Database Develop

HTC S730 Video playback

Hi everyone.
I know, bad video performance is a known issue (see http://www.htcclassaction.org/).
But on my device I'm not able to play any video file without bucking image. About every second, the image stops for a short instance (I get sick watching this for more than a minute )
I tried different video files with different formats:
- wmv8 with 300 kbp/s, 25 images/s, 320 x 240 with wma8 128 kbit/s stereo (converted using All-in-1 mobile video convert)
- mpeg-4 (H.264)/AVC, between 128 and 1248 kbp/s 25 images/s, 320 x 240 and 64 to 128 kbp/s for stereo audio (converted with SUPER)
- a couple other files found on the web
I tried to play them with the installed Microsoft Media Player. Normally sound is ok, video never is. For the video it seems to make almost no difference what settings I use. mpeg-4 is a bit better than wma8. But between the 1248 kbp/s and the 128 kbp/s video there is no difference (besides th artifacts), It's bucking the same.
Can anyone please tell me, what codec / settings are playable on the HTC S730? Or can someone post an example video file that plays well on his device?
Any help is appreciated!

Window's media player is your problem in this case.
I have Core player and that TCPMP one posted above. If I drop resolution on some of my files I can play them perfectly in core player, and with TCPMP set to low (medium) all videos play fine. High action scenes sometimes cause a little studder so I am going to lower the origional res down a little bit.
The only problem I have run into is on some higher quality ones the phone runs out of page file memory which I currently have set to 1024 within TCPMP. Make sure your phone's memory is clear when trying to watch stuff and you should be just fine. Especially if you are dropping the resolution down that low.
I will try to take a short video of a video playing

Works!
It works! The problem really was windows media player!
Thanks a lot for the hint - I think I'd never try to change the player...
Frame rate is not perfect yet. I still have to figure out what the best settings are, but it is already ways better than before.

Hehe, no problem. WMP is not a well optimized player. For my computer and HTPC I use zoom player, it can handle 720p on a processor that really shouldnt be able to.

Video settings
Hi all.
After spending a lot of my spare time I finally found the right settings for converting videos for the HTC S730.
First I tried to convert videos to H.264/AVC and WM8. This does not produce anything you'd like to look at. Even with very low video bandwidth (200 kbit/s for video) the best I got was below 10 frames/s. With TCPMP it's a bit better than with Windows Media Player but there is no big difference.
But if works fine with the following settings:
Container : AVI
Video Codec: MPEG-4 480 kbit/s
Audio Codec: mp3 44.1 kHz stereo 128 kbit/s
For converting I use the free SUPER (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html).
This way I get close to 25 frames/s (maybe 10% are dropped).
Please note that such a video cannot be played with the Windows Media Player. (AVI is a Microsoft format, but it looks as the player doesn't like the codec.) However it plays fine on TCPMP 0.71 (from here: http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/)
My daily train rides are much more pleasant now

Luki2 said:
Hi all.
After spending a lot of my spare time I finally found the right settings for converting videos for the HTC S730.
First I tried to convert videos to H.264/AVC and WM8. This does not produce anything you'd like to look at. Even with very low video bandwidth (200 kbit/s for video) the best I got was below 10 frames/s. With TCPMP it's a bit better than with Windows Media Player but there is no big difference.
But if works fine with the following settings:
Container : AVI
Video Codec: MPEG-4 480 kbit/s
Audio Codec: mp3 44.1 kHz stereo 128 kbit/s
For converting I use the free SUPER (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html).
This way I get close to 25 frames/s (maybe 10% are dropped).
Please note that such a video cannot be played with the Windows Media Player. (AVI is a Microsoft format, but it looks as the player doesn't like the codec.) However it plays fine on TCPMP 0.71 (from here: http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/)
My daily train rides are much more pleasant now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With my S710 (has a 200MHz TI OMAP850) I'm streaming 25fps/200kbs of my VLC server (which transcodes digital sat streams in real time). I'm using .ts container, mpeg1 vid, mp2 audio and Coreplayer as client.

I have an episode of Top Gear that I can play in TCMP at mediuam quality, its video rate is 199 / 25 fps.
WMP will only play the non tweeked files, in other words if it was compressed into any codec (xvid, divx, ogg, mkv) and other of the others WMP will not play it unless it has the codec installed. The other players (core player / TCMP) come able to read these files upon install so they work better.
With TCMP most of my files do not even have to be changed, just dump them on the sd card and with the player set to medium quality it goes right through them. Now some high action / motion scenes will cause a little lag or slow down but not much and not for long.

This is soooo ridiculous! WMP worked just fine in the older 200mhz devices! Now we have to switch to TCMP and make sure that no programs reside in memory before playing ANY videos? Ridiculous! HTC is losing a lot of faithful customers with this.

It depends on the type of file's your trying to play.
Just like WMP on the PC, it wont play anything without the codecs for them.

video playback on PC-No sound?

I use vlc media player to playback recorded videos on my pc, and all the videos of my son have no sound. This happened on the kaizer too and it was due to a copyright issue w/ the codecs htc use.
Has anyone found a work around for this?

Anyone?
Googling on the web reveals nothing? Surely others must be annoyed by this too?

GSpot says Audio codec: 'samr: AMR Narrowband' - could not find anything suitable for PC though and just ran out of time...

This is truly terrible
Would you have a phone with photos that can only be viewed on that phone on and not shared?
Why would these idiots use codec that makes it impossible to share videos with sound with any PCs?
How incredibly stupid of HTC?

I think it's a licencing issue with VLC itself - it can't play the SAMR AMR audio codec. I discovered this accidentally after emailing a vid to the missus who discovered she couldn't play it on her Macbook (using VLC). One of the threads I read about it is here.
I use mediaplayer classic and the K-Lite codec pack from free-codecs.com on my (windows-based) laptop and have no issues at all.

so you must have some codec able to play this... have you tried opening Diamond-Vids with other applications like vlc or maybe a conversion tool (like if one would like to convert to an flv for upping to web).
Also in your K-Lite there is a GSpot could you check what it shows in 'Audio' (check screenie)
THX

ive been trying ot find a codec to get videos to work too.... well, video works but theres no sound on video files recorded with the diamond... ill give the klite pack a try i guess

if you manage to get sound - it would be great if you could check which codec is used ... thx!

same problem here
I have tried out every player under the sun (yes vlc too), updated several different codec packs, and still have the same problem.
I know that there is sound encoded in the files, because when I play them on the phone there is sound.
I have a friend with the same phone, and he also has the same problem.
I have recorded several lectures, and it would be fantastic is someone can find a fix for this.. my intention was never to watch the videos on the phone.. otherwise i'll just end up cross-eyed.
Any help much appreciated.
Mike

SOLUTION - GOM Media player
Plays them all fine
Good luck

http://media-convert.com/convert/index.php
go there and convert the file to a .mov or what ever format u want, and sound will work

Slow video playback

Is anyone having problems with video playback?
WMV files they are played very slow (loosing a lot of frames). With MP4 I got best results but not the best. Any suggestions??
Thanks

WMV
I can't even get the above files to play

are you using Media Player? as video playback has always been awful on Medial Player on every pocket pc or smartphone ive everhad.
install TCPMP and video playback will be perfect, and will play any file you throw at it
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=380387&highlight=tcpmp+diamond

Thanks for the tip keyz86. I'll try it.

no problem, glad to help a fellow Dimondarian

won't play
loaded the TCPMP but everytime I try and start it i get the attached error, using diamond help

keyz86 said:
no problem, glad to help a fellow Dimondarian
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dimondarian Cool hehehe

Has anyone been able to play a full resolution file without skipping?
I am using CorePlayer now but if another player works better, please say so.
With Coreplayer I benchmark about 85%, which is not good enough.
I believe the Diamond should be able to get 100%.
I found that an encoded mp4 file would play about the same as the original avi xvid file...
What do you use to encode videos specifically for the Diamond?
Come on!! Post your results!

tretre said:
What do you use to encode videos specifically for the Diamond?
Come on!! Post your results!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What video settings do you use with coreplayer ?
DirectDraw, GDI or what ?
This is what i get:
With these configs.:
But with some other videos i have i get only 88% speed and some frame drops and tearing.
Doesnt the Diamond has a good video hardware.
Imo, it shouldnt lag at all.
Ive read somewhere that it doesnt use the hardware correctly since the drivers were not fully implemented. Not sure if its true.

Still looking for a good solution... any more help?
Coreplayer is still choppy ...

Yeah, I wasn't able to get WMVs to play using this, either.

I think what we need to have a look at is which encoding, resolution, bitrate, fps, etc are optimal for the diamond using core player.
I'm experimenting a bit. Will report back in a bit...

I've just got my Ignito (diamond) a couple of days ago, but I've got a long history of video playback on hand helds. Since this is my first time post, and I happen to have a bit of time on my hands.... I'm going to convert a file into a series of different resolutions and settings to see which one will perform the best. I know the objective is to get a full res one to play, but I'll see what I can come up with.
Also, I'm using the default ROM at this time.

With Coreplayer you should use the 'QTv' display option - this is hardware accelerated and beats 100% benchmark on every AVI I have tried. If you get a blank display using this mode, you are using an old version and need to update.

Alright. After trying a bunch of different codecs, encoders, video and audio formats at various resolutions I came the conclusion that for now, full resolution video is just not possible without jerky movements during continuous motion or fast action scenes.
My eyes are very sensitive and I get really irritated if playback is not perfectly smooth.
So far what works the best in achieving this kind of natural playback is AVI as the output container with XviD video codec at 480 x 360 resolution, and mp3 audio. I set the video and audio bitrates to match whatever the source video was (min 864 kbps and max 1008 kbps for video and 192 kbps for audio).
Even then, CorePlayer is a must with the following settigns: QTv On, TytnII driver mode On and Smooth Zoom On.
Every now and again CorePlayer will show only a purple screen during playback when QTv mode on. At that point I usually do a soft reset and it starts working again.
This issue may be resolved with an upcoming release of CorePlayer (1.3) but until then, the solution above works exceptionally well.
I'd be very interested in anyone else is having success in other ways...

320 by 240 versus 640 by 480
I have done some playing with conversion and have found that the Diamond (currently) does not support the 640 by 480 settings with a good bitrate. The BEST conversion I have found (using Coreplayer to play back the files) is using the BETA Version of the Pocket Divx Encoder (http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/EN_index.htm) and using the HTC Diamond Template (NON VGA!!!!, there is a VGA and non VGA) that team has developed. They have done an excellent job!
The output settings -
Dimensions 320 by 240
Video Quaility - "36" ... 584 kb bitrate
Hopefully an update by HTC or coreplayer will be released to fully utilize the resolution that the Diamond SHOULD be able to support, but for a clear, non jerky playback, this is my 2 cents

im able to play those axxo dvdripson using coreplayer without any sort of convertion....

I want to share my experience. I am using core player and trying to recode unprotected high-definition TV shows (original resolution of 1920x1080) that I've recorded on Windows Media Center (.dvr-ms files) to watch on my Sprint Diamond. Unfortunately .dvr-ms are poorly supported, and the only program I've found to recode is TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress.
I am using Core Player version 1.2.5 build 4506, and my video output is QTv Display with the Tytn II driver mode enabled.
Like everyone else here, I have had horrible results when converting the shows to DivX at 640x360 at any usuable bitrate (above 500 kbps). Benchmarking in Core Player yielded a playback speed of 66% or so (completely unacceptable, obviously). So I played around with the resolution and bitrate, and finally settled on the following:
Format: DivX
resolution: 512x288 (maintains the 16:9 aspect ratio of the original)
Video bitrate: 850 kbps
Frame rate: 29.97 fps (progressive)
Audio: MP3
Audio bitrate: 80 kbps, 48kHz sample rate
With those settings, I have a 104% playback benchmark with around 25 dropped frames compared to several thousand played, and about 29.5 fps. Basically, it is completely smooth audio and video.
I was still PO'd that I had to sacrifice so much resolution and bitrate on a supposed media device, so I played around with other formats. WMV was awful. MPEG-2 was awful, and avi was passable, but no better than DivX. I also decided to try h.264 (MPEG-4 AVC). Here are the settings I used:
Video Format: MPEG-4 AVC (saves as .mp4)
Resolution: 640x360 (still maintaining the original 16:9 AR)
Video bitrate: 1000 kbps
frame rate: 29.97 fps (progressive)
Audio format: AAC
Audio bitrate: 96 kbps, 48kHz sample rate
Core Player absolutely choked on this. It was unwatchable, and the benchmark revealed a playback speed of 50%. Dropped frames were higher than played frames (!) and framerate was 13 fps. Obviously not successful.
But, before I deleted the file, on a whim I decided to try Windows Media Player and...it was completely FLAWLESS playback. Absolutely beautiful, smooth motion, no audio stuttering, slow and fast pans were the best I've ever seen on a WM device.
Why??? Is there something I'm missing about this that someone can elaborate on? Is this the fabled "hardware acceleration" that I've read so much about? I should note that WMP had a hard time on a 320x240 .wmv file, so I can't really understand how it is able to play a 640x360 .mp4 file so smoothly. In any event, I have found my perfect file format, and, surprisingly, it doesn't involve Core Player in any way.
-R

The thing is that HTC didn't release any kind of SDK for Diamond or Touch Pro and companies like CoreCodec have hard time trying to figure out how to use the HW acceleration but they are trying very hard to improve the situation so maybe with time they will be able to use the HW for now the only way we wan't to watch videos with HW acceleration is only WMP which means recoding or atleast remuxing files.
Cheers
P.S. Could you post exact specs of the .mp4 file? What kind of AVC it was and things like that.

in regards to the WMP hardware acceleration.
is it better on battery life than having coreplayer trying its hard out to render a video. even if its a small 320x vid that plays at 120%. Does that mean that the cpu is running near max?

Get Video Off Of The Tilt!!!!

Ok. I recorded some video on my AT&T Tilt with a memory card. It plays fine on my phone. Well I want to get it on my computer. When I tried to, it was in the MP4 format. So I opened it with Quicktime and iTunes and it wouldn't play. It said there was an error. So I was gonna convert it. I tried to, but it gave me a warning saying that it would have no sound, so I didn't do that. Then I downloaded VLC Player and when I played the videos, they didn't have sound. I tried putting them in Windows Media Center, didn't work. I tried ActiveSync. Didn't work. There has to be some possible way to do this. PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!

Same thing happens to me. Now I just record in the other format, QIF I believe. And that works fine.

THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!

how did you even get "good" video playback?
how did you even get "good" video on the TILT? is it the change in file type that makes the video better in itself? where do you change it?

You can change to CIF by selecting it from the Capture Settings menu (hit menu when the camera is running) under Resolution. The capture format can be changed from MPEG-4 to H.263 if you go to Advanced > Capture Format.
Recording in a well-lit environment helps. I'm not usually affected by placebo, but I and a few other users have reported increased camera performance after installing the latest test drivers for the Kaiser from htcclassaction.org. It DID seem that the framerate was higher. I can't rule out the possibility that updating to windows mobile 6.1 may have made a difference, but I know I don't keep apps running in the background and the comparison whilst not scientific would be pretty fair.

What can be used to view H.263 on the home pc? Will media player play it? And is there a good reason why it just doesn't record to .wmv or regular old mpeg? As you can tell I am a moron when it comes to video.

VLC will read it

kbcherry said:
What can be used to view H.263 on the home pc? Will media player play it? And is there a good reason why it just doesn't record to .wmv or regular old mpeg? As you can tell I am a moron when it comes to video.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
QuickTime will play H.263 encoded files.
The Tilt does not use WMV or MPEG because they do not have formats optimized for mobile devices, so the files end up being huge.

Thanks, that makes sense!

my mp4 videos run fine on wm player! try downloading the vista or xp codec pack which is available on most torrent sites

I know its old but anyway...I record video w/ my kaiser, bluetooth the video over to my laptop, convert with WM convert, open w/ movie maker, edit then post. Sooooooooo easy and no cables required!

You're all going through waaaay to much by using converters & what not. When recording in mpeg4 format just rename the files to ".3gp" after you transfer them to your computer and they will play regularly through quicktime with sound & everything intact.

download K lite codec pack: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm
it will allow windows media player to play ANYTHING, throw and file at it and it will play

VLC Works for me
VLC works for me, try it

TLJack64 said:
You're all going through waaaay to much by using converters & what not. When recording in mpeg4 format just rename the files to ".3gp" after you transfer them to your computer and they will play regularly through quicktime with sound & everything intact.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use a converter to be able to edit the video in windows movie maker, it takes like 10 seconds to convert a MPEG4 to WMV. (i've got the codec pack but in order to edit the video you need to convert it.)

Video encoder

Has anyone with a diamond tried this encoder? It works incredibly smoothly on mine but the problem is, the sound is always out of sync, it lags behind the video slightly, even when I play the converted video from my pc. Just wondering if it's a problem specific to the diamond or if you've had success with it. I've tried loads of settings, decreasing video and audio bitrates, normalising audio, lower resolutions down to 320x 240, VGA and WVGA with no success in synching the audio track.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112

No problem....
I've been using this encoder for a while now with no issues at all. I've only been converting flash videos (.flv), so I don't know about any other formats

grahamkdt said:
I've been using this encoder for a while now with no issues at all. I've only been converting flash videos (.flv), so I don't know about any other formats
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually, converting those videos with encoder causes audio to be out of sync when just playing from my pc, so yeah, doesn't seem to be a diamond issue.
Another thing. I've got core player 1.2.5 now, and that's working very smoothly too, but the audio is also out of sync ( playing on the phone itself) playing flv files or anything (not converted with encoder), but not nearly as much, only by a millisecond or two, but noticeable. What is it with me and audio out of sync.

Ok, I've messed around with the manual A/V offset +/- settings in core player. I've set it to different numbers, and on a couple of videos, one flv and one wmv, at -0.550 the audio syncs perfectly. I thought I had it sorted but other flv videos are still out of synch to different degrees. I don't want to have to keep changing the A/V offset for each video. Can anyone help me further? I'm sure it's the A/V offset function that is the cause but also solution for this problem. I can't tell if it's to do with audio bitrates, video bitrates or other video/audio encodings.
EDIT: YES!! I found the right setting.
-0.200 and every single video in perfect sync with audio. Core Player, what an awesome app, it's got loads of settings to play around with. Smooth as f... video.