Why can't G1 play DivX? - G1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

http://androinica.com/2009/11/16/sa...first-android-phone-to-support-divx-playback/
Both the Rogers LG Eve and the newly announced Samsung Galaxy Spica can play DivX.
What's holding back the G1?

an update from htc and or proper system dump

evilkorn said:
an update from htc and or proper system dump
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what you mean. Can you, or someone else, elaborate?

DivX is a proprietary codec. It has to be licensed which costs money

B-man007 said:
DivX is a proprietary codec. It has to be licensed which costs money
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Click to collapse
That can't be the reason.
If that was the only reason, tons of people would have figured out how to to it illegally months ago haha. There must be some other limitation, that for some reason exists on the G1 but not these other phones.

Paul22000 said:
That can't be the reason.
If that was the only reason, tons of people would have figured out how to to it illegally months ago haha. There must be some other limitation, that for some reason exists on the G1 but not these other phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol thats the reason why its not there legally. Besides, at this point, theres not enough demand/information to get it to work. once we get the dumps, we should be able to port it

We already have h264, which is more efficient than divx or xvid. Why take a step back?

Actually, it *can* play the so-called divx files.
The reason why it doesn't play YOURS may be as follows;
1) It does NOT recognize the FourCC tag used by divx.
-- may help to change this to one matching H263.
2) The bitrate may be too high for the decoder chip.
-- too much data = choke
3) It may not have a demuxer for the CONTAINER.
-- AVI, MP4, MKV, etc. The file format and the actual data stream encodings are INDEPENDENT. The file is demuxed in SOFTWARE, the video stream is decoded in HARDWARE.
Note: divx is a SUBSET of plain vanilla MPEG4-ASP.
The decoder chip can decode H263, H264.
H264 > H263
H263 = divx (approximately)

Dvix and xvid = ****
Why you want **** on your G1... just use a converter and covert the videos to mp4... is a way better format, and you can save some space.

B-man007 said:
lol thats the reason why its not there legally. Besides, at this point, theres not enough demand/information to get it to work. once we get the dumps, we should be able to port it
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Click to collapse
Yeah I'm just saying that the legal issue is definitely not the reason. If there was no barrier aside from legal issues, don't you think at least a single person on the entire planet would have at least figured out how to do it, especially given the G1 has been out over a year?
lbcoder said:
Actually, it *can* play the so-called divx files.
The reason why it doesn't play YOURS may be as follows;
1) It does NOT recognize the FourCC tag used by divx.
-- may help to change this to one matching H263.
2) The bitrate may be too high for the decoder chip.
-- too much data = choke
3) It may not have a demuxer for the CONTAINER.
-- AVI, MP4, MKV, etc. The file format and the actual data stream encodings are INDEPENDENT. The file is demuxed in SOFTWARE, the video stream is decoded in HARDWARE.
Note: divx is a SUBSET of plain vanilla MPEG4-ASP.
The decoder chip can decode H263, H264.
H264 > H263
H263 = divx (approximately)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Let me rephrase the topic then: it's not that I want to play divx/xvid.
I want to be able to play ANY video file my PC can play with a simple drag and drop (avi files, etc).
taz2781 said:
Dvix and xvid = ****
Why you want **** on your G1... just use a converter and covert the videos to mp4... is a way better format, and you can save some space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because I find converting video files to be a ridiculously annoying process, and I hate it with a passion.
I want to be able to drag and and drop any video file to my G1 and play it within seconds.
My Windows Mobile 2003 Samsung SCH-i730 could do that. It's almost pathetic no Android phones (aside from the two in the OP) can.
I also have an 8 GB card that's mostly empty. I don't need to save space.

taz2781 said:
Dvix and xvid = ****
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That depends largely on who encoded it and how.
Why you want **** on your G1... just use a converter and covert the videos to mp4... is a way better format, and you can save some space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You aren't seriously suggesting that someone should subject a video to an *additional* lossy cycle of decompression and recompression in order to make it *better*, are you? Though doing this *can* (but doesn't have to) reduce the overall size, it will *definitely* reduce the visual quality of the video... like a photocopy of a photocopy.

lbcoder said:
That depends largely on who encoded it and how.
You aren't seriously suggesting that someone should subject a video to an *additional* lossy cycle of decompression and recompression in order to make it *better*, are you? Though doing this *can* (but doesn't have to) reduce the overall size, it will *definitely* reduce the visual quality of the video... like a photocopy of a photocopy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was also going to point out the absolute ridiculousness of converting a video file to mp4 and having the quality improve, but forgot to mention it. Thanks

Paul22000 said:
Let me rephrase the topic then: it's not that I want to play divx/xvid.
I want to be able to play ANY avi file my PC can play with a simple drag and drop.
Because I find converting video files to be a ridiculously annoying process, and I hate it with a passion.
I want to be able to drag and and drop an avi file to my G1 and play it within seconds.
I also have an 8 GB card that's mostly empty. I don't need to save space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I'm afraid that that simply isn't going to happen. Though it is certainly possible to add in the software support for demuxing from the various other possible containers, the decoder chip itself most definitely has limitations.
Think about it like this;
The decoder chip in your GRAPHICS card, depending on the age of the card, will either be an MPEG2 decoder chip (i.e., around 1995 when the average CPU simply couldn't do that), or an MPEG4 AVC chip (i.e., Radeon HD, Nvidia 8000+), and even THESE decoder chips are limited in what they can decode. For example, throw a THEORA video at a Radeon HD and it will definitely NOT be able to play it. Throw an MPEG2 at a Radeon HD and it will not be able to play it. Not to mention the fact that a desktop video decoder chip will be able to handle a much larger resolutions at a much higher bitrate than a TELEPHONE (due to power constraints on the phone).
So basically, you can give up on the idea of being able to throw just anything at it.
What you can do, however, is use a SCRIPT to BULK-encode your videos. Look at mencoder (part of mplayer) and ffmpeg for this. Their use is a little complex, but you only need to do it once when you set up the script, then it is just an easy convert for everything.

lbcoder said:
Well I'm afraid that that simply isn't going to happen. Though it is certainly possible to add in the software support for demuxing from the various other possible containers, the decoder chip itself most definitely has limitations.
Think about it like this;
The decoder chip in your GRAPHICS card, depending on the age of the card, will either be an MPEG2 decoder chip (i.e., around 1995 when the average CPU simply couldn't do that), or an MPEG4 AVC chip (i.e., Radeon HD, Nvidia 8000+), and even THESE decoder chips are limited in what they can decode. For example, throw a THEORA video at a Radeon HD and it will definitely NOT be able to play it. Throw an MPEG2 at a Radeon HD and it will not be able to play it. Not to mention the fact that a desktop video decoder chip will be able to handle a much larger resolutions at a much higher bitrate than a TELEPHONE (due to power constraints on the phone).
So basically, you can give up on the idea of being able to throw just anything at it.
What you can do, however, is use a SCRIPT to BULK-encode your videos. Look at mencoder (part of mplayer) and ffmpeg for this. Their use is a little complex, but you only need to do it once when you set up the script, then it is just an easy convert for everything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're saying the G1 doesn't have the necessary graphics decoder chip (and obviously never will), that the LG Eve / Spica do? Could have said that, rather than "legal issues" (lol )

Why hasn't anybody ported VLC over to android then? That media player supports all sorts of codecs

Paul22000 said:
So you're saying the G1 doesn't have the necessary graphics decoder chip (and obviously never will), that the LG Eve / Spica do? Could have said that, rather than "legal issues" (lol )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never said "legal issues" -- that was somebody else.
And no, we do NOT know what kind of decoder chip those other two devices have.. they MAY be exactly the same since, as I said, OUR decoder chip *IS* capable of running bone-stock divx.
Just because those other two devices say they can play divx doesn't mean that they can play the ones you find on the net and download. You still have to worry about the overall resolution, bitrate, and container.

atolar said:
Why hasn't anybody ported VLC over to android then? That media player supports all sorts of codecs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Few things to think about;
1) The majority of the codecs supported by VLC are supported in SOFTWARE DECODERS. We simply don't have enough CPU power to decode video in real-time. We *MUST* use the decoder chip.
2) The rest of the codecs supported by VLC are supported via various HARDWARE DECODERS (i.e. Nvidia vdpau extensions for MPEG4), and just using VLC doesn't open up any more encodings since we are still limited by the hardware decoder that we already have.
3) VLC uses HARDWARE simple post processing via XVideo (i.e. scaling).
As an example:
To playback a common net-rip BD movie, say 10-ish GB 1920x1080 will take EVERYTHING available from BOTH CORES of an AMD X2-3800 (I use that example since that's what I use on my TV) to perform in software. The video resolution is off by a factor of 13.5x, but that CPU is way more than 13.5x what's in these phones, especially when it comes to multimedia content, floating point arithmetic, etc. There is literally no way to do video decoding in software unless you switch to a less-advanced format -- maybe it'll be able to handle mpeg2 for example.

booo urns, I just want to play my tv show downloads without having to convert.

Related

Playing AVI files

Is there an app which can play AVI files?
i think i will bump this as this is a most have and a down side to owning a hero !
Forward the notion.
I'm with you on this. Not being able to play .sci is a real pain.
I've also put some .mp4 files on which haven't played either for some reason. Does anyone know if there is a specific format for video on the hero? Is there a specific converter anyone is using ?
Cheers,
HP
Using something like Handbrake to convert your videos should work. If it has a setting for Apple iPods/iPhones just use that.
Or, it should support the following:
- MP4 container format
- MPEG-4 AVC (also known as h.264) video, max [email protected] (try main profile, try disabling CABAC and B-frames for more reliability)
- AAC (AAC-LC) audio, 48khz suggested sample rate
- Keep overall bitrate low, try from 800kbps to 2000kbps
like most mobile devices, ofcourse there is a limit on the codecs supported, and what levels and settings in the codec that work.
In the current state, all / most clips that are _above_ the native resolution won't play at all. And as a quick rule: H264 @ level 2.1 will work, maybe some 3.0 stuff also works, but I don't know.
Basicly, make sure the MP4's you have are iPhone compatible but 480x320 or lower resolution and the Hero will play them fine.
Any video converter tool (handbrake / Megui / Mediacoder / commercial tools) wil work if you give them the iPhone preset.
About playing AVI files, nobody has written anything yet. Don't really know why people didn't jump on the bandwagon for this kinda of thing. Mostly some sort of ffmpeg-based player will appear quickly on a platform. Maybe it's the java development thing.
Anyway, convert your video's to iphone compatibility at the moment and they should play fine.
Keep in mind that AVI is an older, inferior container format to MP4, and the MPEG-4 ASP (DivX) codec often used with AVI is inferior to MPEG-4 AVC (h.264) usually used with MP4. So you aren't being ripped off in terms of quality or technology. They just neglected to support the older format. Hopefully apps can bridge the gap in future (apps with native libraries that is, not the virtual machine). Given the lower system requirements, I'd say that it would probably be capable of playing an AVI/DivX file encoded up to 640x480x30fps (my old Nokia with a 369MHz CPU can come close).
For best results, however, use handbrake to convert from the original, or from your existing AVIs, to a nice ipod compatible, 480xsomething pixel MP4. Go direct from the original to MP4 (without AVI in between) for even better quality.
however, still after converting that video lags all the time (closed all apps either)
Did you update to the latest firmware? The original shipped firmware has a known issue that the video 'stutters' every second or so for a bit.
ah oaky, this might be the problem... waiting for donut released officially by htc for hero

[Q] NC: xvid, Rockplayer and quality?

Can anyone with a *rooted* NC tell us a bit about video quality on the device. Basically, I am curious about the capabilities to play "scene" quality xvid/classic divx materials. Ie conforming to specs.
I kind of guess that the processor would hold up, but I am not sure.
I am only interested in locally stored content, ie on sd card (for simplicity's sake, let's assume that we have a plain vanilla SDHC card).
Cheers,
My experience with Rock and other players except the standard one (and that was for MP4 only) has been less than stellar.
Like other users on here, I am getting audio-visual lag, leading to me having to pre-convert everything for the device in order to get a working copy. The lag is slight on AVI files and MKV files grind down to a slideshow while the audio stays straight on, leading me to believe that whatever back-end conversion is being done on-the-fly is killing the processor.
My guess is that once we have Froyo (or god willing, Gingerbread), we'll have much better MKV and AVI playback. Until then, I suggest conversion if you've got the time or Rockplayer if you don't mind a bit of lag on AVI files. Hope that helps!
An unrooted NC plays my AutoGk 480p rips in the built in player if you remux it into an .mp4 file with AAC audio.
I get lag also. Weird thing is if you stream a video from the twit app it looks really good and no lag at all.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Ok guys, great, I appreciate the info - thanks!!!
ThePettyTyrant said:
An unrooted NC plays my AutoGk 480p rips in the built in player if you remux it into an .mp4 file with AAC audio.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is something most people don't realize you can do. The video stream in an xvid/divx avi CAN be read by most mp4-friendly devices. But it's in a container they don't know how to read, and may have an auto track they can't read.
You can remux is with any one of a number of tools to drop it into an mp4 file without reencoding the video (and, depending on the source material, possibly reencoding the audio, which is super-fast on any modern machine).
Since the stock NC has no frame buffers enabled video performance will suffer ... when it is eventually enabled (it will be) performance should be good.
I was going to start a thread similar to this but more asking what format is best on the NC.
I've tried some standard xvids in rockplayer, and there is a slight lag on the audio. But enough that makes it annoying to watch.
When rockplayer first opens a video, I get a prompt on hardware or software decoding, I tried hardware and obviously that fails.
So does the NC support hardware assisted format? if so, what format exactly? What codec, bit rate limits, accepted resolutions etc. And not only for smoother playback, but I assume hardware assist would save (a lot?) on battery performance.
I used it encode a lot back in the day, using tmpgenc, virtualdub and avisynth, but I haven't touched any of that in ages. Has someone wrote a guide regarding this specific to the NC?
If you look at the Nook Color spec sheet, one of the supported video formats is H.264. I've gotten hardware-assisted playback of H.264 on my Nook - plays and looks great.
However!
The Nook only supports H.264 baseline profile. If you use Handbrake to encode, use the iPhone/iPod preset as a starting point. Then you can up the bitrate, resolution etc from there.
Another note: I've found the built-in player does not know about anamorphic ratios, so the videos are scaled incorrectly.
sark666 said:
So does the NC support hardware assisted format?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. Sort of.
The OMAP3621 does have dedicated video decoding hardware. Unfortunately, it's pretty well locked down by the manufacturer. You don't get access to the hardware without a license, which means most (all?) 3rd party players aren't going to be able to utilize it. It sucks, but it seems to be par for the course for smartphone/tablet chips these days.
Another note: I've found the built-in player does not know about anamorphic ratios, so the videos are scaled incorrectly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The OMAP3621 does have dedicated video decoding hardware. Unfortunately, it's pretty well locked down by the manufacturer. You don't get access to the hardware without a license, which means most (all?) 3rd party players aren't going to be able to utilize it. It sucks, but it seems to be par for the course for smartphone/tablet chips these days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I was going to say I'll use rockplayer so I don't have to add borders or something to force aspect, but then I read no one else can access the hardware encoder and this is typical?!
Sigh.. It never ends the way they try and lock these devices down. This sure ain't the pc world (which it should be, but they are trying to get it 'right' this time.)
So you refer to the TI, is this also true of the Nook Color?
At any rate, I'll remuxing as suggested earlier in this thread to mp4 container. What the best (hopefully free/open source) remuxer these days?
I used YAMB but I don't know if something better exists. If you use YAMB, you'll have to convert any AC3 audio to AAC ahead of time. I didn't test if MP3 audio is supported.
Hopefully VLC will be ported to Android too, would seem to be a more "natural" fit than the iPad it currently runs on!
sark666 said:
but then I read no one else can access the hardware encoder and this is typical?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, very.
If it's any consolation, it's not the device manufacturers or android team that is to blame, it's the chip manufacturers. The SoC in the NC is made by TI, who licenses all the different cores they stick in their chips. In this case, the video decoding hardware is part of the SGX530 GPU core licensed from PowerVR. While TI pays for the right to use the core in their chips, any software dev who wants to actually take advantage of the decoding hardware has to pay PowerVR for the drivers that allow them to do so. It's pretty crappy from our perspective, but it is their IP so it's their prerogative. I'm sure the chip, device and software makers would all prefer to use open hardware, but there are not currently any open GPU cores out there. At least, none that come within a mile of the "locked down" ones.
The M4V fileformat plays awesome on the NC and the quality is exceptional even with smaller filesizes (370ish megs for a full length movie) No lag at all.
The player I use is: mVideoPlayer (Free)
search for “mVideoPlayer” without the quotes in the android market.
PS It can play most (if not all) formats supported by Android/NC.
OMAP 3621 has a C64x+DSP
The OMAP 3621 has a C64x+DSP. That should be usable for hardware video decoding. In fact I beleive that TI has made video codecs available for their DSPs in the past, and there was even a Google Summer of Code project to create a Theora codec for the DSP.
This TI page tells you that the 3621 has a C64x+DSP: http://newscenter.ti.com/Blogs/news...ers-costs-for-ebook-manufacturers-305022.aspx
Droidish said:
The M4V fileformat plays awesome on the NC and the quality is exceptional even with smaller filesizes (370ish megs for a full length movie) No lag at all.
The player I use is: mVideoPlayer (Free)
search for “mVideoPlayer” without the quotes in the android market.
PS It can play most (if not all) formats supported by Android/NC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll second that. mVideoPlayer is the best thing going, also does subtitles if you've got them (use same filename, eg. MyVid.m4v + MyVid.srt)
If you end up converting videos I have had success with Handbrake (nightly build) using the iPhone profile, 720px width, 2 ref frames. Video bitrate at 900kbps seems to be enough (650kbps for Pixar films).
I think the B&N website explicitly states that the hardware video decoder renders everything to 854x480 and upscales all video to fit the screen. If you're converting just for the NC, it might be a waste to go above that resolution.
testulous said:
I'll second that. mVideoPlayer is the best thing going, also does subtitles if you've got them (use same filename, eg. MyVid.m4v + MyVid.srt)
If you end up converting videos I have had success with Handbrake (nightly build) using the iPhone profile, 720px width, 2 ref frames. Video bitrate at 900kbps seems to be enough (650kbps for Pixar films).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah yeah about the subs... In mVideo If you long press on any movie in your list one of the options is to download subs for that movie (there are some other things hidden there as well). It doesn't always find them but the option is there.

Rockplayer 1.5.x (Tegra 2 optimisations)

Thanks to the people over at Modaco I found out that a new Rock player is out
The latest 1.5.x release adds network streaming (via browser integration) and optimisations for Tegra 2 hardware.
If you have another ver. installed please uninstall it. Go to the market install 1.5.0 when you start it, it will have an update to 1.5.1 and once installed just activate it. (if you have a paid copy) if not it will have ads paid is only $9.99
The new update works great, this thing fly's and has loaded everything I throw at it.
Web streaming is easy I have Tversity setup on my home pc and a link to the IP in my browse I just select what I want to see and the stream starts right away in rockplayer.
I am still testing it, but so far this thing is WIN!
Really? Sweeeet. Ima try out som HD Videos now see how they run!
Just saw it on my Captivate. Trying it now on the Gtab
Let's see it play 720p MKV files natively. I'll be really excited if it can. Will try later.
I just tried a .mov (don't know how it was encoded) it played but like 1 fps and sound dropped out after. 1 minute. I then tried an H.264 .mp4. Same deal. Both were 1080p.
What is the gtab supposed to play 1080p in? Any one know?
The only video I had on my Gtab was a 720p 3211kbps XviD with AC3 audio. I tried playing it using hardware decode and it played beautifully but with no audio
Haven't had time to try anything else yet. Will post results when I get a chance.
So I am pretty disappointed with this update. I still can't play H.264 or mkv MPEG4 files in 1080p. The Tegra 2 is supposed to have an on-chip processor for H.264, but this does not seem to take advantage of it.
Thanks for the headsup on this one.
I downloaded and installed.
When I play my 720p mp4 movies, not sure how they are encoded, it asks me if I want hardware decoding mode or software. Which one should I pick?
Coty
I always try hardware first if it fails then I go software.
OK, so after a bunch of trial and error I got 1080p playing in Rockplayer 1.51 with hardware decoding. The file NEEDS to be an MP4 container encoded with MPEG. I used Handbrake to get it done. Everything else I tried doesn't work one way or another, either FC, no sound or no video. I hope this helps someone.
Using 1.51 with TnT 3.0, hardware acceleration mode resets my Gtablet. Screen blacks out and then reboots, starting at the fireworks streamer spash screen.
Tried multiple times with different files with same result.
yea the tab is unable to play videos encoded in High Profile due to hardware limitations with the Tegra chip. it only works with Baseline and Main profile. from my experience, Main gives a cleaner picture than Baseline does. if its encoded in High, the video will just stutter.
was excited to see that the new Rockplayer was Tegra optimized but it will never play 720p or 1080p vids without being converted to those profiles first. was really hoping i can just drag and drop my downloaded 720p tv shows into the tab and watch it but eh well. i need to figure out how to reencode my files while keeping it as close to 720p quality as possible.
gotwillk said:
yea the tab is unable to play videos encoded in High Profile due to hardware limitations with the Tegra chip. it only works with Baseline and Main profile. from my experience, Main gives a cleaner picture than Baseline does. if its encoded in High, the video will just stutter.
was excited to see that the new Rockplayer was Tegra optimized but it will never play 720p or 1080p vids without being converted to those profiles first. was really hoping i can just drag and drop my downloaded 720p tv shows into the tab and watch it but eh well. i need to figure out how to reencode my files while keeping it as close to 720p quality as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I must be unlucky, since 1.51 hardware mode crashes and resets my Gtablet with TnT 3.0 after playing a few seconds.
Why do you want to encode at 720p when the Gtab is not 720p? Seems overkill- if the files are for the Gtablet. I can see if just copying over to play, but if redoing for G, why not custom res to native of device?
rushless said:
I must be unlucky, since 1.51 hardware mode crashes and resets my Gtablet with TnT 3.0 after playing a few seconds.
Why do you want to encode at 720p when the Gtab is not 720p? Seems overkill- if the files are for the Gtablet. I can see if just copying over to play, but if redoing for G, why not custom res to native of device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well not 720p but at least close to it. the reason is that it will cause blockiness otherwise, especially for the scenes that have a lot of movement. i want to keep everything the way it is but using the Main profile instead of High profile, which the original vid is encoded in. i think i've gotten it pretty close as the original file but still noticeable blockiness in high movement scenes. i'm a guy thats a stickler for quality video and audio. don't mind me lol.
gotwillk said:
i need to figure out how to reencode my files while keeping it as close to 720p quality as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I convert my TV recordings using a free program called SUPER:
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html#Dnload
Lots of features, including a drag and drop queue to batch convert multiple files.
It's a little confusing at first, but has a good instruction page, and tool tips.
Right mouse click brings up different menus, depending on what your click.
Double clicking a file in the queue shows information about the source file.
Check the High Quality, and Top Quality boxes, 3600 or higher bitrate.
MP4 container, MPEG-4 codec, and AAA LC audio works on Gtab.
As for screen resolution from 720p source file, there doesn't seem to be much difference above 800 wide on the Gtab, so I set scale size to 800x448 for 16:9 video that fills the screen (slight black bands top & bottom, but scaled correct).
Good compromise between file size, and quality.
If you choose the original scaling, it converts the fastest, but huge file size.
Some programs like "No Ordinary Family" have audio in channel 2, so if there is no audio, change default to channel 2 in the settings before you convert.
Hope this helps.
I might be the odd one out with this program. I have had horrible experiences with compatibility, function, and even replicating the same failures.
I have a series of files all encoded by the same person form a "podcast" type video series. Some of the files will "load" in hardware mode(i say load because often sound doesn't work) and some will not. The catch is all of them load and fail sometimes.
I noticed virtually no change in the tegra "optimization" I am really disappointed frankly. I have no reason to buy the software if it doesn't support what I need and I was really hoping this iteration would provide me with some kind of noticeable improvement. I even had to use titanium to wipe data for rockplayer for it to launch any video at all. It also force closes opening videos that used to play perfectly in the old version.
I guess multimedia and android still don't mix =/
High Profile
I having success with HP video using Mediacoder. Both hardware and software rendering are successful with deinterlacing, 6 B-frames and 1920 by 1080 resolution.. My source is AVCHD content, so I am having some interesting issues with audio though....
[email protected] said:
I having success with HP video using Mediacoder. Both hardware and software rendering are successful with deinterlacing, 6 B-frames and 1920 by 1080 resolution.. My source is AVCHD content, so I am having some interesting issues with audio though....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what does deinterlacing and 6 b-frames do exactly?
also can you post the rest of your settings? i've been following someone else's settings on a Droid forum and they don't work that well with the tab.
For what it's worth, VLC for Android is reportedly in the works for early 2011.
Jokulgoblin said:
For what it's worth, VLC for Android is reportedly in the works for early 2011.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great news i look foward to trying it out.

Video playback

Hi there!
I have gotten to new Lg Optimus 2x now for about a week and I am getting a bit annoyed now. I bought it purely on Being able to play full HD Movies on my Tv. But with countless hours spent on forums and trying with different players, and also differnt types of formats.
What I have on the phone now is QQplayer and arcmedia and ofcourse Lg's player
Formats I have used and there display quality:
.AVI Works in QQ, Arc but not in LG's
.Xvid Works in all
.Mkv (480p) Works in QQ ,Arc but not LG's Also this is where the framerate goes down.... out of sync audio.
.Mkv (720p) Just awfull
I am now converting a 720p movie to mp4 format h.264 to try if that works but it takes ages and I can't be botherd to convert a movie for 4h when I want to watch it on my TV.
So what can be done.. why can it play back some lame teasers on full hd but not a bloody movie in decent quality on 480p...
What should I try to convert movies and episodes to?(prefix)
The phone is not Rooted and I have no experience in that matter
Kind regards!
Kruxa said:
So what can be done.. why can it play back some lame teasers on full hd but not a bloody movie in decent quality on 480p...
!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because a video is not just a video
Video consist of 3 parts
videopart encoded to some specific format (xvid, divx, mpeg-4, h264, mpeg-2) etc
audiopart encoded to some specific format (mp3, ac3, dts) etc.
a container (avi, mp4, mkv) etc. that encapsulates the video and audio part
furthermore the video and audio part are not just encoded in specific formats, but according to specific settings - often called profiles. These define things like bitrate, b-frames, ref.frames, and other technical stuff
The chipset only support hardware acceleration (which is needed to play video in high resolution) for certain types of formats, and only when encoded after certain specifications, and only when encapsulated in certain containers, and finally only when being played by the LG player.
Other players cannot utilize the hardware acceleration but rely on software filters like ffmpeg, these give you the possibility to play formats that are not supported by the chip itself or by LG's player by using these software filters. But this also means there are no hardware acceleration to help the playback and therefore you can only play these in standard resolution and/or you can get synch issues between video/audio.
the main format supported by the chip and the LG player is called mpeg-4/h264 - and its only supported inside an mp4 container - mkv are not supported.
The encoding of the video part mpeg-4/h264 are only supported up to a certain profile level - meaning it only support upto a certain bitrate, a certain number of ref.frames, of b-frames etc. It also only support certain audio formats, mainly aac. It wont play your downloaded 720p/1080p mkv with ac3 or dts audio, and a videotrack using h264 profile level H4.1 or more with lots of ref.frames
In short you cannot just throw any downloaded or home cooked video to the mobile and expect it play - it wont. Secondly if you bought it to be a generic HD mediaplayer for these types of videofiles, then you bought it for the wrong reasons. It is not a generic HD mediaplayer, its a mobile phone, with the ability to record and play up to fullHD video - if these comply to the specifications which are supported. This videoability are mainly targeted at recording video of reasonable quality (for a mobile phone) and playing web2 content like youtube HD video which complies to these standards.
Nothing more - it wasnt designed to be your HD mediaplayer replacement
So what to do ?
make sure youre videos are encoded as h264 using max profile level 3.1 and max 10mbps bitrate - using an AAC audiotrack and encapsulated in an .mp4 container. Then they will play in HD resolution.
Now all you need is reading a couple of hundreds websites and guides on how to check your files for these specifications (mediainfo), remux video from an mkv container to an mp4 container if the video and audio inside are allready compliant, or how to reencode to desired specifications if they are not compliant.
Very usefull mini guide into the jungle of video/audio, codec, splitters and containers.
Knowing this makes it easy to setup DVDFab and other rippers/converters (hopefully).
Thanks
I tested some h264 formats on the LG2x. Baseline profile works fine for 1080p video, I tried that up to 10mbit/s. Main profile works, but is too slow on 1080p and I think 720p also. It might work with SD resolutions, but I didn't test this. High profile simply isn't even recognized by the LG media player. I did try all profile levels, it ate all of them. Perhaps someone else can figure out the maximum bitrate the device will play smoothly, and what the "maximum" resolution for the main profile is (and at what bitrate).
So if you're putting h264 HD material on there, put it in an mp4 container with AAC audio, and use the baseline profile. 10mbit/s worked fine for the 1080p source I tested with (Looney Tunes Short Fur of Flying).
spawndk said:
In short you cannot just throw any downloaded or home cooked video to the mobile and expect it play - it wont.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hrms, can an app do this? Like for instance, on a desktop/laptop, Window's default player is not the greatest- however, here comes VLC player & it damn plays anything. My point is, can there be a App out there in our future that does this too for Android?
fen_nyc said:
Hrms, can an app do this? Like for instance, on a desktop/laptop, Window's default player is not the greatest- however, here comes VLC player & it damn plays anything. My point is, can there be a App out there in our future that does this too for Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
An app on Android can not use the hardware acceleration! On a computer however, a program (like vlc) is able to use your full power!
Hi all
Read this guide "How to make videos to Optimus 2x using Handbrake"
http://www.knowyourcell.com/lg/lg-optimus-2x/optimus-2x-guides/697986/how_to_convert_videos_and_transfer_them_to_the_lg_optimus_2x.html
Hi.. THX that is great help.. Very interesting.... .
Do you think that we can expect some 3rd party video player using hardware acceleration of Tegra 2 in Market soon.? Playing .mkv and other HD formats.? Or it is not possible.?
I do not know, but if Tegra 2 will be used in other phones than Optimus 2x ... drivers might be upgraded to support more video types.
Walvater said:
An app on Android can not use the hardware acceleration! On a computer however, a program (like vlc) is able to use your full power!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
RAWrrrRRR!! WHY?? Okay, I kinda get it thanks...
Its a fact that HW acceleration can only be used when/if Nvidia Tegra 2 drivers supports it.
But any app can play any format if it have the right SW decoder (using CPU).
Optimus 2x should be fast enough to play quality video (DVD resolution 720×576) using sole SW decoders
Isn´t Full HD on a mobilephone a total overkill and kind of waste?
If I want to se a movie on my Full HD Flatscreen I use my Media Center or BluRay player
im not sure what you guys looking for but all movies i downloded from internet just fly
gintas111 said:
im not sure what you guys looking for but all movies i downloded from internet just fly
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What kind of movies
YouTube videos ?
Hi Mittaa,
how does it work with big files..? You can only put files up to 4 Gb on the SD card can't you..? So there is not enough room for 1080p movies..???
element332 said:
Hi Mittaa,
how does it work with big files..? You can only put files up to 4 Gb on the SD card can't you..? So there is not enough room for 1080p movies..???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I said ... "Isn´t Full HD on a mobilephone a total overkill and kind of waste?"
FAT32 SD card can't handle files > 2GB
Maby you could split files and maby Android supports filessystems other than FAT16 and FAT32 ... I don't know
I think it is not a overkill. I don't have any way of getting HD content on my TV (BlueRay, Playstation, etc) so i can sure use this.
Or when I travel I can just plug my phone to the TV in the hotel room and watch the movie.
Overkill? Whats wrong with that?
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA Premium App
HerrKuk said:
Overkill? Whats wrong with that?
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Click to collapse
I agree. This phone has the specs to run it, & space is up to the owner to use. I remember a headline from Engadget stating that the "the 2X has a crazy amount of codecs for video media" when it's released in S. Korea. .mkv is probably the most popular container for HD videos- disappointing the 2X does not support this...
HerrKuk said:
Overkill? Whats wrong with that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is it possible to play 1080X1920 on a 480x800 screen?
It might be possible to use 1080X1920 when using HDMI mirror, but then how much space do you have on your phone? And do you want to split files > 2GB?
OK ... if you use hard compression file size drops ... but then quality also drops to something that you can compare with DVD resolution!
What I ment was that I personally prefare a lower resolution in a good quality
DVD resolution 720×576 ajusted to my phone (MPEG4) take up about 1-2GB and I use to have around 6-8 good movies on my 16GB SD card.
I too hope that more formats will be supported ... at the moment its just not good enough ...
optimus 2x supports baseline profile 4.1
basically it means that most of the 720p media files you'll find in the internet won't play smoothly because they are encoded according to high profile or even have been encoded after specifically more quality wise settings
if you need to encode for 2x you basically need software such as handbrake, set on the iphone and ipod touch profile on the right and change the resolution to your preference up to 1920 width and then set the bitrate so that the maximum won't go over 20Mbit
basically avg 15 would be fine though because of the fat32 limitations 4 gigabytes, it would be wise to calculate the bitrate according to the maximum file size
i do not know if Android supports ExtFat, which supports much higher filesizes, but because of the baseline profile limitations it doesn't really make any real difference between 1080p 15kbit/s or 5kbit/s video stream nor does those additional settings in Handbrake software
there is no "almost lossless" settings for optimus 2x, only thing matters is the speed for reencoding the bloody internet

NVIDIA Tegra 2 optimized Video Player

Found this at the transformer forum..
*Phi* said:
Just thought i'll share,
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mxtech.videoplayer.ad&feature=more_from_developer
its a multi-format player called MX videoplayer(in case the market link doesnt work).
so far seems good, comparable to mobo player
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Couldn't agree more.
regards
Thanks! Best player so far!
Wish there was a no-ads option, but it's good.
ZanshinG1 said:
Wish there was a no-ads option, but it's good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to send a note to the Dev telling him he should make a Paid, No-Ads option. A while back someone posted a ~95MB .mkv of Planet Earth in 1080P, and while MX player doesn't play it in any usable FPS, no other Xoom player I've seen will even attempt to touch it.
I'd pay $5 for this one. I'm just surprised how limited the Tegra2 HW codecs are; so many of the videos I have play in SW mode (but then again, maybe NVidia hasn't released all the specs necessary to take advantage of them?)
I really don't get why anyone wants 1080p playback (unless it's for HDMI of course) since it's a 16:10 1280x800 screen, which is 720p (plus the extra 80 rows of pixels for the menu bar).
kcrudup said:
I'm going to send a note to the Dev telling him he should make a Paid, No-Ads option. A while back someone posted a ~95MB .mkv of Planet Earth in 1080P, and while MX player doesn't play it in any usable FPS, no other Xoom player I've seen will even attempt to touch it.
I'd pay $5 for this one. I'm just surprised how limited the Tegra2 HW codecs are; so many of the videos I have play in SW mode (but then again, maybe NVidia hasn't released all the specs necessary to take advantage of them?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
really nice player indeed.
...but would even kill for a player with playback rate control and pitch correction through... (any dev listening? =] )
brandogg said:
I really don't get why anyone wants 1080p playback (unless it's for HDMI of course) since it's a 16:10 1280x800 screen, which is 720p (plus the extra 80 rows of pixels for the menu bar).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
because no one wants to reencode before watching.
I tested with 720p mkv movies and not work. Screen remains black, but is not running. Any tip? Mobo Player run 720p, but slow or dropping frames.
I have only tested MxVideoPlayer on divx/avi files and it is very similar to Moboplayer. I'd pay for a paid app also without adds if they would add/fix a few things below..
- Auto Rotate option.
- video playback should have option of resume or start over. I found a few bugs playing/resuming on videos that were incomplete. MxVideoPlayer would then show Video Playing Error when clicking on play because video was stuck on that *end spot*. The fix was to reset counters in preference to fix.
- add next/previous video button to toolbar and auto play next video in preferences.
Fix the above and remove adds and then I'll pay for that app.
brandogg said:
I really don't get why anyone wants 1080p playback (unless it's for HDMI of course) since it's a 16:10 1280x800 screen, which is 720p (plus the extra 80 rows of pixels for the menu bar).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Who wants 1080(p)?
1080p will be on the Xoom 2..the screen on that thing goes way beyond 1080p.
Sent from my DROIDX using XDA App
Well I guess I get it if you have a 1080p movie that you want to watch on your PC, PS3, etc, and don't want to download (or *ahem* re-encode) a 720p version. That makes sense then.
I'm intrigued by, and appreciative of, the suggestion. I did download and try it, but I don't see anything to tear me away from Act 1 (which I've been quite happy with). Probably, I don't understand which format to use - but, I tried re-encoding a movie at 1080 and MX Video wouldn't play it any better than Act 1. Which is to say, I got a "format not supported" message and no joy...
Any ideas why this app (MX videoplayer) needs our GPS location?
this app is cool.
Thanks for sharing.
REgards
you guys see a diff between s/w code and h/w codec. Seems the same
It is not working for me, are there requirements for specific mkv codecs?? my mkv files never worked proporly 3.0, 3.1 or 3.2 with mobo, rockplayer or this one (just tried with 3.2)
Nothing will play in HW, it all plays SW. Even when I uninstall and reinstall both the app and codec.
Thanks happened to me with Mobo Player as well.
Stock, non-rooted, US WiFi only on 3.2.
Any ideas?
Timbledore said:
Nothing will play in HW, it all plays SW. Even when I uninstall and reinstall both the app and codec.
Thanks happened to me with Mobo Player as well.
Stock, non-rooted, US WiFi only on 3.2.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What kind of files are you trying to play? HW mode means that the app will make use of the Tegra2 hardware acceleration.
That means it will be subjected to the limitations of the Tegra 2 chip. The Tegra 2 chip can only decode certain 720p h264 formats with certain profiles and up to a certain bitrate. Let's not even go into 1080p.
Not only that, the Tegra 2 can only decode certain audio streams as well, so if your videos are in AC3 audio, you have to reencode the audio to something like AAC.
You can use a program like Mediainfo to check what formats your video files are in.
Edit: I think some folks are still not familiar with video formats and what the extensions mean. Mkv is just a container format for video files, similar to Avi. What's important is what codecs are used to encode the video and audio streams.
For example Avi files usually have divx/xvid encoded video streams and mp3 audio streams, mkv files have h264/mpeg4 AVC video streams and AC3/AAC audio streams.
So 3rd party apps are just able to open up these video containers and attempt to decode the video and audio streams for your viewing.
But they will use the CPU to process them using the app's built in codecs where possible if the chipset doesn't support it.
You can refer to the official specs of the Tegra 2 to determine what kind of video/audio compression formats it can decode.
So technically, the Xoom can playback avi files encoded with divx but because using software to decode requires some licencing fee in certain scenarios so that's why Honeycomb has no basic support because being "open source", Google did not pay for the licenses to playback some of the supported video formats. I may be wrong about this but it makes sense.
If you see other tablets like the Transformer or the Acer Iconia, you will realize they can playback more formats because the manufacturers probably paid for extra licenses and added playback capability into the OS. At least that's what I figured out.
musashiken said:
What kind of files are you trying to play? HW mode means that the app will make use of the Tegra2 hardware acceleration.
That means it will be subjected to the limitations of the Tegra 2 chip. The Tegra 2 chip can only decode certain 720p h264 formats with certain profiles and up to a certain bitrate. Let's not even go into 1080p.
Not only that, the Tegra 2 can only decode certain audio streams as well, so if your videos are in AC3 audio, you have to reencode the audio to something like AAC.
You can use a program like Mediainfo to check what formats your video files are in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, these are mostly xVid with AC3.
Mainly TV shows that I have missed. I rarely have time at home to catch up and more time on the move.

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