

synplex said:
Yes I heard that the Sprint SGT can play Divx and some MKV out the box (my friend has one), why is that? Different native video player? If so can I get it extracted for my Tmobile Tab?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very interesting. I do have the Sprint Tab, perhaps that's why it plays almost everything I throw at it.
I'd never considered that different versions of the Tab would have such a major difference in codec support. I'd figured Samsung was responsible for paying the licensing fees for the various included codecs. Looking at the reality of these significant codec differences, it makes me wonder if the codec licensing fees aren't instead forced on the carriers themselves. That's the only reason I can fathom to explain the codec differences.
The Sprint ROM's are online here. My guess is that you could certainly pull the necessary files out of the Sprint rom and run them on your device. That said, I've absolutely no idea how the codecs are packaged and which files and libraries you'd need.

my tmo tab being a gsm device might not play nice with a sprint rom. And I have no idea how to take apart a rom or how to add codec to mine tab.
Anyone have any other options?
Also I have tried v player and same result as rock player

So far my tab has played all my video files with out a problem, (mostly .mkv animes) i have to use mkv sub extactor (from the market) to get subtitles to work. Rockplayer would go out of sync after 5mins of 720p .mkv

RockPlayer can play h.264 720p MKV videos using hardware acceleration as long as they don't have DTS audio (as many do when they are real BluRay rips). If you play TV rips they generally work since they are not using DTS. Dolby audio might work in HW mode as well, I am not sure.
You can play DTS audio though, but only in software mode . But the processor in the SGT cannot keep up with both DTS and h.264 in 720p. I think it might manage 480p with DTS though.

synplex said:
my tmo tab being a gsm device might not play nice with a sprint rom. And I have no idea how to take apart a rom or how to add codec to mine tab.
Anyone have any other options?
Also I have tried v player and same result as rock player
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From what I've read, most incompatibilities between GSM and CDMA versions of the Tab have to do with communications related apps, limitations that should have no impact on the video app.
I would think it's extremely likely that the Sprint video app and/or codecs would run flawlessly on other versions of the Tab. Ripping apps from ROM's and deodexing them is not my forte, but there are many in the developer forums who are very experienced in that sort of thing.

I use mVideoPlayer. It plays everything I throw at it.
Galaxy Tab

zozodouce said:
well i have problems with sound playing 1080p BRRip H264 AAC-.mp4 files i get no sound,does anyone know why?
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Click to collapse
Probably because it's a 1080p H264 file and you're trying to play it on a device with a 1Ghz processor, and no hardware acceleration for video playback. It can't cope.

Geletis said:
From what I've read, most incompatibilities between GSM and CDMA versions of the Tab have to do with communications related apps, limitations that should have no impact on the video app.
I would think it's extremely likely that the Sprint video app and/or codecs would run flawlessly on other versions of the Tab. Ripping apps from ROM's and deodexing them is not my forte, but there are many in the developer forums who are very experienced in that sort of thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
....Anyone?

Filgaliel said:
I use mVideoPlayer. It plays everything I throw at it.
Galaxy Tab
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If you read the app detail for mVideoPlayer, it only play videos/codecs your phone/tablet can already play. It doesn't add anything or help at all. It's just a skin that takes up app space.
...thanks anyway

Hanson68 said:
Is this your own rip or did you... uh... find it laying around?
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downloaded from the net.

Does RockPlayer & mkv work on the Xoom?

Anyone tried the RockPlayer app on Honeycomb?
That's one of the reasons why I got one, watching my .mkv movies without have to transcode them.
RockPlayer + mkv works PERFECT on my Evo, loved it so much, I paid $10 to buy the app!
*which is still cheaper than a movie ticket where i live

Yes...
I've tried MKV and Rock but no luck. I get video flawlessly but no audio. If I get audio it's really low voice (kind of like a bad kid napping movie calling the police type )
Sadly I think we need to convert video files to an exact format/type.
At least that's what I've gathered.

Neo3D said:
Anyone tried the RockPlayer app on Honeycomb?
That's one of the reasons why I got one, watching my .mkv movies without have to transcode them.
RockPlayer + mkv works PERFECT on my Evo, loved it so much, I paid $10 to buy the app!
*which is still cheaper than a movie ticket where i live
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you search the forum you will see about 1 million post about this. Xoom and rockplayer work just fine. That being said, some people can get files to play, others can't.

bwcorvus said:
If you search the forum you will see about 1 million post about this. Xoom and rockplayer work just fine. That being said, some people can get files to play, others can't.
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Sorry, I did a search and there were no posts about Xoom and RockPlayer. Plenty of posts about RockPlayer working on GTab and other devices tho.
But it's good to know that it works fine!

rockplayer isnt optimzed for tegra yet but it does work. Not sure if theres any apps that are programed to use 2 cores

Unfortunately it's still file specific. Overall MKV's and high quality mp4's are struggling even with Rockplayer, vPlayer, etc...but certain mkv files and mp4's with specific encoding are working. we need to keep our fingers crossed for software patches fixing these issues.

u guys should try Vplayer. see if that works. I dont have a xoom yet but usually when rock player gives me problems with movie files on my phone. Vplayer always plays it perfect.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Scoop24 said:
u guys should try Vplayer. see if that works. I dont have a xoom yet but usually when rock player gives me problems with movie files on my phone. Vplayer always plays it perfect.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
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Click to collapse
Tried vplayer, qqplayer, rockplayer. No love.

Its a Tegra 2 issue. It is unable to decode high profile h.264 video, which almost ALL mkv files and h.265 video is due to its superior compression. It can only decode baseline profile h.264. I am unsure if it can decode high profile 720p video, but I wouldn't bet on it. Basically, the Tegra 2 is awful for media playback compatibility, and no one seems to be prodding Nvidia or mentioning it at all in the media.

In a different thread there is a bit different info about this issue (quite depperesing I have to say):
muyoso said:
If it was an audio issue the audio simply wouldn't play. There is a reason that Boxee dumped the Tegra 2.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/13/boxee-box-ditches-nvidias-tegra-2-for-intel-ce4100-pre-orders/
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Click to collapse

galtom said:
In a different thread there is a bit different info about this issue (quite depperesing I have to say):
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be fair, I don't have a Xoom to test media on, so I am just going by reports from other people/outlets. I am amazed that a bigger deal hasn't been made about this glaring flaw though in the tech blogs.

Same here. This should be shouted loud and clear! Watching movies is one of the first thing 99% of ppl will want to do on the very first evening...
If I would find out that I just spent $800 on something that will not it (ever) + has a lot of other thing "coming soon" I would be.... upset (and back to shop next morning).
Lets face it... just for mobile web browsing without flash there are cheaper devices... (much cheaper).

With the rockplayer I had no probs with MKV. It would play divx avi, but no audio. It would not play H.264 mp4.
The honeycomb player had no problems with mp4

muyoso said:
Its a Tegra 2 issue. It is unable to decode high profile h.264 video, which almost ALL mkv files and h.265 video is due to its superior compression. It can only decode baseline profile h.264. I am unsure if it can decode high profile 720p video, but I wouldn't bet on it. Basically, the Tegra 2 is awful for media playback compatibility, and no one seems to be prodding Nvidia or mentioning it at all in the media.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Tegra 2 CANNOT play HIGH PROFILE 1080p - it CAN however play ANYTHING lower - this includes 1080p low and medium profile AND all 720p profiles.
The problems that people are having are due to CODECS and nothing more..

CODECS CODECS CODECS
It's always about the CODECS...

[Q] Local HD Playback and Clear.Fi

I'm still entertaining picking this up instead of the Asus Transformer but I saw two things recently on a video that discouraged me.
1) Local HD Video
I've heard MoboPlayer can tackle most formats so that helps a bit, but what is HD playback like on the device? Does it stutter? Does it have a hard time playing anything 720P or perhaps just 1080P.
For some reason, the lady had a really hard time playing 1080P on this thing.
2) Clear.Fi
I haven't seen a review that actually covered this feature. This is so important to me. I sold my iPad because I wasn't happy with it. I loved Cydia and having XBMC on it though because I could pretty much watch anything.
I was hoping Clear.Fi was going to make me forget about XBMC but I haven't seen any videos on Youtube or heard people discuss Clear.Fi too well.
What's your experience been like? Do you have problems streaming specific types of files? Does it convert on the fly or does it only stream specific file types?

I'm still considering buying the A500, one of the points I had noticed was a statement from Acer that 1080p playback on the device will be available via a future update. If I recall it's due June/July

Thanks. I appreciate the heads up.

to OP.....Yes no one has touched base on the clear.fi features but from my experience just mp4 files.......and it streams over your wifi network so there isn't any converting on the fly since it only plays mp4's but it will see avi's and wmv's but will not play it ....it says cannot play format unknown hopefully when rom developement progress may some how we would be able to watch other formats like video codec installs but it kinda sucks because all my vids need to be converted to work which is sad lol

cmdpapichulo said:
to OP.....Yes no one has touched base on the clear.fi features but from my experience just mp4 files.......and it streams over your wifi network so there isn't any converting on the fly since it only plays mp4's but it will see avi's and wmv's but will not play it ....it says cannot play format unknown hopefully when rom developement progress may some how we would be able to watch other formats like video codec installs but it kinda sucks because all my vids need to be converted to work which is sad lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here, and I am NOT coverting 3tb's of TV shows and movies. Not gonna happen.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App

Have you guys tried streaming with the help of a File Explorer and a video player like MoboPlayer.
I remember I was able to use the File Explorer on the Gtab to find videos on the network and then watch them with my choice of app.

Clear.fi is just a transport as far as I know. In essence, it's an app like upnp that sees shared compatible media across your network. It then allows you to use a media player on the device to view the file.
So for example, if you have Windows 7, media sharing enabled and put videos into your Windows 7 Video library, music in your Music library and Photos in your Pictures library, clear.fi will detect it all over your wifi network.
Because of this, I don't think it has any hard limits as far as what clear.fi will play as it depends 100% on what your tablet hardware and software will play. For now, that's just mp4s using a certain profile when it comes to videos. Some mkvs will play too as those are just wrappers. I've also seen a thread where someone has claimed to play some realplayer files I think. I myself have played mp4s that are smooth as silk in both 480 and 720p and I have had others that were extremely jerky. This has to do with profiles which I don't have the details on. I can tell you what I THINK it means, which is that mp4s come in several "parts" and that the newest one which compresses the most data is referred to as h264 which the device can't seem to play well at all. I converted a 720p movie and left everything in tact except for specifying the resolution needing to be up to 1280x800 and for it to be in MP4 format and it played flawlessly. I use a program called Freemake. I haven't attempted to convert any 1080p.
I have an intel quad core 6600 with 8GB of RAM and that took 40m so there's no way I'm converting my entire library however it's no problem converting a few movies and maybe a season or 2 of TV in prep to hit a roadtrip or do some sort of travel. I also have an Amazon Prime and Crunchyroll membership so I don't even really need to do any of this.
This isn't a brand limitation afaik, it is due to Honeycomb and Tegra 2. We know Tegra 2's hardware can support a myriad of formats, but we don't know if Nvidia has released a full Honeycomb dev kit yet and since Honeycomb isn't open like Froyo and GB, I'm not sure if it will be indicated on Nvidias site when it is released - for all we know it's already in the various tablet manuf. hands so we just have to be patient. So far the promises for updates in June by both Acer and Asus have me hoping that the 1080p upgrade is a sign of more supported formats and some fixes as well.

Yeah I've been having major problems getting HD files to play at all- converted 480p movie to mp4 had no problems, but can't get the same converter app to spit out a 720p to mp4 file except in mkv container format. Keeps insisting on 4:3 ratio on mp4 files. Once I get it figured out (if I do lol) I'll post the app & settings

Every Tegra2 device has problems with 1080p, 720p and anything encoded with h264 with main profile and high profile (so with almost any HD video out there). So it's a problem on A500 but also on Xoom, Trasnformer and other tablets too unfortunately.

Magnesus said:
Every Tegra2 device has problems with 1080p, 720p and anything encoded with h264 with main profile and high profile (so with almost any HD video out there). So it's a problem on A500 but also on Xoom, Trasnformer and other tablets too unfortunately.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not every Tegra 2 device, every Tegra 2 device with Honeycomb.
Tegra 2 has been out since last year and a number of the ones shipped with Android 2.2 don't have an issue playing HD video in any format. For example, this is what the GTablet by Viewsonic supported:
S1080p H.264/H.263/ VC-1/MPEG-2/4/WMV9/DiVX 4/5 Video Decode
1080p H.264/MPEG-4 Video Encode
Supports multi-standard audio formats, including AAC, AMR, WMA, and MP3
Mind you, I don't know if the native resolution has anything to do with it as that has a 1024x600 resolution, I do know that it played 95% more files than my Iconia does.

Do you reckon the stuttering will be fixed with an update, and when do they usually come out?

I have been doing this to help stream content and it works like a charm.
1. Download UPNPlay from the market
2. Download Rock player from their web site (the one optimized for the tegra 2)
UPNPlay detects your server and will allow you to browse your contents and will play the video with Rock player. since Rock player supports a slew of codecs you should never have a problem playing anything. I even threw a .OGG file at it and the tablet played it with no problem. Also note that the quality (lag) of streaming HD content depends primarily on your home network.
The Clear.fi app sucks...
Enjoy streaming your content.

b1urr said:
I have been doing this to help stream content and it works like a charm.
1. Download UPNPlay from the market
2. Download Rock player from their web site (the one optimized for the tegra 2)
UPNPlay detects your server and will allow you to browse your contents and will play the video with Rock player. since Rock player supports a slew of codecs you should never have a problem playing anything. I even threw a .OGG file at it and the tablet played it with no problem. Also note that the quality (lag) of streaming HD content depends primarily on your home network.
The Clear.fi app sucks...
Enjoy streaming your content.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man. You saved me $5. I was about to buy PLEX because that would take care of most format issues but I'll try this first. Appreciate it!!!
* Just tried it. Worked like a charm. I enjoy being able to pick from all the video players I've got installed but everything on my server is playing easily! Thanks again.

b1urr said:
I have been doing this to help stream content and it works like a charm.
1. Download UPNPlay from the market
2. Download Rock player from their web site (the one optimized for the tegra 2)
UPNPlay detects your server and will allow you to browse your contents and will play the video with Rock player. since Rock player supports a slew of codecs you should never have a problem playing anything. I even threw a .OGG file at it and the tablet played it with no problem. Also note that the quality (lag) of streaming HD content depends primarily on your home network.
The Clear.fi app sucks...
Enjoy streaming your content.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You still cant play mkv h.264 right? From what I have read on xoom and gtab forum its a hardware issue and not software.

shep211 said:
You still cant play mkv h.264 right? From what I have read on xoom and gtab forum its a hardware issue and not software.
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Click to collapse
Yeah I play mkv with no problem using this method. The problem is with honeycomb not with the hardware. Try it out and let me know if it works. Its been working for me.

I would agree on clear.fi sucking. I've been using Skifta with the standard WMP12 media sharing in W7 and it works great.

b1urr said:
Yeah I play mkv with no problem using this method. The problem is with honeycomb not with the hardware. Try it out and let me know if it works. Its been working for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its a hardware issue and every tegra 2 device has this issue. You source is not hd 720p if you can play it. Tegra 2 can only play substandard H.264 baseline profile videos and its still choppy. Most people are using MPEG4 to get reliable play back with tegra 2. Read any of the xoom & Toshiba tab forums.

shep211 said:
Its a hardware issue and every tegra 2 device has this issue. You source is not hd 720p if you can play it. Tegra 2 can only play substandard H.264 baseline profile videos and its still choppy. Most people are using MPEG4 to get reliable play back with tegra 2. Read any of the xoom & Toshiba tab forums.
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Click to collapse
I actually went to edit the post about it not being a hardware issue as soon as I posted it but couldn't because I had to wait due to me being new to the forum. I didn't have the proper information to make such a claim... Either way I have not ran across a video that I wanted to watch that I couldn't. I have been mostly watching anime on it (hi rez MKV) but I will try out an hd movie when I get home and report back.

so is it a hardware or software is that the device can't play back movies smoothly and can it be fixed?

ok so I checked out a few movies yesterday. All movies were in HD. 50% played fine while the other 50% played but with so really bad hiccups. The files I had less issues with were MKV that were displayed at 720 and were a smaller file size (probably not true 720P). 1080 video murdered the tablet lol. I have had 0 problem playing HD anime but again they are smaller file sizes. This method will play all non hd video without a hitch. Hopefully this issue is fixed shortly in the next update but that is me just being hopeful.

[Q] Chances for better hardware-accelerated media playing?

Hi Iconia-Lovers,
I really love my Tab for web-browsing and gaming, but you have to admit it sucks at video playing. MP4 and 3GP are crappy formats that are hardly used in RL und converting your whole video and movie collection isn't a real option.
I had have an Archos A70 which plays even 1080p MKV flawless with a single core 1GHZ CPU, but relies on an additional decoding chip if i get this right.
In theory, the Tegra 2 has more than enough power to play 1080p files, right?
I already tried like 6 different media players but all of them weren't able to play 720p mkvs nice and even non-HD-avi-files felt a little slowed-down.
So can we hope for a hardware-accelerated media player that enables alle the joy of moving pictures for us? Will possibly acer itself help us out on this issue? What are Samsung and Motorola doing on their Gingerbread tablets to enable nice media playing?
Hoping for a better tomorrow
Cheers
pint

pintness said:
Hi Iconia-Lovers,
I had have an Archos A70 which plays even 1080p MKV flawless with a single core 1GHZ CPU, but relies on an additional decoding chip if i get this right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you sure about that?? my 101 throws a fit with 1080p mkv videos and both use the the firmware.
but i agree, i would love better video support on the iconia, since it runs circles around my archos when it comes to everything else.

pintness said:
Hi Iconia-Lovers,
I really love my Tab for web-browsing and gaming, but you have to admit it sucks at video playing. MP4 and 3GP are crappy formats that are hardly used in RL und converting your whole video and movie collection isn't a real option.
I had have an Archos A70 which plays even 1080p MKV flawless with a single core 1GHZ CPU, but relies on an additional decoding chip if i get this right.
In theory, the Tegra 2 has more than enough power to play 1080p files, right?
I already tried like 6 different media players but all of them weren't able to play 720p mkvs nice and even non-HD-avi-files felt a little slowed-down.
So can we hope for a hardware-accelerated media player that enables alle the joy of moving pictures for us? Will possibly acer itself help us out on this issue? What are Samsung and Motorola doing on their Gingerbread tablets to enable nice media playing?
Hoping for a better tomorrow
Cheers
pint
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried VPlayer? it costs like $4/ £2.30 but it can play practically all standards, not sure how it fares for 1080p tho.
I had it playing .avi and .mkv fine though.
Vplayer--
Video formats: divx/xvid, wmv, m4v, flv, rmvb, avi, mkv, mov, mp4, 3gp, ts, tp...
Streaming: http, rtsp, mms and m3u(apple http stream, m3u8)

I use UPnPlay (network streaming) along with MoboPlayer and it has played everything i have on my NAS very well.

Also I know Rockplayer gives you the option of hardware/software decoding so you may want to give that a try if you haven't already. There is a free version.

Both moboplayer and rock player are useless for my 720p and 1080p videos... total stutterfest, but that's a known thing for tegra devices on 3.0...
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk

godashram said:
Both moboplayer and rock player are useless for my 720p and 1080p videos... total stutterfest, but that's a known thing for tegra devices on 3.0...
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk
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Hmmm... I use moboplayer, and every 720 did I've tried has been great! I haven't tried any 1080p vids though.

tested 1080 quality....the videos lag and the audio missing....
hope acer will figure it out....

Avatar & 10,000 B.C. in 1080P using UPnPlay & MoboPlayer streamed from my WD NAS, looks great. No lagging at all.

not another one of these threads..

edgie168 said:
not another one of these threads..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess what? You aren't being forced to read this thread.

lord_voldemort666 said:
Guess what? You aren't being forced to read this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess what? It pushes down other, more quality threads.
Guess what? There's already something like 6 or 7 threads EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE already.
Guess what? People need to learn to use the search function.
Guess what? Guess what? Guess what?

^ If you don't like it, report it to a mod and move on...

edgie168 said:
Guess what? It pushes down other, more quality threads.
Guess what? There's already something like 6 or 7 threads EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE already.
Guess what? People need to learn to use the search function.
Guess what? Guess what? Guess what?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess what? You've just caused this thread to get bumped several times.
XP

I have been trying all the suggested encoders to get smooth playback for film material as 60/50hz works fine. I maybe more sensative to it than others as I tent to look for it on moving objects. But I got it to replace a media player too.
I tried the script posted in another thread with good results but the jump is still there.
Bought DVD Catalist 4 with same results.
Freemake with custom profile same again.
Handbreak I find too slow but I read it works but can't verify it.
Any Video Converter Pro with xoom profile WORKS - it has very little judder but having to strip the subtitles out of the MKV every time is a real pain ( Anyone know how to disable them ) and it's too expensive anyway.
Trying to edit DVD Catalist 4 profile now but no success yet
Oh and I tried Vplayer , Rockplayer , Moboplayer and any others I could find
Hope my two weeks at this helps somone else out.

@RaveOn911
With any problem, you need to find its parameters. Only a handful of people notice the "micro-stutter" deal, so it's either a user sensitivity issue, or a tablet-centric issue (which could be hardware or software, user-caused or device defect).
Ask somebody to watch a video clip on your tablet, and ask them if they see anything wrong with playback. Don't tell him beforehand about "micro-stutter", as you don't want to bias his observation.
If he notices the stutter, it's your tablet. If he doesn't, it's you.
If the first, then bring a video clip on a uSD card into a store and try it on other tablets (hopefully with same or similar make as yours). If it doesn't happen on other tabs, then replace your tab. If it happens on every other tab, then again it's you.
If you have heightened sensitivity, then there may be params that can alleviate the issue. The default interleave for MP4Box is 0.5s. You can reduce this interleave, eg
MP4Box -inter 250 -add infile.mp4 -new outfile.mp4
(or)
MP4Box -tight -add infile.mp4 -new outfile.mp4
MP4Box works on MP4 only. Given that MKVs can only play in software mode currently on Teg2 tabs, it's a fool's errand to play MKV and claim that they don't play smoothly. Avail of the native support.

Mobo Player plays my mkv and xvid/divx AVI's just fine. I'm no codec/encoding expert, but from what I've read it's worth re-encoding some of the files to a more manageable bitrate for both audio and video and maybe dump the 5.1 or AC3 audio. I haven't looked at every file I've played, but a couple that would choke on my Win7 Asus netbook, I re-encoded with Handbrake. They still look and sound great.

e.mote said:
Given that MKVs can only play in software mode currently
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Click to collapse
I understood that that's the whole point the OP was trying to make: he wishes that someone makes a video player application that can handle MKVs via the hardware decoder. It's not a bad thing to wish for, either; it would provide better performance and hardware playback uses less battery, too.
The question remains: is it possible? As far as I know, the chip itself doesn't get relayed anything more than the actual video stream inside the file, regardless of the container, and thus an app should be able to do exactly that. But since I don't know anything about Android internals are applications given any such access?
My N900 phone uses regular GStreamer stack and thus you can demux anything you want and supply the video stream to the hardware decoder. As long as it's H.264 normal profile and not too high a resolution it'll play, regardless of the originating container.

There's nothing wrong with wishing, but until it happens, we have to use what we've got. For HC, for now that means MP4 for native support.
3.1 thus far has been worse than 2.x insofar as multimedia, probably because vendors have had 2.x for much longer, and were able to add enhanced support. A good case in point is the Samsung GalTab 7 vs the GalTab 10.1. The 7, released last year, can play MKV. The new 10.1 can't. Ditto for all the "my old phone can play MKV, why can't my tablet" complaints. It is what it is.
From all indications, HC was and is a rush job. It had to be pushed out the door because of competition from the iPad. I think the prospective buyer should understand that s/he is buying into a beta, and temper his expectations accordingly. Android has high potential, but now isn't then.
I've written a script that does fast remux/convert to MP4. A straight remux takes a few minutes, and it can process batch. It's a more productive route than wishing for a HW-accel player to come along.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1102922

e.mote said:
It's a more productive route than wishing for a HW-accel player to come along.
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Click to collapse
I suppose that's a matter of viewpoint.
I took a look at the MediaPlayer class in Google's APIs and it seems to me that it should be fairly straightforward to demux the MKV file in software on-the-fly, create named pipe with mkfifo and feed the MediaPlayer class the raw video stream via that. Just throw a simple GUI on top of that and you have a rudimentary video player capable of playing MKV files with hardware accelerated video.
I'll try it out once I receive my tablet, was planning to learn Android programming anyways.
PS. Bah, doesn't allow me to post links yet :/

Lagfree playing of .mkv 720p/1080p source

Hi folks,
Is there any posibility of a lagfree playing of those videos ?
It sucks watching Videos with less than 20fps...

3.1 is supposed to improve playback... just no idea if it will improve 720/1080p playback
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk

I use Handbrake and imported these setting I found on the net.
https://sites.google.com/site/theiveryinc/a500files
That Google site is mine.
Converts all my 720p.mkv files perfectly, the only issue is the files are big, 2-4 GB, but the quality is outstanding. They even play on 'Movies' which darkens the navigation bar.

i was looking for something like this so many times before, but I never found a stable movie app. On my Samsung Galaxy S II however, it's no problem at all. And that's a freaking phone man! But it's no wonder the hole system is so fast. It makes my newly aquired Iconia looking really sluggish and outdated :-( I don't know if I gonna keep this tablet or gonna look my movies on a 4.3" screen...

I asked Acer customer support whether they're ever going to support additional formats and they replied that they won't ever add support for MKV and can't comment on the rest. So official support for MKV is out the window.

Mkv isn't a video format, it's a container. It's just that most mkv's don't contain only baseline h.264, which is the only supported video format currently. The most benefit would come from adding support for main or high profile h.264

themono said:
Mkv isn't a video format, it's a container.
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Click to collapse
I know, it still doesn't help at all if the video player application or framework don't support the container format. I personally love MKV, it's handy to slap in two different audio tracks and subtitles in English, Finnish and the hearing-impaired version, plus any metadata about the movie itself. No need to hassle with several files then.
The most benefit would come from adding support for main or high profile h.264
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Click to collapse
Indeed. I tried transcoding a 1080p movie to 720p in constant quality mode, both in baseline and high profile modes, and while the quality was the same the high profile one used a lot less storage space. With storage space being rather scarse on mobile devices....
Well, we can only hope. But I don't know if the DSP is beefy enough to decode high profile or if it can be re-programmed to support it. Some DSPs are hardcoded and can't be used for anything other than what they already do when shipped. I don't know anything about Tegra 2 internals so I don't know what to expect.

godashram said:
3.1 is supposed to improve playback... just no idea if it will improve 720/1080p playback
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use 3.1 atm, but there is no mentionable ddifference to 3.0.1

The nVIDIA Tegra 2 250 is fully able to hardware decode:
H.264
VC-1 AP
MPEG2
MPEG-4
DivX 4/5
XviD HT
H.263
Theora
VP8
WMV
Sorenson Spark
Real Video
VP6
and encode:
H.264
MPEG4
H.263
VP8
And this is for 1080p both enc/dec
Why ACER can't (won't) support them is beyond me! Even my Single Core 7" Samsung Galaxy TAB can play all 1080p videos I have thrown at it!
And here is the full spec of the Tegra 2 250 Link!

Is it maybe because of that, that I play these videos from my USB-HDD?

dgcxsk said:
Is it maybe because of that, that I play these videos from my USB-HDD?
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Click to collapse
You can always copy one of them to the TAB and see if there is any change ( I doubt it)

Using a OLD 60gb usb hdd (literally 8 years old)
And it does not seem to matter - even with the low speed of an old external drive I have no issues playing video from it.
.Mkv -- Regardless of where it is stored is not going to work on the Iconia right now - i don't think there is anything anyone can do or change to fix that right now - the system will not?/can not? use the hardware decoder on mkv files - and software decoding, even for a low bit rate video file is always going to suck.
Hopefully 3.1 will improve our video performance - but I find it a very simple matter to just transcode a video file if the only source I have handy is mkv. Plenty of great and free tools that make the process pretty darn easy. I watch a lot of movies/TV on my a500 - and get a great experience as long as I don't throw .mkv files at it.

WereCatf said:
Indeed. I tried transcoding a 1080p movie to 720p in constant quality mode, both in baseline and high profile modes, and while the quality was the same the high profile one used a lot less storage space. With storage space being rather scarse on mobile devices....
Well, we can only hope. But I don't know if the DSP is beefy enough to decode high profile or if it can be re-programmed to support it. Some DSPs are hardcoded and can't be used for anything other than what they already do when shipped. I don't know anything about Tegra 2 internals so I don't know what to expect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My understanding is tegra2 will support h.264 high profile up to 720p @ 20mbps, but only baseline profile for 1080p.
With regard to the container format vs video format thing, I'm under the impression that container format support can be added by an app - so even if Acer never support mkv in the default player, if they do add hardware high profile h.264, then other apps should be able to play an mkv that contains high profile h.264 with hardware acceleration.

entropy.of.avarice said:
Hopefully 3.1 will improve our video performance - but I find it a very simple matter to just transcode a video file if the only source I have handy is mkv. Plenty of great and free tools that make the process pretty darn easy. I watch a lot of movies/TV on my a500 - and get a great experience as long as I don't throw .mkv files at it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From playing around with PRIMEE, mkv containers are split appropriately and if the video format is supported hardware decoding works. The problem is that there is no support for AC3 therefore majority of compatible MKVs will play very well but have no sound.
Unfortunately once software encoding is enabled we are back to the same stuttery playback issues.
I personally don't believe it's Acers' job to add playback compatibility, I personally believe it should be built into Honeycomb as a baseline. Honeycomb is a tablet OS and as such should be expected to play popular video and audio. codecs. Saying that, if manufacturers did add additional codec support it would be a solid competitive edge.

Use mobo player.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA Premium App

patterson12123 said:
Use mobo player.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA Premium App
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Click to collapse
Have you read any of the thread, running moboplayer doesn't help, as I mentioned above as soon as you enable software decoding HD MKVs start to get choppy.

hellcat82 said:
From playing around with PRIMEE, mkv containers are split appropriately and if the video format is supported hardware decoding works. The problem is that there is no support for AC3 therefore majority of compatible MKVs will play very well but have no sound.
Unfortunately once software encoding is enabled we are back to the same stuttery playback issues.
I personally don't believe it's Acers' job to add playback compatibility, I personally believe it should be built into Honeycomb as a baseline. Honeycomb is a tablet OS and as such should be expected to play popular video and audio. codecs. Saying that, if manufacturers did add additional codec support it would be a solid competitive edge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, that's good to know, so with a baseline h.264 payload an MKV will play fine on stock?
I think it probably IS Acer's job to add codec support, frankly. At the end of the day we're talking about hardware acceleration, and Android provides the software framework for that to work, and it's up to the hardware vendor to make it work with their specific hardware.
Frankly I think Nvidia should be doing it though - it'd do wonders for Tegra 2 sales if they offered up code to support hardware acceleration for their platform on Android.

I guess you didn't really do your research on video playback on Honeycomb tablets, did you?
You can not blame Acer for poor HD playback when, frankly, this is a Google/nVidia issue. Currently no 10" Honeycomb tablet can playback high profile encoded HD vides--smoothly, if at all--without reconverting said movies.
There may or may not be a *real* fix in the future (quad core Tegras are right around the corner, so...), only time will tell.
OrionBG said:
The nVIDIA Tegra 2 250 is fully able to hardware decode:
H.264
VC-1 AP
MPEG2
MPEG-4
DivX 4/5
XviD HT
H.263
Theora
VP8
WMV
Sorenson Spark
Real Video
VP6
and encode:
H.264
MPEG4
H.263
VP8
And this is for 1080p both enc/dec
Why ACER can't (won't) support them is beyond me! Even my Single Core 7" Samsung Galaxy TAB can play all 1080p videos I have thrown at it!
And here is the full spec of the Tegra 2 250 Link!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

edgie168 said:
I guess you didn't really do your research on video playback on Honeycomb tablets, did you?
You can not blame Acer for poor HD playback when, frankly, this is a Google/nVidia issue. Currently no 10" Honeycomb tablet can playback high profile encoded HD vides--smoothly, if at all--without reconverting said movies.
There may or may not be a *real* fix in the future (quad core Tegras are right around the corner, so...), only time will tell.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought an ACER device so I'll blame them! Problem here is that the Tegra 2 chip is capable to decode and encode the formats at 1080p without problems! The fact that Google still hasn't taken advantage of this feature doesn't mean that ACER couldn't!! To back my words here is an example:
Samsung! The Galaxy S and Galaxy TAB (7") they have much superior video codec support! I'm playing 1080p movies just perfectly on the Galaxy TAB. Samsung have invested in codec support and optimized it for the platform (both Hardware and Software) The Hummingbird CPU is Single Core! So why can't ACER do it? Maybe because they never did something like this before? Maybe because the have done only the hardware till now and they don't have the programmers that can pull this of? Ones the managers at ACER understand that selling thees devices without enhancing the base that Google provides won't cut it, I think we will have a very good device (not that it isn't good now but...)

OrionBG said:
I bought an ACER device so I'll blame them!
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Guess you'll have to "blame" every single manufacturer out there who have a Honeycomb tablet out too, then.
OrionBG said:
tl;dr
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So does the Samsung 10.1 play 1080p videos smoothly?
From what I've been reading.. no. Frankly, watching a 1080p on a 10" tablet is pointless (which is what I'm assuming you're crying about). If 720p isn't "good enough" on a 10" tablet, well, then, time to buy a 17" laptop.