Alternative to Handbrake - DVD Catalyst - Nook Color Themes and Apps

Seeing some of the threads/questions re: Handbrake settings for the Nook, if you're having issues or just want something completely automated I found that DVD Catalyst ($10) has three presets for Nook Color (normal, fast, high quality) that work very well -- essentially just load the file or folder, select the preset and hit go. You can enable "advanced" user if you want to tweak the options but I've tested it with a couple of dvd video_ts folders and videos of different codecs (both audio and video) and they've all come out in good quality, and all playable without software decoding.
The file sizes that come out are comparable to the ones produced by presets for Handbrake people have produced here. a 1 hr 55 min video encoded for me at 1.39GB at the highest quality Nook setting.
I know it's not free like Handbrake but it might save someone headaches especially if they're wrestling with, for example, widescreen anamorphic content that isn't 16:9 or 4:3. Or if they just don't want to deal with tweaking presets
Does batch jobs as well, and has presets for a slew of other android devices if you're also converting for other formats/resolutions for your phone, etc.

is it faster then handbrake when converting the video?

Somewhat; I tested it last night for you with a 5-minute video. It took Handbrake 3 mins and 45 seconds to encode, it took DVD Catalyst 3 mins 15 seconds -- I can't (or haven't found) the command line interface to see what DVD Catalyst is writing out for its encode jobs, but I've tried to match w/e specs as closely as possible for the test (audio/video bitrate, etc.) How that will scale to larger files, I'm not entirely sure -- I batch encode all my videos before I go to bed at night.

I'd like to use AMD Video Converter as it uses the GPU to convert and is about twice as fast as Handbrake even on my Quad Core but I'm having trouble finding a way to manually control the settings for the output to match the NC needs. Anybody have any tips there?
Edit- Trying out MediaEspresso - Media Converter. So far, problems with output, will keep trying and report back. MediaEspresso settings not working with NC. It is a pretty nice encoder that has support for GPU encoding and is faster by about 50% than Handbrake, but not flexible enough to get the output that the NC needs. Working great to encode for my EVO however.

Just wanted to point out that with the speed of the NC (OC) and the range of codecs recognized by various players you hardly need to recode videos anymore.

britoso said:
Just wanted to point out that with the speed of the NC (OC) and the range of codecs recognized by various players you hardly need to recode videos anymore.
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Have you gotten 720p videos to work smoothly with software decoding? I am only oc'ed to 1.1 Ghz and they still stutter. That's what I'm normally encoding.
*** Edit:*** Just to clarify, I mean encoding from 720p -> 480p so I can use Nook's hardware acceleration.

Both nookie froyo and the newer cm7 builds have hardware decoding

I didn't think the Nook's DSP (TI OMAP 3621) allowed native 720p decoding, only the OMAP 3630+ -- there was a thread here somewhere that said something about that. The 854x480 maximum resolution was, I thought, a hardware, not software limitation for the Nook.
From my own (meager) experience, anything higher than 480p insists on being played via software decoding regardless of what player I've used.

Some sites say 720p, others mention what you said... I just leave hd content for my bigger,hd screen

britoso said:
Just wanted to point out that with the speed of the NC (OC) and the range of codecs recognized by various players you hardly need to recode videos anymore.
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I have moboplayer and CM7 OC to 1.3 and 720p video is still sub par via software decoding. Best results are still to handbrake recode to mp4 at 854x840.

The hardware decoding only handle mp4 files.
I tried this software to re-encode hd file to lower res mp4 and it does it lot faster than handbrake (on old P4 w/o gpu decoding GPU) : format factory : http://format-factory.softonic.fr/

Related

[Q] 720P playback on G Tablet - Is there a fix to make these videos play correctly?

I just picked up my gtablet yesterday and have been spending my time installing tnt lite and installing several apps. I bought it because when I go on trips I wanted something that could browse the net, and play videos. I installed RockPlayer and put a 720p mkv file onto the machine, however playback is very choppy and its almost like the device cannot handle it. I know that several people have gotten 1080p to work good, and I am wondering if there is a setting that needs to be enabled to make 720p work better? I did some digging and saw that someone said to edit a line in the build.prop file (set the media.stagefright.enable from true to false), but I cannot edit my build.prop file. And I am not entirely sure that this will fix the problem. Are 720p videos playable on this machine?
What profile did you render the movies in? Try changing the MKV extension to AVI... Sometimes some renderers treat containers differently even though they are using the same codecs.
just tried to rename the extension from .mkv to .avi and still same choppiness and eventually the videos stops playing all together. I am not sure what rendering is, but the file is encoded AAC 2.0 H264
h264 is not the issue, it's what profile its encoded in
I have this in my FAQ section (in my sig). h264 is supported, but the Tegra 2 cannot handle h264 encoded in high profile. It can handle main profile.
This is confusing to people. So, what I would recommend is to download the excellent "mediainfo" tool (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en) and it will show you how your videos are encoded.
As for container support, I think MP4 plays a little better than MKV, but Rockplayer (in the Market) seems to be able to handle MKV and using hardware acceleration. Again, as long as it's h264 main profile.
This is not just an issue with the GTab - all the Tegra 2 devices will have this issue as its a limitation of the chipset, or so I've read. Vega, Folio, even the mysterious Adam will probably have this same limitation.
Reference on h264 and main / high profile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
Thank you for clarifying. I am wondering can I convert the video to the main profile and then get it to work?
Maximus1000 said:
Thank you for clarifying. I am wondering can I convert the video to the main profile and then get it to work?
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Yeah, that's the tricky part. I haven't been able to figure that out yet, although granted I haven't put much time into it. I think these "profiles" depend on how you encode and which tool you use.
If you try the Tron Legacy trailers, they are 1080p but main profile. A good example of how nice videos can look on it, when encoded the right way.
I have to play around more with something like ffmpeg to see if I can pin this down. Another reason for transcoding is to keep the sizes down, since we have the 4GB FAT32 file size limitation to deal with. Yuk.
I've incoded a 1080p high profile to main. sound was in and out then tryed a few things and lost sound. Video played great anyways.
I guess it depends on the encode. I dl a 720p music video off of youtube, mp4 avc [email protected] (according to mediainfo) and it plays just fine.
japhule said:
I guess it depends on the encode. I dl a 720p music video off of youtube, mp4 avc [email protected] (according to mediainfo) and it plays just fine.
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Could be a lower screen resolution that full 720p (not all 720p's are alike).
I also read today that Tegra 2 720p should work in high profile, but 1080p definitely does not. But, Android itself might be limiting even 720p, so it's a crap shoot.
Just out of curiosity why do you guys want those big files on here anyway? Is it to output to a TV? I wouldn't think you would need such a high quality file to watch stuff on the G tab.
Sent from my VEGAn-TAB-v1.0.0b2 using Tapatalk
Sprdtyf350 said:
Just out of curiosity why do you guys want those big files on here anyway? Is it to output to a TV? I wouldn't think you would need such a high quality file to watch stuff on the G tab.
Sent from my VEGAn-TAB-v1.0.0b2 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
It's not about storing large files on the gtab...its more about having video portability. I keep my movies and videos on a server that I stream from my living room and bedroom. It would be ideal if I can play files on any device without having to reencode the video.
I did test 1080p files from YouTube and they did not play (high profile).
Ok, makes sense. I do the same thing using upnplay and my server. Thought you were wanting them on the tablet.
Sent from my VEGAn-TAB-v1.0.0b2 using Tapatalk
Sprdtyf350 said:
Just out of curiosity why do you guys want those big files on here anyway? Is it to output to a TV? I wouldn't think you would need such a high quality file to watch stuff on the G tab.
Sent from my VEGAn-TAB-v1.0.0b2 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A two hour 720p movie runs ~4GB, so it's close to the limit in FAT32. And you could easily go over the limit when encoding, which would require you to break the file up. Annoying.
The problem here is that none of the vendors want to agree on a replacement file system for portable devices (wow, no surprise there). MS wants exFAT, the open source community would prefer EXT3/4, and I assume Apple would prefer HFS+.
Sprdtyf350 said:
Just out of curiosity why do you guys want those big files on here anyway? Is it to output to a TV? I wouldn't think you would need such a high quality file to watch stuff on the G tab.
Sent from my VEGAn-TAB-v1.0.0b2 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
Can't speak for everybody else, but for me I'd want to just use the video files I broadcatch from the NNTP groups. Ideally, I wouldn't want to have to reencode video to watch it, just access it directly from my media server. Standard definition avis work okay, but eventually these will not be offered and of course the HD versions look way better. Over the years it's been harder to come by a regular source of SD resolution TV Series feeds. The 720P encoded files quality are noticeable versus SD even on this smaller screen. Ideally we would get high profile 720P MKV at least to work as it seems this is what the guys doing NNTP TV Series seem to be encoding in.
What I would see happening is that a video player on the GTablet will access the files off the media server and stream, not play files directly off the local Internal SD. Regardless of where the file resides, it looks like it needs to be refined to play these files more fluidly.
I'm not saying this will be the only nor primary method of viewing video files, but having the flexibility and option is always nice. Especially when all the tvs are watching something else. ;P
dkhilo said:
Can't speak for everybody else, but for me I'd want to just use the video files I broadcatch from the NNTP groups. Ideally, I wouldn't want to have to reencode video to watch it, just access it directly from my media server. Standard definition avis work okay, but eventually these will not be offered and of course the HD versions look way better. Over the years it's been harder to come by a regular source of SD resolution TV Series feeds. The 720P encoded files quality are noticeable versus SD even on this smaller screen. Ideally we would get high profile 720P MKV at least to work as it seems this is what the guys doing NNTP TV Series seem to be encoding in.
What I would see happening is that a video player on the GTablet will access the files off the media server and stream, not play files directly off the local Internal SD. Regardless of where the file resides, it looks like it needs to be refined to play these files more fluidly.
I'm not saying this will be the only nor primary method of viewing video files, but having the flexibility and option is always nice. Especially when all the tvs are watching something else. ;P
Click to expand...
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First rule of Usenet.....
roebeet said:
First rule of Usenet.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay I'm doing the Madagascar penguin "you didn't see anything gesture" now. LOL.
Sent from my GTablet-TnT-Lite using Tapatalk
japhule said:
It's not about storing large files on the gtab...its more about having video portability. I keep my movies and videos on a server that I stream from my living room and bedroom. It would be ideal if I can play files on any device without having to reencode the video.
I did test 1080p files from YouTube and they did not play (high profile).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please share how you are thinking about doing that using movies/pictures/videos on Windows Media Center share or NFS mount.
I tried very same thing as some of my movies still in vob format or mpeg2 (home recordings of kids), tv recordings using microsoft format or streaming pics, and nothing seems to work. I was able to use upnpplay (android program in the market place) to browse my stuff on the shared drive, but can't play mpeg2, vob or other format.
does anyone know what's the best way to do this?
G Tab supports H.264 1080p main and high profiles
Detailed specs on what Audio and Video formats G Tablet supports are listed in the manual downloadable from the Viewsonic web site.
But in a few words - it does support up to 1080p, both baseline, high, and main profiles for H.264 with certain limitations for each, and MPEG4 simple profile.
rob_z11 said:
Can you please share how you are thinking about doing that using movies/pictures/videos on Windows Media Center share or NFS mount.
I tried very same thing as some of my movies still in vob format or mpeg2 (home recordings of kids), tv recordings using microsoft format or streaming pics, and nothing seems to work. I was able to use upnpplay (android program in the market place) to browse my stuff on the shared drive, but can't play mpeg2, vob or other format.
does anyone know what's the best way to do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My entire system is redundant. I have my windows 7 share as well as my htpc/nas running tversity, orb and audiogalaxy (music only). Everything is shared in every way. First I try just streaming the file through Windows 7 dlna, which generally works fine. I too use Upnplay. If something doesn't work (very rare) I move to looking for it through Tversity which attempts to detect the dlna device and scale it so it works. I've never needed to use Orb on the GTab since I really got everything up and running, Orb is for when I actually am on the road and want to watch sth. from my home network. PlayOn may actually work as well - it has a free mode which allows you to use it to share files on the local network using VLC codecs.
Video Playback
I'd like to add to this conversation with, I hope, clarification of how to get higher definition video playback working on the GTab.
I've tried four video files that are 720P or 1080P. None of them works well in Movies, DoubleTwist, Rockplayer, or VitalPlayer.
G Tablet, TnT 4.21, OE kernel. Market fix. Various apps.
Videos all playing from /SDCARD
Here is some more information about those videos, using Mediainfo:
Touring Car race:
720P MPEG-4 50FPS AVC ([email protected]) (CABAC / 3 ref frames)
AAC Stereo
Big Buck Bunny:
http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/
1080P OpenDML AVI 12Mbps 24FPS MPEG-4 Visual ([email protected])
AC-3 audio
Audi R8:
720P AVC Matroska 800Kbps 29.970FPS AVC ([email protected]) (CABAC / 2 ref frames)
AC-3 audio
Donington LG demo:
1080P BDAV M2TS 35.5Mbps 29.970fps AVC ([email protected]) (CABAC /3 ref frames)
AC-3 audio
Are all of these simply too much for me to get away with playing on the GTab? I've played most, if not all of these, using a Broadcom 70012 Crystal HD decoder card on a Dell Mini 9 (Atom N270) with few problems.
Thanks for the help.

[Q] What video codecs for hardware acceleration?

I have a bunch of 1080p MKV movies that I want to convert into mobile versions for the Galaxy S II, but does anyone know what codecs I should use in order to take advantage of better battery life?
I play to shrink these down to 800x480 res. Any recommendations on bitrate too?
Also, any software or guides recommended to convert MKV to whatever codec has hardware acceleration for this phone?
All the video formats that the phone can play natively are hardware accelerated. So u can choose from MP4, avi, FLV and so on.....
I don't have much knowledge regarding the subject. But here's what I gathered:
According to Wikipedia:
The Exynos 4210, unlike Tegra 2, features support for ARM's SIMD engine (Media Processing Engine, a.k.a NEON instructions) and this may have a significant performance advantage in some cases over Tegra 2 in critical performance situations such as accelerated decoding for multiple multimedia codecs and formats (e.g., On2's VP6/7/8 or Real formats).
Click to expand...
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Now, to take advantage of that hardware there also needs to be software that supports it.
MoboPlayer is one such software, that I know of, which has "ARM V7_NEON" playback codec and so it will fully utilize Galaxy S2 resources.
As to regards to which format you should convert...
On the MoboPlayer website is said that: "Almost all video formats(need to choose "software decoding" mode inmost cases)."
So I suppose what you need to do, is to disable "software decoding" mode and see what video formats will be supported in hardware mode.
stra said:
I don't have much knowledge regarding the subject. But here's what I gathered:
According to Wikipedia:
Now, to take advantage of that hardware there also needs to be software that supports it.
MoboPlayer is one such software, that I know of, which has "ARM V7_NEON" playback codec and so it will fully utilize Galaxy S2 resources.
As to regards to which format you should convert...
On the MoboPlayer website is said that: "Almost all video formats(need to choose "software decoding" mode inmost cases)."
So I suppose what you need to do, is to disable "software decoding" mode and see what video formats will be supported in hardware mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I live in the US and we don't have the SGS2 released here yet. Can anyone who has the phone already, please test this out and let us know which codecs are hardware accelerated with MoboPlayer?
I found this guide for transcoding:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/211070-How-to-convert-MKV-to-AVI-or-OGM-to-AVI-using-mencoder
I don't think there is an "optimum" bitrate because that is going to vary depending on content, ie, number of fast motion scenes. Maybe encode it in VBR and set the top limit fairly high.
I know this phone will handle 1080p MKV, but some of my mkv files are like 12gb!
Hi, dont bother with anything else, handbrake should be your tool of choice. There are various templates included but I usually just set it to MP4 high profile and choose the file size I want, handbrake then does the rest and bloody well too.
Do a search on here for handbrake, there may already be threads about it, note though you should only really have to re-encode if you movies are over 4 gig (fat 32 limit) as I haven't found a file this phone wont play yet with one player or another. My players of choice are always stock first, then mobo, then DICE.
stoolzo said:
Hi, dont bother with anything else, handbrake should be your tool of choice. There are various templates included but I usually just set it to MP4 high profile and choose the file size I want, handbrake then does the rest and bloody well too.
Do a search on here for handbrake, there may already be threads about it, note though you should only really have to re-encode if you movies are over 4 gig (fat 32 limit) as I haven't found a file this phone wont play yet with one player or another. My players of choice are always stock first, then mobo, then DICE.
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Thanks mate! Actually, I'm getting this phone for my GF for our anniversary and she's a big Harry Potter geek, she has all the books and blu-ray. I've already converted her blu-rays to MKV so she can have them all on the XPS 15, but I was hoping to convert the MKV down to a mobile friendly format.
All the HP movies add up to 80gb so I can't just copy the MKV's on there, that's why I was thinking of transcoding again.
I did find this bit of info on the Exynos:
http://www.samsung.com/us/business/oem-solutions/pdfs/Exynos_v11.pdf
1080p Video Encode/Decode
- H.264 30fps
- MPEG-4 30fps
- VC-1 30fps
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Click to collapse
It doesn't say what container it supports but from what you say, it sounds like MP4 is the way to go. Thanks for the Handbrake tip!
one thing you should aware of is that if you intend to get the MHL>HDMI adapter at some point you may want to transcode at a resolution a little higher as it wont look great on the TV. If you are just playing on the phone then you can get them down to a fraction of the size. I found the best thing to do was to find a smaller film clip that was encoded as 1080 MKV and run off some tests, then save off the template and batch convert the log. I converted all my start trek films from 8 gig to 2 gig a piece, I left them at 1080p but set the file size down to 2 gig. The all look great on my Phone and still really good on my TV through the HDMI, best of both worlds.
stoolzo said:
one thing you should aware of is that if you intend to get the MHL>HDMI adapter at some point you may want to transcode at a resolution a little higher as it wont look great on the TV. If you are just playing on the phone then you can get them down to a fraction of the size. I found the best thing to do was to find a smaller film clip that was encoded as 1080 MKV and run off some tests, then save off the template and batch convert the log. I converted all my start trek films from 8 gig to 2 gig a piece, I left them at 1080p but set the file size down to 2 gig. The all look great on my Phone and still really good on my TV through the HDMI, best of both worlds.
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Wow, that's crazy! I doubt my gf will ever output these to a TV. I'm still playing with Handbrake's settings.
One thing I don't get about it is that HP is 1920x800'ish, so when I set it to 800, the height drops down to 336'ish.
I think I'd rather have it fullscreen and sacrifice cropping some of the sides, so I clicked ASPECT RATIO and set the height to 480.
Handbrake set the width to 1152, so I set a crop of 176 on left and right, to try to bring the final size back down to 800x480.
But Handbrake has some weird algorithm that doesn't seem to give the desired result? It changed the output size of the video on its own after I changed the cropping values.
So, I'm not quite sure how cropping is handling in Handbrake, is it done before or after the resolution is resized?
Mobo can't use HW video decoder. SW decoder use SIMD(NEON) instructions.
Exynos HW video decoder can decode 1080p.
Try diceplayer. it use HW video decoder in Exynos ( Multi Function Codec )
juami said:
Mobo can't use HW video decoder. SW decoder use SIMD(NEON) instructions.
Exynos HW video decoder can decode 1080p.
Try diceplayer. it use HW video decoder in Exynos ( Multi Function Codec )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks but does it also depend on which container or codec the video is in?
I'm assuming that h.264 video in a MP4 container should be hardware accelerated right?
H264 in any container up to High Profile level 5.0

[Q] Best video settings (balance of quality and size)

I've been trying to find information about this but I have been unable to yet (likely due to how new it is). I'm trying to find the best settings to re-encode my videos for a balance of quality and size.
Test the NT's video capability here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1348488
As for encoding specs, it's simple: conform to MP4 specs (H.264, AAC stereo) if you want to use built-in player and hardware accel.
Newbies tend to obsess with encoding parameters, and there've been reams of how-to's for Handbrake encoding. You don't have to bother with any of that. The 4430 should handle anything in 720p, and the majority of 1080p. I would use the default settings of whatever encoder you prefer.
For quickie conversion to MP4 (from common formats), see my VidsOpt script conversion in the above link.
Thank you for the information. And it's not so much worrying about all the settings but trying to maximize how many shows/movies I can hold on the NT at once. I travel a lot for work and some of the flights are LONG so having as many options as possible is what I'm really looking for since it wouldn't be as simple as just loading other videos onto the NT at the time.
Cozila said:
Thank you for the information. And it's not so much worrying about all the settings but trying to maximize how many shows/movies I can hold on the NT at once. I travel a lot for work and some of the flights are LONG so having as many options as possible is what I'm really looking for since it wouldn't be as simple as just loading other videos onto the NT at the time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get a 32 GB uSD card. I can hold 20+ hours of video on mine.
>to maximize how many shows/movies I can hold on the NT
There are two ways to lower a movie's size, reduce the resolution, or reduce the quality. Both are a personal preference.
A 90min movie averages 800MB-1GB, encoded at 480p and standard quality. Then, you can fit 32 such movies onto a 32GB uSD. With a larger res, you can fit fewer. You can also of course have more than one uSD card.
Getting ready for the Thanksgiving drive and saw this question, so did a test re-encode of Green Lantern. Original file is a 720p mkv
Video Bitrate: 720p (1280x536 @ 4811kbps)
Audio Bitrate: DTS @ 1509 kbps
Using Handbrake Normal as the baseline.
1) Container MP4, left extension as .m4v
2) Picture: changed Anamorphic to Loose, Width to 1024 (assumed native width was a good idea to reduce size)
3) Video: Video Codec x264 which means encode took about 50 minutes. Constant Quality 22
4) Audio: AAC Mixdown to Stereo, Samplerate Auto, Bitrate 160
5) Subtitles: need to play around with this later
Original mkv filesize was 5.7GB
.m4v file was 913MB
To me, it looked absolutely great. Could not complain and actions scenes didn't show any sign of stutter. Didn't watch the whole thing through, but didn't seem to come across any problems either.
I'm sticking with these settings and will see if there are any changes required.
I'm not a video encoding expert or a Handbrake expert - but I think I know enough and need at least 3-4 movies for the drive.
Hope that helps.
Thank you very much, I'm going to give those settings a try when I get home.
The settings are working great. So much that I actually put the setting into a preset file for anyone else that wants it in http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1361819. Thank you very much for your help iron_c

MKV playback issues

Hey guys, just got a few 720p high profile mkv files which reviews claimed could be played with the stock video player. All 3 files currently do not. Dice player works in trial but when i try to buy it gives me not found in the market. I'd rather usethe built in player personally but has anyone else had any luck either way?
EDIT solved with bs player
Try moboplayer its free.
Sent from my Galaxy S2
or MXPlayer I have used that on many MKVs
compuw22c said:
Hey guys, just got a few 720p high profile mkv files which reviews claimed could be played with the stock video player. All 3 files currently do not. Dice player works in trial but when i try to buy it gives me not found in the market. I'd rather usethe built in player personally but has anyone else had any luck either way?
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Click to collapse
I got same problem,but i used mx player and upnp , works flawless
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
erick0423 said:
I got same problem,but i used mx player and upnp , works flawless
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
I use the exact same
mx player works well but there's no hardware decoding available in any of them. Very disappointed ( though I know the hardware is capable of it). I know anandtech? Or one of the reviews did a blu ray rip and it played great so I'm guessing I'm missing something, an update broke it or if will be fixed in ics. Is also possible they just need hardware drivers for tegra3. I'm optimistic, is launch week, well have awesome devs, it'll get sorted eventually. Even software decode stutters just a bit ( I'm a video perfectionist). Also peeved at xda app FCs but again, brand new device. Just let me know if anyone (particularly those who didn't update) has any better luck.
Unbelievable , this still not resolved after the Tegra 2 debacle.
i've played a couple mkv's just fine with the stock player and mx player. the only issue i've had with them is if i skip around, the video never picks back up, works fine in software though.
but if i just watch the movie through without skipping around, it plays perfectly.
as you can see here ICS has added support to the Matroska format, so hopefully the default player will be handling it smoothly in ICS.
hXXp://briefmobile.com/android-4-0-ice-cream-sandwich-announced-feature-list
replace hXXp with http in link.
That's good to know. Was thinking of cancelling my preorder once I heard people having problems with mkv's & diceplayer being unavailable
compuw22c said:
mx player works well but there's no hardware decoding available in any of them. Very disappointed ( though I know the hardware is capable of it). I know anandtech? Or one of the reviews did a blu ray rip and it played great so I'm guessing I'm missing something, an update broke it or if will be fixed in ics. Is also possible they just need hardware drivers for tegra3. I'm optimistic, is launch week, well have awesome devs, it'll get sorted eventually. Even software decode stutters just a bit ( I'm a video perfectionist). Also peeved at xda app FCs but again, brand new device. Just let me know if anyone (particularly those who didn't update) has any better luck.
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How were these files encoded? Because in order to take advantage of hardware decoding a file has to meet a certain standard. If it deviates even a tiny bit, it will not work.
Go and Download BSPlayer lite from the market. It has the same funtionality like Diceplayer. Tegra 3 can nearly play all 1080p vids.
RussianMenace said:
How were these files encoded? Because in order to take advantage of hardware decoding a file has to meet a certain standard. If it deviates even a tiny bit, it will not work.
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Well its h264 high profile, which tegra 3 plays. Tegra 3 isn't picky, as long as its less than a 42mbps bitrate the hardware will handle it. The only standard it must meet is 1080p and less and 42mbps or less in h264 anyways. For tegra 3, i'm sure software is the issue.
Files came from my media server which are also hw accelerated with an nvidia graphics card via vdpau. never even have to check, just always plays (h264 anyways)
Again, i'm sure they'll fix it eventually,I know the chip does it, still annoying., its why I never bought tegra 2. And for those suggesting software decode, battery life PLUMMETS and the performance we would have with hw decode would be as good or better than blu ray with no stutter.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5163/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime-nvidia-tegra-3-review/5
EDIT:BS player appears to work WITH hardware acceleration. Every other app told me "not supported by system player, using software device" including dice
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
Prime will handle highprofile mkv just fine if you use a other media player like mxplayer, diceplayer The problem when you can't play with the stock player is that it for the most times can't handle the audio.
Just give them some time to update there players to full Tegra3 support. The device have only been out some days and I think the developers also would like to have a device to test on.
I have posted this in a other thread, but I will repost it here to. From swedroid.se test, and translated into English.
"As is the case for the music player, Asus do net onclude their own video players, but instead uses default player that comes with Android. This is a rather rowdy players who only manages one of our clip in the table below (# 9), but without any sound, because support for AC3 missing."
"The third-party video player dice player or MX Video Player, both of which are available in the Android Market, it is however full marks. ASUS Prime plays everything we feed it with, whether it is DivX, XviD or MKV / h (x) 264-films with soundtracks in DTS or AC3 format."
Resolution / Codec / Profile / Container / Bitrate / Audio / Results (MX Video Player
640x352 XviD / [email protected] / AVI 1 Mbit/s MP3 2.0 OK
576x320 XviD / [email protected] / AVI 1,4 Mbit/s MP3 2.0 OK
720p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 3 Mbit/s AC-3 5.1 OK
720p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 9 Mbit/s AC3 5.1 OK
1080p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 14 Mbit/s DTS 5.1 OK
1080p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 19,2 Mbit/s AC3 5.1 OK
1080p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 22,8 Mbit/s DTS 5.1 OK
1080p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 25 Mbit/s DTS 5.1 OK
1080p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 30 Mbit/s AC3 5.1 OK
1080p h.264 / [email protected] / MKV 42 Mbit/s AC3 5.1 OK
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@OP
Have you tried a straight MP4 (H264/AAC) with standard Android player? You do realize that it's not just the video track that kicks the (3rd-party) player into HW or SW mode, right? Subtitles, for instance, will invoke SW mode. Chapter tracks will also probably cause SW.
As much as you sound you know, then you should also know that not every downloaded video is the same. If you have problems, SOP is first to provide specs (MediaInfo works), second is to provide a sample, third is to specify environment (which player you've tried, and their respective performance). Only noobs go "my vids don't work, now what?"
With the non-info you've provided, all you get is guesswork.
What do you mean by " files came from a media server"? If you are streaming to the device, expect skipping playback because WiFi can't handle hi-bitrate 1080p.
I have no issues running 720p or 1080p hi profile (locally) on my Transformer Prime in Dice player, even with DTS and multiple audio tracks.
people need to realise 3rd party players need to be optimised for tegra 3 for hardware acceleration. its not to do with type of file, as long as it does not have very high bitrate.
Everyone has to understand, that MKV is just a container. You can put almost anything into this container so therefore it is unlikely that the hardware can decode everything that can go into a MKV container.
The main thing about the Kal-El SoC, it is the first chip that can decode h.264 High Profile video. To see the supported codecs that Tegra 3 can decode in hardware see: http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-superchip.html
I've ripped hundreds of blu-rays. I've ended up using two sets of files.
Archive for playback on Samsung LED TV's and other high end DLNA devices:
Container: MKV
Video: H.264 High Profile 4.0 Constant Quality 18-20 1080p
Audio: AAC-LC 384 5.1 channel
Subtitles: sub format
Software: HD Decrypter, RipBot264 and Handbrake
Mobile Devices:
Container: m4v
Video: H.264 Base 3.0 Profile, 2-pass (1000kbps widescreen and 1200kbps for 16x9) qHD size (960x540),
Audio: AAC-LC 128 2 channel
Subtitles: Converted from the MKV
Software: Handbrake
I spend most of the time make the archive format looking as good as possible for it's size. Most files come out to 4-7GB per movie. There are exceptions depending on the quality of the movie. Movies with lots of noise in them come out to be much larger then one that is very clean. Computer Generated movies will come out to 3-4GB using CQ 18. The Prime should decode these just fine.
The mobile size I use for under powered devices and also to have as many movies as possible for it's size. qHD actually ends up looking very nice for it's size when down converted from blu-ray. A two hour movie comes out to be about 1GB. This way I can have on average 60-70 movies on 64B microsdxc card and about the same on the 64GB prime itself.
sorry, but I felt I provided all necessary info. The files are stored locally, mkv h264 high profile 20mbps streams with ac3 5.1 audio. They also have subtitles, though I don't need them.tpb was the source of all 3.
In any event, bs player works with hardware acceleration perfectly and I'm very happy. It also shows the hardware is fully capable of it, software will soon follow (ics)
compuw22c said:
sorry, but I felt I provided all necessary info. The files are stored locally, mkv h264 high profile 20mbps streams with ac3 5.1 audio. They also have subtitles, though I don't need them.tpb was the source of all 3.
In any event, bs player works with hardware acceleration perfectly and I'm very happy. It also shows the hardware is fully capable of it, software will soon follow (ics)
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According to the Tegra 3 specs, AC3 is not supported in hardware.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-superchip.html

The Official Nexus 10 Video Playback Specs

Does anybody have that?
For example Apple has listed for its Ipad4
Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High Profile level 4.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG‑4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
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Where are these specs from samsung or google? When I had my Ipad 4, this helped GREATLY with converting movies to the proper format.
Rinzler said:
Does anybody have that?
For example Apple has listed for its Ipad4
Where are these specs from samsung or google? When I had my Ipad 4, this helped GREATLY with converting movies to the proper format.
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Sort of a moving target.
The Exynos 5250 has native support for: MPEG-4/H.263/H.264 decoding and encoding and decoding only for (MPEG-2/VC-1 and VP8)
Source:
http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...t/application/detail?productId=7668&iaId=2341
BUT
The actual wrapper formats supported nativley and in what players depend on software support. Everything will play on the processor in software mode through a cpu decoder like FFMPEG being used by MX Player or BS Player from the market place (free). But software mode is not the most efficient mode and will drain the battery at a faster rate than native HW playback.
Here is what I know seems to work so far in the native player: MP4/H.264.
If anyone else has had native support with something else sound off. As to a spec sheet that is the best I can show you, but as I said it is not representative.
MrGrimace said:
Sort of a moving target.
The Exynos 5250 has native support for: MPEG-4/H.263/H.264 decoding and encoding and decoding only for (MPEG-2/VC-1 and VP8)
Source:
http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...t/application/detail?productId=7668&iaId=2341
BUT
The actual wrapper formats supported nativley and in what players depend on software support. Everything will play on the processor in software mode through a cpu decoder like FFMPEG being used by MX Player or BS Player from the market place (free). But software mode is not the most efficient mode and will drain the battery at a faster rate than native HW playback.
Here is what I know seems to work so far in the native player: MP4/H.264.
If anyone else has had native support with something else sound off. As to a spec sheet that is the best I can show you, but as I said it is not representative.
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Are you able to smoothly playback mp4's?
If you are..what frame rate and what avc works for you best?
Step 1: download MXplayer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mxtech.videoplayer.ad&hl=en
Step 2: make sure your content isn't 10-bit (hint: most likely it isnt)
Step 3: Your content will play. Basically 99% of regular content will work. To be honest, I cant think of anything that hasnt worked for me, and I play high-bitrate anime with advanced substitle scripts (ASS-subs). It works fine.
Rinzler said:
Are you able to smoothly playback mp4's?
If you are..what frame rate and what avc works for you best?
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Yes. Most of the MP4s I have tried are H.264 standard 30fps and up to 1080P. All worked on the native player
For other's experiences with MP4s up to 60fps and 1440p see this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1995176
If you are using a player like MX Player and are trying to play an Mp4 Muxed into an MKV then the video will play with hardware and you can select software for the audio (right now. this may improve in the future).
As the other poster said. Almost everything will play with MX Player. It is just a question of whether it is played using HW codecs or SW Codecs. HW codecs use built in decoding capabilities on the chip to vastly reduce the workload on the processor. SW decodes everything on the processor and then pushes it to the screen. The only difference between the two from a user perspective is efficiency and battery usage. (and on super-res files there may sometimes be slowdown in SW mode)
To be honest I have tried everything from mkvs to rms to movs to wmvs on MX Player and ALL have played successfully in the SW player.

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