Develop Bugs

best video convertor

im about to buy core player and a new 8 gig micro card
i want to convert some of my SD and HD movies to use while on holiday
movies are in TS. or vob format at the mo
which is the best way to convert them to play using core player
thanks for any advice
i have tried encoder but the audio is always out of synce
thanks for any help

Try DVDFab

dvdfab is for copying my dvds what i want to do is convert film files i have on my pc into smaller files such as divx or mpeg 4 to play via core player
is there a universal tool to do this
edit found the mobile convertor in it but very limited no options to change res or audio and doesnt seem to work i click next and nothing as though it doesnt see the file types

i was playing with mediacoder last night, seemed to do the job for me. lots of settings as with any codec conversion process and u'll need to experiment to find the best codec/bitrate/resolution combination for you and ur media.
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

just got core player
with WMP it plays my mpeg 4 conversion of monster inc no probs
with core player its very stuttery
file details are
Mpeg4
video avc aka h264
codec coreavc
video size
800 x 448
frame rate 25.00
i suppose what im looking for is to be able to convert the file to a format and res that core play will play smoothly
thanks for any advice

Ghostifish said:
i was playing with mediacoder last night, seemed to do the job for me. lots of settings as with any codec conversion process and u'll need to experiment to find the best codec/bitrate/resolution combination for you and ur media.
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/
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cant get this to run
keep getting msvcr71.dll was not found
download the eg fixer to cure it and says it cant be run on a 64 bit system
any help would be great
thanks

Didn't have a problem with it myself with vista x64.
I already had the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime library installed and just used the 32bit version of mediacoder and didn't bother with the 64bit addons. Not having experianced the problem you have, I'm not really in a position to offer much more help than that. Sorry
If you keep having trouble with mediacoder, you could try SUPER. I used to use it, but found its UI a bit of a mess.
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

I use Visualhub on OSX. It will specifically do H.264 MP4 videos made for iPhone and iPod Touch but you can also specifically set the resolution and the bitrate so you can specifically set for the TP2 screen. I get faster and higher quality video at the iPhone resolution especially since high bitrates choke on the TP2. Couple that with Coreplayer and it's a done deal.

combat goofwing said:
dvdfab is for copying my dvds what i want to do is convert film files i have on my pc into smaller files such as divx or mpeg 4 to play via core player
is there a universal tool to do this
edit found the mobile convertor in it but very limited no options to change res or audio and doesnt seem to work i click next and nothing as though it doesnt see the file types
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you picked your source at the top of the screen?
but DVDFab is a shareware so here's a freeware for you
http://www.winnydows.com/page.php?2
more tools through google

With core player go menu/tools/preferences/select page/video
And put video out onto qtv display. Put video quality on high. Smooth zoom on.
Then try your mp4.
I find it best to convert videos to 320 x 194 or 320 x 176
The best video quality I have downloaded. (Trailers) .m4v but I can’t find any program that converts to that format

I've used Total Video Converter which has plenty of options and seems to work fine for me.
Total Video Converter

whtrbt7 said:
I use Visualhub on OSX.
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Visual hub (http://www.techspansion.com/) has been discontinued (sadly enough), but I use it as well. If you can get a copy somewhere, its really useful and piss easy to use. As an alternative i can also recommend Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/). Its not as easy to use as Visual Hub, but it also produces great results which work very well with Core Player.

Best Video Player for TP2?

I am trying to find a good player for .avi, .mpeg4, etc. for my TP2. I used to use TCPMP but when I installed it on my TP2 it errors out at launch. Any ideas? Is there a newer version of TCPMP that is compatible?
Thanks!

The WMP supports avi and mp4. And it works!

Hmm, it does not work for me. That is strange.

dcam1075 said:
I used to use TCPMP but when I installed it on my TP2 it errors out at launch. Any ideas? Is there a newer version of TCPMP that is compatible?
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Try here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3275845&postcount=172
Once installed you need to go into Options/Settings... and choose the DirectDraw page, then tick the box that says "Use blitting instead of overlay".

Try Core Player. It is amazing... it is also running via network (wifi)

the best video player is coreplayer

Aqrab said:
the best video player is coreplayer
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The impression I get from reading these fora is that CorePlayer may be the best but that it's still not actually particularly good, as it is unable to benefit from any of the hardware acceleration provided by the Qualcomm chipset - this being HTC's fault for providing dodgy or non-existent drivers. It seems like this is a major weakness of the TP2.

Actually, from what I remember, it's not HTC's fault per se, so it's not really fair to blame HTC. The thing is that Qualcomm sold their chipsets but different price ranges for the same chip. The difference being that if one paid more then they'd get the drivers necessary to take advantage of other features. Basically one has to pay for the drivers. So HTC's player includes hardware acceleration, but just because it seems they have gotten the drivers for that feature doesn't mean that they can pass the drivers on to software makers (just like you can't legally pass your copy of a game on to a friend). But neither can we say it's Qualcomm's fault as it was their pricing plan. I think somewhere it was stated that it was a misunderstanding at some point. But yeah, that's the gist, and why if Coreplayer is to work they have to reverse engineer the drivers or deal with Qualcomm directly.

What's wrong with the built-in free WMP? It plays 640x480 MP4 (H.264) videos smoothly.

solsearch said:
Actually, from what I remember, it's not HTC's fault per se, so it's not really fair to blame HTC. The thing is that Qualcomm sold their chipsets but different price ranges for the same chip. The difference being that if one paid more then they'd get the drivers necessary to take advantage of other features. Basically one has to pay for the drivers. So HTC's player includes hardware acceleration, but just because it seems they have gotten the drivers for that feature doesn't mean that they can pass the drivers on to software makers (just like you can't legally pass your copy of a game on to a friend). But neither can we say it's Qualcomm's fault as it was their pricing plan. I think somewhere it was stated that it was a misunderstanding at some point. But yeah, that's the gist, and why if Coreplayer is to work they have to reverse engineer the drivers or deal with Qualcomm directly.
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Let me get this straight... Your saying it's not HTC's fault because you think they didn't know they were buying chipsets without drivers from Qualcomm. To me it sounds like they cheaped out and screwed consumers.
I highly doubt its a misunderstanding and I'm not afraid to place blame because I'm more than certain HTC knew what they were doing otherwise they wouldn't keep ordering more of the same chipset to produce new phones.
If this were really the case I would assume we would see slightly different hardware or drivers included with CDMA versions since they would have had time to figure this out since everyone else already has.

Gave up Core Player for the Touch phones. It doesn't play movies at all well. Just use the built-in WMP or the HTC album player.
Download the Encoder GUI and just re-encode your movies. Let it run during your bedtime. Easy!

Lord_BlackAdder said:
What's wrong with the built-in free WMP? It plays 640x480 MP4 (H.264) videos smoothly.
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For starters, it doesn't play xvid.

Shasarak said:
For starters, it doesn't play xvid.
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Re-encode it using the Encoder GUI. Why fight it?
Don't think there any mobile phones that can play xvid videos at 800x480 smoothly. Even the latest i8000 only supports video playback at up to 720x480.
Even if you get an iPhone, you will still need to convert it to in order for you to watch it.
My solution, either re-encode it, or play a lower resolution xvid (i think i tried it once at 622x288, can't remember and it played ok in core player).

I'd go with Coreplayer too as it has the widest range of codecs available BUT if the bitrate of your clip is too high your phone won't like it whatever player you use (but you probably knew that anyway...)

Hi Everyone I have found that GOM Encoder does an outstanding job of converting any movie to a playable format for the Rhodium

reddog said:
Hi Everyone I have found that GOM Encoder does an outstanding job of converting any movie to a playable format for the Rhodium
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Hey, good find! Will give it a try for sure! Cheers!

Core player has some nice features, but benchmarking h264 playback it was somewhat lacking compaired to windows media player mobile....
95% of the time u will want to/have to re-encode to make it smaller or lower the bitrate to something it can play, so codec support shoudnt be a choosing factor...
I get WMPM playing smooth with H264(1300~ bitrate) and ACC audio(stereo at 128 varieable bitrate) at 800x416. which is dame nice quality on the small screen
I'll start a thread on encoding with MeGUI to get you all started

But I can't get full screen on WMP
Lord_BlackAdder said:
What's wrong with the built-in free WMP? It plays 640x480 MP4 (H.264) videos smoothly.
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Do you know what I'm doing wrong? After not being able to use WMP on my Universal (WM5) because it could not do full screen - I load a movie into WMP on my shiny new Touch Pro 2 and 'full screen' isn't - it has a dirty great big border round it! The video is smaller then the screen but WMP is set to stretch to screen. What gives??
John

Shasarak said:
Try here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3275845&postcount=172
Once installed you need to go into Options/Settings... and choose the DirectDraw page, then tick the box that says "Use blitting instead of overlay".
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Click to collapse
wow that done the trick for me, awesome playback imo

I tried the Touch HD encoder and used the advised settings in the thread.
Playback is smooth in HTC Album, but the quality seemed fuzzier than my normal method.
So back I go to:
Coreplayer
Videos encoded using PocketDivXEncoder with the following settings:
HDTV preset
Video quality: 70
Audio quality: maximum
Resize the video so that the video width is 400 pixels, maintaining the aspect ratio.

Youtube works on Windows Phone 7 !!!!

Youtube works on WP7, caught on video
check it out : 1800PocketPC
once you play a video its automatically added to your Music and Video Hub !!!!

works on the youtube mobile version, http://m.youtube.com

Honestly, did anyone expect it NOT to work in WP7?

with out flash , yes many of us did not think it would work initially.

forget youtube....XVID is a supported format out of the box. Now I can do less work at work and look at animes on my phone .

gom99 said:
XVID is a supported format out of the box. Now I can do less work at work and look at animes on my phone .
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*Sigh*
It's not true, unfortunately, according to the official list of codecs supported in the RTM version of WP7. As you will see there, there's no xvid or divx in the list.
Luckily, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile is listed, and this means that most xvid/divx videos should work as both xvid and divx are variations of this spec.
However, this codec isn't supported in .avi container, the file should be an .mp4 or an m4v.
To add insult to injury, you will not hear any sound in those videos if they have a soundtrack encoded in mp3 or AC3. Only AAC-LC.
To summarize, there's just no way to view a real-life video in WP7 without messing with some sort of convertion. A bit of good news is that it shouldn't require hours, it should be enough to remux the video (put it into another container) and reencode audio (a bit lengthier), and it's better than what you get in Android or iOS, but still far from smooth hassle-free experience.

^ very funny.
I'll have you know that I don't need to convert videos for my phone. Have you seen the specs for new higher end Androids, they support most codecs out the box. The only codec I haven't seen work was for converted dvds or .vob.

vetvito said:
I'll have you know that I don't need to convert videos for my phone. Have you seen the specs for new higher end Androids, they support most codecs out the box.
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I know, that's brought by OEMs. Who can do the same for WP7 if they wish, although that will cost them less as the base things are covered by MS, both in terms of licensing and hardware acceleration built in. Supporting a container is should be much easier than supporting a codec. In this case all you need to do is a demultiplexer, the actual decoders are already there.

vangrieg said:
*Sigh*
It's not true, unfortunately, according to the official list of codecs supported in the RTM version of WP7. As you will see there, there's no xvid or divx in the list.
Luckily, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile is listed, and this means that most xvid/divx videos should work as both xvid and divx are variations of this spec.
However, this codec isn't supported in .avi container, the file should be an .mp4 or an m4v.
To add insult to injury, you will not hear any sound in those videos if they have a soundtrack encoded in mp3 or AC3. Only AAC-LC.
To summarize, there's just no way to view a real-life video in WP7 without messing with some sort of convertion. A bit of good news is that it shouldn't require hours, it should be enough to remux the video (put it into another container) and reencode audio (a bit lengthier), and it's better than what you get in Android or iOS, but still far from smooth hassle-free experience.
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Bah, I should have look at that further instead of taking the article at face value.
My 2nd thought was hoping that wasn't final and that wp7 should play everything zune does as well. So I looked up the Zune specs and the avi container isn't there either . Although the xbox 360 has supported xvid in .avi since fall 2007 I believe, so that's a glimmer of hope.
Thanks for clearing that up though. Audio & Video Codecs are a pain in the neck.

Not only codecs are a pain for everyone, but also a very confusing topic, tech blogs mix up things all the time.
The most amazing thing in all this story for me is that .avi is Microsoft's format. Why they don't support it in their products is totally beyond my comprehension.
Oh, and of course this: mp4 is based on Apple's QuickTime video format, while m4v is totally developed by Apple. Go figure.

[Q] No avi Xvid support?

Hi,
I was under the assumption that the wp7 Emulator supported avi containers and xvid files. At least I was hoping for the Windows Phone 7 platform to be able to play these files without conversion.
I stumbled across a review of the Omnia 7 on gsmarena (cant post the link) and apparently these files get transcoded by the zune software into *.mp4
Would anyone with more knowledge shed some light on this. Maybe its an OEM specific feature? I would hate to see the potential of fast file transfer go to waste to transcoding

http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-7-audio-media-codecs

The list on wpcentral is wrong and outdated. The list of supported codecs changed twice since MIX, and the final one doesn't list avi as a supported container.
Things may be not too bad in that MPEG4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile is back in, and that's basically what xvid and divx are. So, in order to watch a real life movie on a WP7, you might just need to remux it (it takes a minute or so).

Thank you very much domineus and vangrieg!! Very informative.
I wonder if MS would bow down eventually and bring back the support for the avi container.
One can dream ;D but 1-2 mins remuxing doesn't sound too bad.

VonCrisp said:
I wonder if MS would bow down eventually and bring back the support for the avi container.
One can dream ;D but 1-2 mins remuxing doesn't sound too bad.
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It's just my guess about remuxing, so please dont get too disappointed if I'm wrong.
Re avi, the strangest thing in Earth is that this is Microsoft's own format, and instead they choose to support Apple's ones.

The AVI format is horribly broken by design. The only reason it's still around is the piracy scene and both its idiotic reluctance for change and their desire to maintain legacy support for all these cheap chinese knock-off DVD players that support XviD in AVI.

Media format support

Hi, I was wondering if there are plans for other media player on wp7. I'm thinking about getting a new phone and also thinking about starting development on wp7 so I would need a wp7 device for that(yes a know i can just use the emulator), but media support is a requirement for me as my galaxy s will play pretty much everything without additional software. I have a lot a ogg, flac and mkvs in my collection and would like to avoid having to transcode everything. So.. what say you?

In short - this is between highly unlikely and impossible.
The thing is, you need access to native APIs to add support for codecs and even for adding new containers, you simply can't make that stuff in Silverlight. So, apart from a possible jailbreak solution and getting tools to make native stuff, there are only three possible sources for added media format support - Microsoft, operators and OEMs. Microsoft will never add support for FLAC, mkv or ogg. Operators have zero interest. OEMs theoretically can do it, but I haven't heard anything with regard to this, and it will only be on new handsets which won't appear until the end of the year (fall at the earliest).
On a somewhat positive note, you should be able to watch mkv videos on your phone without reencoding because in theory you only need remuxing (which is a much easier process and takes minutes, not hours). The codecs are mostly supported, it's just a container issue.