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.

Choppy video playback on HTC 730

Any video clip I play in TCPMP and Coreplayer is choppy. The audio is fine, but the video is terrible, varying between about 4 and 0.4 fps.
Is this a known issue? Are there any settings I can tweak to get acceptable video playback quality on this device?

Wow thats bad, in TCPMP do you have the video quality set to high? Also you can increase your buffer size to help with playback. What programs are you running in the background also eating up memory? Are you storing the files on the phone or on the storage card?
TCMP wont play quarter mapped pixels so I have core player which "sort of" playes those files, I have not tweeked that one as much sicne TCPMP workes so well for most of my files but as is it will hang every few seconds for about a second.

I'm taking care to kill any programs in the background with task manager, the video files are stored on a microSD card. Video quality is set to normal. All TCPMP settings are left at their default values.

Here's the media info from TCPMP
Video: MPEG-4 Video
COodec: CoreASP
Video Size: 576x432
Frame Rate: 25.0
Audio: MP3
Codec: CoreMP3
Format 48000 hHz stereo
Data bit rate: 132 kbit/s
Played Frames: 225
Dropped: 199
Played FPS: 2.8

Okay, definately up your buffer size, mine is set to 4096 and audio preload at 512. I also uploaded the underrun buffer. When I get home I can type out all my settings, I can play resolutions around 352h x 640w and 704w x 400h(un changed files) at medium quality with only slight choppies in high speed scenes with lots going on.
You might also change the Video output mode to "Raw Frame Buffer"
It can handle really good video playback just gotta tweek it to fit your phone

I changed my settings to:
Buffer size: 4096
Audio preload: 512
underrun buffer: 85%
Video output: Raw Frame Buffer
And playback is now perfectly smooth, thanks! Are there any further tweaks I should apply?

Not many more for performance until HTC beef up the driver's. However you can go through the rest of the pages and tweek the audio, color's and such to improove how it looks.
Glad its working now though

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?

Best suited video resolution / kbits for TD?

I made a new video with myself with my Samsung HD Camera. It records with 50 FPS and in 16:9 - 1280x720p. I was wondering what the best results would be to convert to for the Touch Diamond. If I choose 25fps from 50fps originally, the video doesnt seem smooth enough.
And if I just choose to make it, say 320x180 and 50 fps at 1000kbit, it lags alot on my phone. What can I do? Its coded with WMV 9 codec.

Try to encode with 30fps, and 640x480 wmv9 WITH hardware acceleration (search for video encoder on forums )

[Q] Divx playback (neverending story...)

Hi!
I have been struggling with this topic for a few days now. Read most of the threads written here on this too. I know about the limitation of hardware accelleration, and understand it. I have created presets for Mediacoder (+CUDA) perfectly working so that I can quickly convert what I want to a video format being very well played by on nook with hw accelleration.
I am aware of the fact that videos encoded with xvid/divx can only be played with software decoders. It's been reported here such videos are pretty well handled by players like Rock-,Mobo-,YXplayer and so on; I assume nook's CPU has enough power not to have issues with ~620x350 XVid encoded video. Well, mine seems to have one.
I tried out a couple of different .avi's I have. Just one specific example:
an episode of some TV show:
Video: 310 MB, 1037 Kbps, 25.0 fps, 624*352 (16:9), XVID = XVID Mpeg-4
Audio: 38 MB, 130 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, 0x55 = MPEG Layer-3
This one is being played fine even on my old PPC Axim 30 (Intel XScale PXA270 at 624MHzwith TCPMP), but with no means on the nook. Test results:
- RockPlayer -> slide show
- YXPlayer -> slide show
- YXPlayer Neon -> slide show
- MoboPlayer - almost the one. The only one which plays completely flawless video, but the sound is out of sync, about 1 sec behind the video
What am I missing/doing wrong? Such a file should be a walk in the park for a Cortex A8 at 800MHz, shoudlnt' it? Is it about me using a rooted stock nook? Would froyo did the trick?
Regards,
Maciej

So you're on stock? Have you overclocked your setup? If so do you have governor set to Interactive and the Min. Cpu set to atleast 800mhz?

Matchay said:
25.0 fps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Found your problem. I find that the nook can only do 24fps or 29.999999fps. You must be trying to play a European program. Re-encode in Handbrake and change the "Framerate" drop down box to the NTSC Video setting.
While you are at it, in Handbrake and all, you might as well re-encode using x264 to take advantage of the Nook's hardware decoding...

poofyhairguy said:
Found your problem. I find that the nook can only do 24fps or 29.999999fps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Generally? Or in terms of software divx/xvid playback? I re-encoded the file to H.264 WITHOUT changing the framerate and it works smoothly. For the hardware accel the framerate is not an issue.
I wonder what the problem could be: the sound isn't stuttering, the video is smooth, they are simply not synchronized. It cant be due to lack of power,can it?
Regards,
Maciej

The NC supports hardware decoding of MPEG4 (i.e. Divx/Xvid) Simple Profile but it has to be in a MP4 rather than AVI container. Unfortunately MP3 audio is incompatible with MP4 containers so the typical AVI needs to have at least the audio re-encoded for hardware playback on the NC.
It's not unusual to have poorly muxed AVI files where the audio and video end up out of sync when re-encoded. I'm not sure about Mediacoder but Handbrake does not easily allow adjusting the audio offset to compensate for that. You might try aviDemux (open source) as it does allow adjustment of audio offset. Unfortunately, it's trial and error to figure out the proper offset. If your Divx file is MPEG4 SP then you could just set up aviDemux to copy the video, re-encode the audio to AAC and mux in an MP4 container with the appropriate audio offset.

Matchay said:
Generally? Or in terms of software divx/xvid playback?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me just software divx playback. My 25 fps files just never play well.
For x264 you can do any framerate up to 39 fps I think, as long as the bitrate is low enough. For me in Handbrake the magic number is a Constant quality of 22

@razmajazz
Sorry for the confusion. I have no issues with any x264 re-encoded file, as mentioned in my first post - my Mediacoder preset does its job perfectly.
I mean MoboPlayer plays the original Xvid video and audio very smoothly, they are simply out of sync, which doesn't look like a CPU power issue to me. As poofyhairguy said, it must be about the framerate and some incompability.
Re-encoding doesn't bother me, I only wanted to avoid it if possible for lower quality divx/xvid films. And the MoboPlayer seemed to be only an inch far away from the right solution.
I will do some testing in the afternoon.
Thanks,
Maciej

Are You playing videos on stock, rooted Nooks?
Or Froyo/CM7?

rooted stock

Try summer player, I tried many movies with that player and all seem to work well
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

angel7000 said:
Try summer player
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interestingly, Summer player plays all my files in fast forward mode

DSP drivers/Hardware video decoding is critical for smooth playback.
I dont know why the CPU cannot do it fast enough. (software decoding)
Thats why I'm on nookie froyo
No sync issues or anything with normal res videos from the interweb, no recoding needed, any decent MPEG4 player plays smooth.

Matchay said:
@razmajazz
Sorry for the confusion. I have no issues with any x264 re-encoded file, as mentioned in my first post - my Mediacoder preset does its job perfectly.
I mean MoboPlayer plays the original Xvid video and audio very smoothly, they are simply out of sync, which doesn't look like a CPU power issue to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed I was confused. I thought both the original and re-encoded files had audio sync issues. As long as the video stream is MPEG4 SP, you may still just want to copy the video, re-encode the audio to AAC and mux in a MP4 container. It's pretty fast since you only have to convert the audio, you don't lose quality from re-encoding video and it plays back with hardware decoding on the NC.

Success!
Yesterday I ran nookie froyo from SD. MoboPlayer plays all files perfectly, no out of sync! It was that simple...
Thank you all for your suggestions!
Cheers,
Maciej