720p and above playback

[Guest ChazW123]

I've been trying and failing to convert any HD quality videos into a playable format for the Vega, be it .mp4 or .mkv, so had given up and gone down the streaming video route instead BUT had a mini breakthrough when I spotted that a particular 1080p mkv worked (the Bourne Ultimatum trailer) which was mentioned in a previous post.

Basically this particular mkv works flawlessly and looking at the file is a 1080p hi-def mp4 file with high bitrate (around 7500 kbps) but unlike all the other full HD or even 720p size files that I've tried, works great.

The difference seems to be it's encoded at 23.97 frames per sec.

I tested out converting a number of HD quality files (TV eps and films) and tried reducing them down from 1080p to 720p to no avail and also reducing the bitrate but still juddered and went out of sync but as soon as the FPS was changed from 25 fps or 29.97 to 23.97 they played perfectly !?!?

My testing comprised of using the stock and a few other video players (Rockplayer 1.55, NSWplayer and a few others) all behave in the same manner on the Vega, so maybe a limit set somewhere in the config. or kernel ??

Any ideas people and/or any suggestions on s/w to do the encoding as the ones I've tried (that can handle the change of FPS) take an age to convert (around 40 mins for a 50 mins TV ep!).

Cheers,

Chaz

Edited January 4, 2011 by ChazW123

[Guest unholyimp]

Quick suggestion visit this website

http://handbrake.fr/

Great encoder works really well. Default setting for iPhone/touch. They play nice on the Vega screen not sure about out put on HDMI not tested that as I travel to work and only use my Vega on the commute. If the disc is encrypted you will need something like this to get round it

http://www.dvd43.com/

Not that I'm condoning the use of software to get round security features of modern disc :unsure:

Oh and the speed of conversion will be down to the CPU in the PC being used

IE. My old AMD dual core laptop is about real time conversion 1hr of DVD take 1hr to convert

IE. My slightly more upto date AMD quad core 1hr of DVD takes about 20 mins to convert

So general rule of thumb want it quick. Buy the fatest PC money can buy, use a lightweight OS leaving Max CPU for conversion

Edited January 4, 2011 by unholyimp

[Guest thedicemaster]

it's either mkv or mp4, can't be both.

[Guest ChazW123]

it's either mkv or mp4, can't be both.

Agreed ?!?!

My point is either of the file formats do not play well at 720p or 1080p on the Vega unless the fps is 23.97. Well that is what I've found personally anyways.

Have tried Handbrake but is very slow at encoding, I found GOTSent to be faster but still too slow for me :unsure:

[Guest unholyimp]

What sort of PC you using?

Some software uses the GPU for encoding others use CPU.

Like I said before the more powerful the GPU or CPU. The faster it will encode if your using an old PC or you have a lot of crap running in the back ground or for that matter Virus software that checks files on the fly this will slow a CPU based encoder. Most GPU based software used to lip sync really badly. Due to the indirect access to your soundcard. Although I have not tried since the introduction of HDMI embedded sound on new HD graphics cards.

Mind you I have noticed if you are trying to get a 720p from a standard DVD you would have to be upscaling your dvd's as a native DVD output is not 720 or 1080. Infact they are only at best 576. This means you expect you PC to create lines that don't exist a bit like an upscaling DVD player. These work by taking the line above and below the missing line and recreating the best possible match. Easy to do in a standalone player but needs masses of processor in a PC. Best go steal the PC's from pixmar.

It's just the same as my gaming PC can run. Black Ops maxed out in 1080 Res but still can't emulate a XBOX 360 without lag

Edited January 4, 2011 by unholyimp

[Guest ChazW123]

My PC has a quad core AMD processor, 4gb RAM and a 1GB ATI Graphics card.

Took 1 hour+ to convert a 1gb 720p MKV from 29.97fps with DD5.1 sound to a 23.97fps with stereo sound MP4 file using Handbrake B)

Using other utils on the pc have cut the time down to about 30mins for the same but would still like a bit more speed out of my system tbh! :unsure:

PC doing nothing else whilst doing this (AVG installed and running in the background though, may try removing that to see if it speeds up!)

Edited January 5, 2011 by ChazW123

[Guest MaxiP]

I'm doing a bit of playing with this at the minute - all my movies / TV shows are 720p MKV and I'm trying to work out the best way of re-encoding for use wit the Vega (both internal & external to HDMI TV). Using Handbrake, I've created a new preset called Vega (funnily enough) with the following attributes;

Output container - MP4

Aspect - 1024x576

FPS - same as source

Constant Quality - RF20

So far, I'm getting good results with little obvious quality loss when converting a 1.1Gb MKV to 500Mb M4V. My target will be to find settings to allow a 1.1Gb TV episode to be 300-400Mb and a 4-5Gb movie rip to 1-2Gb with acceptable quality. Handbrake is not the fastest tool available but IMHO is one of the best as it allows for easy tweaking of settings as well as batch jobs - when I find my ideal settings, I'll queue up 20-30 movies at a time on my HTPC to re-encode then transfer to USB hard drive to use wit the Vega

Edited January 5, 2011 by MaxiP

[Guest TeaTimeSoon]

In my experience, one of the things that the standard Android media player in the Vega cannot do is to cope with anamorphic (non square pixels) video. So encoding in Handbrake - it is essential to choose None as the Anamorphic option. Failing to do this results in a lovely picture but everything in the wrong aspect ratio.

Cropping the video to 16:9 ratio can be useful if it is to run full screen without black borders, but if it is a widescreen film, it may be more important to encode the full width, black borders top and bottom being the lesser problem. This is a matter for personal choice and preference.

Does anyone know if RockPlayer handles non-square pixels (anamorphic video)? I must give it a go to see...

EDIT

Rockplayer does not *intelligently* handle anamorphic video, however it will stretch the movie to fit the screen - which in those cases where the video looks ok in 16:9 will work just fine.

Edited January 11, 2011 by TeaTimeSoon

[Guest Ter4a]

Im still trying with different conversion settings in Handbrake.

If anyone comes up with the best settings, please try to save it as a device template, so others could import it...

[Guest rpmccormick]

I can't see how your claim that the FPS makes or breaks the Vega could be a hardware limitation. If your findings are correct, it is my hope that a dev is able to fix whatever configuration error is breaking 30FPS movies on our devices. Until then, I will just stream using ORB (or VLC as an alternate). Pre-transcoding a whole collection is way too big a pain.

Edited January 11, 2011 by rpmccormick