Hi all, I'm sure this is a common topic but unfortunately, the search term "orb" doesn't come up with anything since it is only three characters and using the google search isn't coming up with much up to date info.
I've managed to get it working, but the quality seems kind of shaky. I haven't re-encoded any of the video files on my computer, but from what I understood Orb transcodes on the fly to lower the bitrate to make a good match with the upstream and downstream capabilities of both your home computer and your phone or whatever device you are viewing the media on.
Is it just dropping the bitrate by dropping frames and decreased the sound quality or is it actually transcoding the resolution of the frames, etc.? Maybe a better solution, if I don't want to go through my entire library and re-encode everything to lower resolution would be to use TVersity which does for sure transcode...
...................................
If you make it stream through SteramingMedia it is a lot less studdery, but the quality is way low. I found that to stream movies Kinoma Freeplay is the best so far. I am currently looking for alternatives for streaming my LiveTv.
Related
If space isn't a major issue (I mean I'd like to reduce the video size, but I have a 2gig card that I plan to use only for video so it's not super important to get the vids as small as possible) - what are the best encoding settings for 3gp video with respect to quality playback on the dash.
Is there a way to encode something larger so that it could be played relatively decently on a laptop but still work okay on the phone too? There might be occasion where I'm on the road with a work laptop and would prefer to simply copy the movie over and watch it on the larger laptop screen as opposed to directly on the phone.
I've done some searching around and did some encoding with DVDFAB but I was using a custom profile someone whipped up for a dpod and while the playback is acceptable for on the phone, there is some pixelation and since the encoding was specifically for the phone, I suspect playback on a larger laptop screen would be terrible.
Thanks for the help!
See subject.
Really? Nobody?
Sorry...I used to use it but now I use Coreplayer instead...Tj
I use it.
Hello,
I have used tcpmp for many years, and think it's the best overall player out there, especially considering the price! ;-)
As far as settings go, I have the version mentioned here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=565653&highlight=tcpmp
and I followed the directions about blitting. I also (from old habit) set video to use raw, instead of direct draw because in past versions that setting helped smooth out video quite a bit.
I am very pleased that the TP2 can actually handle 'full sized' xvids, without having to reencode them to a lower bitrate and screensize, but it's not perfect. Ironically, it reminds me of the way my oldest pocket pc (Casio e125) played back .mpg, which had to be encoded at 15 fps: stopgap.
There must be a fix though, because I also have a file I recoded for my iphone as an .m4v file, with pretty high bitrate, and when I click on it, it plays with the 'built-in' player found in the photoviewer by default, and the playback is nearly perfect.
I must say: the iphone certainly has the advantage for video playback, although having to recode bites. They have VLC player for hacked iphones, but it can't playback xvid worth a damn.
So after reading up and finding that video playback isnt brilliant on the tp2 i thougt i would do some tests.
my goal was to find an easy way to watch films. I dont really want to have to convert all my films to mp4 and use the htc album, but i dont really want to have to switch of sense and soft reset every time i have a spare 1/2 hour.
So using the same footage I ran multiple formats on the following players:
coreplayer, TCMP, Media Player and HTC album.
Not really sure how conclusive it is ( and there is certainly more testing that can be done)
i am going to try using MP4forHD to convert the file a last time and try that on all players
have a look at the results and let me know what you think
So basically what you're saying is that the only videos that work are the original AVI and some MP4s with coreplayer without Sense turned on. That sucks.
Interesting results. I have never bothered trying with sense or spb mobile shell off, but for most videos I watch (640x320 or something close, i.e., vga resolution), they seem to work ok on the tilt2. I get some annoying pixelation with TCMP, but the default windows media player seems to play them pretty crisply and smoothly. the only tradeoff there is WMP is pretty low on the totem pole feature wise.
it also seems odd to me that your results get worse when sense is turned off. It's more intuitive that it would work better if you have more ram available. Could this be an issue with a custom rom you flashed? I am using the stock ATT with spb mobile shell. Did you try a different media file?
I am using the stock rom
from what i understand the HTC and windows media use some sort of graphics acceleration
so you dont need to turn off sense.
stringman said:
I am using the stock rom
from what i understand the HTC and windows media use some sort of graphics acceleration
so you dont need to turn off sense.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, that makes sense. Still not sure why things get worse with Sense off, but maybe that is just the human side of the measurement, as they do all look pretty close between the two sets? And actually, it gets better for Core, worse for TCMP, and then about the same for the other two.
Do you think it would be worth trying with a different SD card, or better: trying a small video loaded from the device? If you play from the device, you at lease take the age/quality of the SD card out of the experiment as a variable. Even though you wouldn't watch a video from the device in real life, it may be a better way to benchmark, unless you are benchmarking for a specific card.
I think adding a streaming file to the test would be interesting too. Anyway, thanks for the research on this. It is a very interesting topic, imo.
The muisc player wasn't working for me either, and movies really sucked! nothing would play.
I switched roms and now everything works, music plays and comes up in the player, and movies look and play good.
I converted with AVS here are my settings:
Video codec: MPEG4(divX/Xvid compatible)
Audio codec: MPEG2/4 Audio
Frame Size:
Width: 368
Height: 208
Frame Rate:
Bitrate: 520
File Type: mp4 PSP
Channels: Stereo Sample Size: 16bit
Sample Rate: 48000Hz Bitrate: 128kbps
I watched on the built in player and didn't have to turn anything off, my fully charged battery lasted for almost 4 hours of nearly constant use ( i turned it off after i got under ~7% left).
PocketDiVXEncoder
hard to go wrong with PocketDiVXEncoder
http://www.pocketdivxencoder.net/EN_index.htm
its free, and makes amazingly good playable .avi's out of almost anything
the 1.7mb :30 second clip attached below was encoded at 300k video/96k audio, and the whole movie is about 390megs @ this level of quality.
Anything made in PDE thats <= 1200k/128k/640x480 seems to play flawlessly in COREplayer
my issue is that if i have to convert any file to anyformat its a real pain.
on the td2 i could tranfer a avi fil from my laptop to the sd card and watch the film no problem.
now i have to convert it to a mp4 or something and to a particular resolution
ok so its about 40mins but its a pain
so bearing in mind that this does need to be done
whats the best format ( i am leaning to mp4)
whats the best resolution settings
whats the best prog ( i am using mp4for hd at the moment)
cheers
I'm traveling next week, and thought I'd transcode some .wtv TV recordings from Win 7 Media Center to take with me. Will probably use DVRMSToolbox, because it knows how to work with wtv files natively. I might use something else if it's too much of a pain in the neck, as a lot of other programs work fine with the older dvr-ms container and Win 7 will natively switch a file from wtv to dvrms.
I figured I'd transcode to h.264, but was trying to decide on video resolution and bitrate. I'd tried some mkv's at 800x480 a few days ago and they stuttered a bit much for my liking, so I had ended up lowering the resolution to what I use for a ZuneHD (480 wide) to smooth that out. They didn't look quite as sharp, but played back smoothly.
So what have you guys found to work well?
Tried to search, but searching for transcoding got me a post about VLC streaming, and searching for video settings got me fps lock stuff
again...
Andy S,
There are many threads on this, on multiple forums. Please search thoroughly before posting.
That being said, I personally transcode with mpeg-4, as I have noticed less stutter vs h.264, at 720 horizontal. I don't specify a bitrate, I prefer specifying a target file size. I'm watching the content on a 4 inch screen, not an HDTV, so this is satisfactory. Side note - Froyo sped things up quite nicely. These settings work very well for me, though I apply them to DVD's I rip, not DVR recordings. YMMV.
Thanks for the response. As I said, I did several searches with no easily found answers specific to the Evo.
I went through 5 pages of that with no answer to my specific question. Lots of general stuff for other devices, some stream transcoding via VLC, DLNA, etc. My searching probably is deficient.
Sorry if I offended.
Andy S-
No worries, this is a Q&A forum after all. It's just that there are certain subjects that come up frequently, and it gets old.
Do the community a favor though, and post the results of your transcoding work, as well as the settings/apps you used. I am certain others will find the info handy, as I haven't seen any posts on transcodes from W7MC recordings.
This thread had some interesting info:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/archive/index.php/t-695910.html
khov07 said:
Do the community a favor though, and post the results of your transcoding work, as well as the settings/apps you used. I am certain others will find the info handy, as I haven't seen any posts on transcodes from W7MC recordings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will do. The 7MC just uses a .wtv container, which in most cases is MPEG2 inside as would be brought in via the tuner, although in Europe it could be h.264 because the container now supports it (the previous dvr-ms didn't). I think it supports .aac, mp3, and AC3 audio. It also has good meta data support.
So it's nothing fancy inside, it's just not a lot of software support the container very well. I don't think MS has it very well documented for developers.
Hi all,
just wondering what people are using to convert .avi/.mkv/etc to mp4/wmv/etc so Zune/Wp7 can use them?
ATM i'm using anyvideoconverter and converting the video's to "Zune HD" but it seems to leave a black border of about 5mm around every edge of the video which is really annoying me, so anyone got any other good ones?
Only confirmed ones please, i've used dozens of Conversion apps that say they'd do the job but in reality they don't, so only post if you've used one for WP7/Zune.
Just convert your Video to MP4 or WMV with WVGA resolution.
Audio said:
Hi all,
just wondering what people are using to convert .avi/.mkv/etc to mp4/wmv/etc so Zune/Wp7 can use them?
ATM i'm using anyvideoconverter and converting the video's to "Zune HD" but it seems to leave a black border of about 5mm around every edge of the video which is really annoying me, so anyone got any other good ones?
Only confirmed ones please, i've used dozens of Conversion apps that say they'd do the job but in reality they don't, so only post if you've used one for WP7/Zune.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this application should solve your problem....you can adjust everything....
http://www.any-video-converter.com/products/for_video_free/
It was great,I use it to convert videos for my android and Iphone...and it is very flexible.You can adjust the bit rate,size...almost everything...and it is free...
That's what i'm using at them minute sylau as i said in my post
Audio said:
ATM i'm using anyvideoconverter and converting the video's to "Zune HD" but it seems to leave a black border of about 5mm around every edge of the video which is really annoying me...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you know of a good one which will let me just convert to mp4 WVGA Paul?
*EDIT* Just found This Thread which Recommends a GUI for MENCoder called "SUPER". My dealings with MENCoder have been great in the past so i'll give it a go and let others know what it's like.
FWIW the Microsoft way is to use Expression encoder for WMV. It's free, it's nice, and it does a good job encoding, so if you want WMV you should use that one.
paul_43 said:
Just convert your Video to MP4 or WMV with WVGA resolution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My Zune does not even want to read WMV files so I can not upload. I have multiple copies of DVD's/Blu-Ray's with digital copie of movie for portable devices.
I can copy those movies to my PC and watch them, I can watch them on HD2 but zune doesn ot see them so I can not copy them on to phone. They are all in WMV or MP4 format.
MP4 don't work in Zune!
I tested with this videos: http://cid-e9230930f20e0820.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Windows Phone 7 Ads
deleted, please ignore this message
Same problem, I have digital copy's of blu-ray's that came with them, they play using WMV but the Zune Software won't see them and won't play them.
Download 'Expression Encoder'. There's an option to encode specifically for Zune.
Portos2008 said:
MP4 don't work in Zune!
I tested with this videos: http://cid-e9230930f20e0820.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Windows Phone 7 Ads
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny as phone by default records in mp4
Mabe the audio stream?
I was just playing around with this last night, and the biggest issue was the audio stream. While it plays h264 streams up to the High Profile level 3.0, it did not like an AC3 stream. I had to demux a video that I had in an mkv container, convert the audio to AAC and remux into an mp4 container. Microsoft has a whole detailed table of stream type compatibility with bit rates, profiles, etc. I can't seem to post links, so search for it at the msdn dot microsoft dot com under this title "Supported Media Codecs for Windows Phone". The list on the WP7 consumer site sucks btw.
The AAC has two compatible types, AAC-LC and HE-AACv1 or v2.
I used MeGui to redo the audio, and yamb to mux it.
Thanks dgetz, here is the link to msdn.
Audio said:
Hi all,
just wondering what people are using to convert .avi/.mkv/etc to mp4/wmv/etc so Zune/Wp7 can use them?
ATM i'm using anyvideoconverter and converting the video's to "Zune HD" but it seems to leave a black border of about 5mm around every edge of the video which is really annoying me, so anyone got any other good ones?
Only confirmed ones please, i've used dozens of Conversion apps that say they'd do the job but in reality they don't, so only post if you've used one for WP7/Zune.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for the time being i have been using "HTC Touch HD Video Converter"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=467112
Seems to work very well
anyone try clonedvd mobile. I have used this in the past with the sony psp settings and gotten very good results, just a very small black strip (maybe 1-2mm) across the top and bottom of the screen (on my hd2).
Portos2008 said:
MP4 don't work in Zune!
I tested with this videos: http://cid-e9230930f20e0820.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Windows Phone 7 Ads
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can confirm that MP4 works on the Focus, using TV shows previously converted for my iPhone 4
I use handbrake on Windows and Mac to convert my videos, using the settings from
http://lifehacker.com/5572037/handbrake-presets-for-your-new-ipad-or-iphone-4
The results have been good, but using the frame(middle) setting shown in that article does bump up the file size a good amount, and as I'm sure a lot of you have heard, storage space isn't so easy to come by on WP7 yet...
Handbrake
I too can vouch for handbrake. All of the videos I have made for my ipod touch with it work just fine on the Focus. Unfortunately, the library I have for the touch is lower resolution, with videos at about 1/2 DVD resolution and at 500kbps encode rate. I end up with about 500 MB for the about 90 min. It is nice because they don't take up a lot of room, but still look decent. When output to a standard definition TV they look fine as well.
When I first put a few of these home videos on the Focus the lower quality was immediately noticeable. To see how I could push the phone, in my reply above I took a full DVD resolution video 720x400 (16x9 non-anamorphic) and corrected the audio stream. That video looks gorgeous on the Focus screen and is great for showing off the phone. It also takes up over 2.5 GB!!!! It is encoded at a rate of about 2100 kbps. As with any video encoding for a mobile device you have to make your own decision about resolution, encoding rate, etc in that constant game of quality versus size.
One thing to note. If there are black bars on your video, then either you have a video that was not encoded in a proportion that matches your screen or it was hard coded with the black bars. The second thing should be rare nowadays (eliminating this wasted information space was the point of an anamorphic DVD). The first is actually very common. IF your media is a studio movie, almost every action film these days comes at 2.35:1 instead of 16:9=1.77:1. Personally I like viewing any of my content in the way it was originally intended to be viewed and don't ever re-proportion anything. At the moment I am not sure if the Focus/WP7 'stretches' videos. I know on my ipod touch this was an option you could toggle by double tapping the video during playback...
Maybe I will play around with a few options tonight and report back.
have a zunehd and remember seeing this thread on abi
anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58183
it converts the audio of any avi/mkv and keeps the video the same, so converting only takes a few mins, and zune software recognizes it..for the zunehd anyways, maybe someone can try w/ wp7
Since I couldn't find right settings for MediaCoder (best video converter ever).
I was using Prism Video Converter for my Omnia7.
About settings for prism:
For .wmv use as video compresor WMV9 and for sound WMAV9, i am not changing the resolution as it is not bothering me at all. All files (mostly avi or mkv) played smooth after conversion.
If anybody have good settings for MediaCoder I will be much appreciated for sharing.
Thx
Okay, so MP4forHD works. The quality still isn't stunning, but it'll do for now (i guess.) However, i've encountered an issue with contrast. All my blacks appear as dark grays, which drives me nuts