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Hello Everyone,
After much testing/researching, I have finally found the best solution to encode .MKV files to .MP4 for flawless playback on the HD2 using MediaCoder. I have tried many of the other methods and settings provided by others on this forum and many of them were good, but simply took too long or sometimes caused choppy playback on the HD2.
UPDATE 9/6/10
Thanks to everyone who has helped out with new settings and testing out encoding methods in this thread and the entire forum. I have recently had major issues with encoding certain videos in H.264 resulting in audio sync issues, frames, and artifacts. Doing some more testing and help from forum members, I will be updating the settings to what I have been using recently and having absolutely no issues with even on 1080P files. Just remember to use Windows Media Player, it provides the best playback for these encodes!
MediaCoder Settings:
Format: H.264 ( If Possible use CUDA Encoder, much faster!)
Mode: Average bitrate @ 1500Kbps
Audio encoder: FAAC
Audio Format: LC-AAC
Audio container: AAC
Audio mode: Average bitrate @128Kbps
Container: MP4
Resize: 800x480
Effects: Filter by Encoder
Aspect ratio: Keep Display AR
With these settings I have tested 12 different files ranging from 500MB-1.8GB in size(720p quality) and the largest took 34 minutes on my dual core CPU (intel i5). First tried playing the files with HTC Album player and CorePlayer and the results weren't very good and they included a lot of choppiness. After reading some others success with WMP, I decided to give it a shot and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it played the .MP4 files beautifully and without a single hiccup.
Some of you may already have solutions for encoding videos for playback on the HD2, but I have found these settings to be perfect for anyone who wants to encode HD .MKV files.
I want to thank everyone who has contributed to finding the best method of converting/encoding files for playback, but I can honestly say these settings will give you amazing quality and smooth playback, even in the most intense action scenes. Give it a try!
Smack it up, flip it, rub it down,
Sticky this to be seen all around
Very nice find!
Wow, tried many of different settings and this one has worked the best for me so far! Sticky this!
Great find. This is now stuck
Great find. One question though, I have been using XenonMKV to package my MKV files to MP4 and it never takes longer than 10 minutes to do and the videos work flawlessly on my XBOX 360. Haven't tried it on an HD2 since I haven't got one yet. Do the MKV files have to be re-encoded to work on the HD2 or can they simply be repackaged into an MP4 as XenonMKV does?
htpw16 said:
Great find. One question though, I have been using XenonMKV to package my MKV files to MP4 and it never takes longer than 10 minutes to do and the videos work flawlessly on my XBOX 360. Haven't tried it on an HD2 since I haven't got one yet. Do the MKV files have to be re-encoded to work on the HD2 or can they simply be repackaged into an MP4 as XenonMKV does?
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one reason ud wana change them up is to lower the resolution and bitrate since you dont need it so high on the smaller screen and it uses less battery
I will try it but I don't even convert mkv I just hit up coreplayer but I will keep this in mind
i dont have the option for 800x450 does that just depend on the original aspect of the video? its lost so should be 16x9
domineus said:
I will try it but I don't even convert mkv I just hit up coreplayer but I will keep this in mind
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same here I dont see the use of it (at least for me)
lbhocky19 said:
i dont have the option for 800x450 does that just depend on the original aspect of the video? its lost so should be 16x9
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You probably meant to say "16:9" which is the aspect ratio. Also, check for 800x400, it should be there.
Depending on your encoder, you might want to see about removing the black bars that are so prevalent on TV shows crammed onto DVDs. The black bars not only take up precious screen space, but they cause the decoder to render them, which is CPU-intensive. Also they cost you in battery life since black is the most expensive color rendering for our screens.
I've tried these settings 3 times on .avi and .mkv amd I either get an unreadable file or sound but no video. the HD2 WILL NOT play ANy of my .avi files and it lso doesn't play some .mp4.
I have tried .mkv files and yes, some of them fail when I try to play them. I kept the same settings from the first post and only changed: Aspect Ratio = Keep Pixel AR.
Which MediaCoder version do you use?
Thank you,
Mike
medrison said:
Which MediaCoder version do you use?
Thank you,
Mike
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I use MediaCoder 0.7.3.4625 x64. For some of you having trouble playing .MP4 files, what player are you using to open them with? I have found WMP to give me no trouble playing any .MP4 file I threw at it.
htpw16 said:
Great find. One question though, I have been using XenonMKV to package my MKV files to MP4 and it never takes longer than 10 minutes to do and the videos work flawlessly on my XBOX 360. Haven't tried it on an HD2 since I haven't got one yet. Do the MKV files have to be re-encoded to work on the HD2 or can they simply be repackaged into an MP4 as XenonMKV does?
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Re-encoding the MKV files seems to be the better choice for size and smoothness of playback. At the native bitrate of 3000+Kbps playback is choppy for me even when using WMP. Not only will lowering the bitrate provide smoother playback, but it will lower the file size. The videos I encode are around 500MB average, and when encoding is finished they are no larger than 250MB, which helps a lot since I only have a 16GB memory card.
Using MediaCoder 0.7.3.4625 x64. On my PC I have no problems playing the .MP4. The only issue I get is when I transfer the file to the phone, and try playing it on the phone. I hear audio but no video, but after changing the Aspect Ratio that seem to have fixed my issue.
N1M1TZ said:
Using MediaCoder 0.7.3.4625 x64. On my PC I have no problems playing the .MP4. The only issue I get is when I transfer the file to the phone, and try playing it on the phone. I hear audio but no video, but after changing the Aspect Ratio that seem to have fixed my issue.
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Glad to hear things are working fine for you. If you don't mind me asking, how's the playback, and what player are you using?
Gentlemen, let me introduce to you AnyVideoConverter - this little baby is free and does the job just fine!
Tried it out w/ some anime. Select file, and hit convert to mp4 - perfect sync!
http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/
godsafk said:
Re-encoding the MKV files seems to be the better choice for size and smoothness of playback. At the native bitrate of 3000+Kbps playback is choppy for me even when using WMP. Not only will lowering the bitrate provide smoother playback, but it will lower the file size. The videos I encode are around 500MB average, and when encoding is finished they are no larger than 250MB, which helps a lot since I only have a 16GB memory card.
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Wait....250MB...I end up with 1Gb/movie with your settings.
May I ask if you are sure you wanted 800/450 px and not 800/480?
Thank you,
Mike
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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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
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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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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
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First rule of Usenet.....
roebeet said:
First rule of Usenet.....
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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).
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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?
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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.
Has anyone experienced video lagging causing audio to fall out of sync? I've been playing a small variety of .mkv files and some lag and others don't. What's most odd is that the largest file I've tried (24 minute 1.15GB, with subs) works fine, while a smaller file (24 minutes, 274MB, with subs) falls out of sync within a minute and doesn't re-sync until I move the playback head.
I've seen that other Android handsets seem to have similar issues, though the solution was usually to re-encode the file at a lower bitrate, but I don't get why a larger file would work fine while a smaller one would have sync problems?
Both video files I'm mentioning here are MPEG4 (h264), but the larger file's audio is Dolby AC3 48000Hz audio while the smaller one is AAC 44100Hz audio. I'm playing the video with mVideoPlayer and the videos are stored on the internal memory.
Edit: I've played the same file side-by-side on my laptop and phone, and it's definitely the video that's lagging.
Sorry for the bump, but I'd really like to know if anyone else is having this problem, or if there's a solution for it. No one else experiencing this problem?
I went back and tested multiple players mentioned here on the boards. I tested every player using the same file, one that lagged in the stock player and in mVideoPlayer. Here's a rundown of my results:
VPlayer: no lag, no matter what combination of settings used
RockPlayer: lags in hardware decoding mode, no lag in software decoding mode but terrible video quality (artifacting everywhere)
MoboPlayer: lags (in hardware decoding mode?), no lag in "default software decoding"
mVideoPlayer: lags
stock player: lags
I don't know what's causing the lag, but it almost seems like the players relying on hardware decoding are mainly the ones that lag. Not all files lag, just certain ones, as mentioned earlier.
usually, the reason why video & audio out of sync is the bitrate and framerate are inconsistent, in this case, i suggest u using a video tool, with the video tool, there are two solutions for you:
1. you can convert mkv to the format that compatibled well by galaxys 2
2. just import the mkv video into the tool, then adjust bitrate and framerate.
i prefer the first way, the second way you need trying many times.
for myself, i use fox real video converter, it has video audio sync technology
Thanks for the suggestions. Part of my decision to buy the GS2 was the fact that it could play large video files without conversion since I don't have the time to constantly re-encode video files. Will probably drop the $4.99 on VPlayer since it's been playing my files well. Still prefer mVideoPlayer tho.
Is there some way to check if a file has inconsistencies between bitrate and framerate as you've mentioned?
I convert MKV files to play on my PS3 with a great tool called mkv2vob. It can convert a 1.5GB movie in about 2 minutes, so I imagine it's not actually encoding at all. I'm just curious as to whether it would solve your problem, especially with it being such a quick and easy app to use.
http://www.mkv2vob.com/showthread.php?tid=1
Giving mkv2vob a shot, but it's taking far longer to convert than 2 minutes. My ~250MB file is about 25% through video transcoding, and I'm already 5 minutes in. Will report back whether it worked or not, but I don't think I'll be doing this for every video that lags.
Okey-dokey, here's what happened with the video file I converted with mkv2vob:
It output an mpg file that was unplayable or problematic in mVideoPlayer, MoboPlayer, Rock Player Lite, and lagged in VPlayer. Encoding/transcoding took about 30 minutes, and the resulting file was 337MB, up from the original's 273MB.
I guess you could say it didn't work out well. I found it interesting hat the file lagged in VPlayer where before the same file played fine before the conversion.
-Tj- said:
Thanks for the suggestions. Part of my decision to buy the GS2 was the fact that it could play large video files without conversion since I don't have the time to constantly re-encode video files. Will probably drop the $4.99 on VPlayer since it's been playing my files well. Still prefer mVideoPlayer tho.
Is there some way to check if a file has inconsistencies between bitrate and framerate as you've mentioned?
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i don't know how to check the file, when i met this problem, i just import the file into the video tool, by viewing the preview to adjust some parameters
i have the same problem with my neverlocked and unrooted sgs2 running firmware "pda:kf3/phone:kf7": mp4 videos with x264 video codec and AAC VBR audio codec loose audio-video sync. i.e. the video lags behind and you hear people talking before they open their mouth. using xvid4psp 5.0 i experimented with the used audio codec. when recoding the videos to mp4 with x264 video codec and AAC ABR av sync is o.k.. using MP3 as audio codec also works but since AAC is the mp4 standard audio codec i'll stick to that.
and by the way: using another video player like vplayer also works with the problematic AAC VBR videos. since vplayer does software-decoding i suspect a problem with the hardware-decoding layer in combination with certain video/audio codec combinations (like x264 und AAC VBR). the benefits of hardware-accelerated-decoding are better performance and lower battery drain. therefore i want to stick with the stock-video-player (because i asume it is strictly using hardware-accelerated-decoding).
Hi,
I'm trying to make MP4 files from my DVD archive to play on NT. I'm using MeGUI and I have been through that process a number of time for my PC. However, the problem I have with NT is that it seems it cannot playback 16:9 or other wide formats that have non-square pixels correctly: during playback, it shrinks the video to display it with square pixels. No need to say that the same files play correctly on a PC or other devices (Xbox 360, network media player, etc.).
One solution is to resize the video during encoding. I tried that with HandBrake (couldn't figure it out in MeGUI though) and encoded a PAL 16:9 video (in the standard 720x576 pixels forat) into an MP4 file with 1024x576 pixels. It worked and NT played the file beautifully. Still this process is less than ideal as it reduces the overall quality and wastes space.
Is there any way to keep the original video resolution and still make NT to play it correctly? Also it would be great to know how to do that with MeGUI (HandBrake is fine but misses a few critical features compared to MeGUI).
Thanks,
AlefSin
Please read carefully! It took me an hour just to write this post, not counting days of troubleshooting.
The old situation:
I have a collection of video in different compressed formats on my home server, and i want to access them from my phone.
So far, i have been using sftp for this (several file managers support this, esp. ES File Manager), but either the sftp protocol or ES file manager aren't suitable for streaming, there's too much stuttering and freezing. This is not a bandwidth issue!
Partial solution & new problem:
I use a dedicated media server (ampache) on my home server, and a dedicated client (DSub) on my Acer E700 (aka E39), stock android, rooted, firewalled.
I noticed a problem with video that uses AC3 sound encoding - The video plays fine (even hi-res), i just don't hear any sound.
And it happens only when i stream the video through the network (http?) (*) - the file plays just fine when i copy it to the phone, or use sftp via ES file manager, or download the file through my media server.
I tried this with all media players i have:
stock android video player
ES media player
MX player (with or without custom codec neon.1.7.32.rev1.zip) - it says, when playing files through the media server, that HW+ or SW decoding is not supported, however when i play the same video locally there's no such limitation.
I also tried all video streaming settings inside DSub:
Raw
HTTP Live Stream (HLS) (this did not work at all)
Direct transcode (requires video -> mp4 or similar setup on server)
Flash plugin (did not work, i guess i don't have the flash plugin)
and the result is always the same: all video plays fine, but video with ac3 sound has no sound.
unfortunately most hdtv videos use h264/ac3...
here's a list of codec combinations and resolutions that don't play sound:
h264/ac3 1280x720
avi/ac3 704x396
avi/ac3 640x368
here's a list of codec combinations and resolutions that do play sound:
quicktime/mp4 848x448
quicktime/mp4 1280x720
quicktime/mp4 716x404
avi/mp3 640x360
I can only come to the conclusion that android treats different codecs differently when streamed through the network. How can I solve this?
(*) i also copied one of the affected files to the public html section and tried to open it through my phone's browser, and the result is the same: no sound with ac3.
i did notice that one of the "good" files opened right inside the browser, whereas the "bad" file asked to open with a media player.
i'm pretty sure this is about ac3 audio.
i just don't understand why it works flawlessly when i play the files straight from phone memory, but not over the network?