Video playback help

[Guest Tim Howard]

Hello All,

I'm a MoDaCo, Vega and Android newbie, in fact I'd not seen any of the three until 24 hours ago! I run an iPhone 3GS and I've always been really impressed with it as it has always worked pretty well at what it does, the only downside being that it is locked down and as such if Apple say it doesn't fo something, then it doesn't do it!

I've always been nervous about Android as I worried that being open-source it just wouldn't work as well and would feel like a collection of tools rather than an fully integrated operating system, and as such I've steered away. That was until I had the revelation that a low cost tablet was the ideal way to try it out. I did a bit of research, decided on the Vega because of the hardware specs, and actually missed the fact that it didn't have access to the market etc.

By about 8pm last night I was getting bored with the built in functionality and dropped on MoDaCo! By 10pm I'd installed the latest MoDaCo ROM (I've subsequently become an ad-free member and baked a custom ROM). I have now re-installed Flash (though not from \system\etc as per the guide as it was missing, but downloaded the optimised installer), and even managed to get my Huwaei 3G dongle working (160E running on Orange), I was grinning like a cheshire cat!

I've installed LauncherPro so will be customising that tonight, I feel I have so much more than the tablet I came home with yesterday, and to be honest it seems a lot more complete than the iPad I could have so easily talked myself into, even if the build and components might not be quite up to that level. I've also added a 32Gb MicroSD card so potentially it has a similar storage capacity to the much more costly Apple!

So I definitely have to say thanks to Paul and indeed all of the contributors on MoDaCo for helping me have such a fun evening last night making my Vega better by the minute!!

I do have one area of disappointment with my Vega, not sure if there is an answer, or maybe I just need to be patient, or maybe the hardware will prevent it from ever happening. I have a lot of HD video files encoded as MKV (720p) and DivX files that are encoded with AC3 soundtracks. Obviously the stock player supports those video formats but not the audio. I downloaded RockPlayer as I read that it supported AC3, and I did manage to play the DivX file fine, though the MKV file played briefly with sound, and then the sound ceased. The video playback was somewhat jerky too.

I am guessing this is because RockPlayer isn't optimised for the Tegra chipset and the stock player might be? My question is whether there is a player that supports the chipset that also supports those video/audio formats? Or if not if anyone is aware of one in development. I would buy the full version of RockPlayer if I thought it might perform better but I'd imagine it would be the same?

Finally, sorry for the length of this post, I'm also a newbie to forums really so I guess many people will have stopped reading by the second paragraph!!

Tim Howard

[Guest Tim Howard]

Lesson 1 = Check to make certain you haven't missed this question before.....d'oh looks like I will have to wait/re-encode my videos for now!!!

Edited February 24, 2011 by Tim Howard

[Guest SmileyMan73]

Vitalplayer can play ac3 but its very quite on the vega.

Waiting on the VLC port.

[Guest warriorscot]

Unfortunately we are probably going to see a honeycomb port with its improved media framework before we get a properly tegra optimised player. The problem with the AC3 sound is a financial thing mostly it's closed source and needs a licence that google aren't going to pay for and its up to device and software manufacturers to foot the bill for it.

Hopefully it shouldn't be too long before we see something however until then we are going to have to convert into the right audio and container formats for the vega. One possibility to get around the limitations is with a streaming program that can convert to a flash video on the fly and send it to your vega. It's talked about in the forum there are a lot of earlier threads on this topic.

[Guest N3ls0n]

Tim,

Glad your enjoying your Vega. FYI I am using arcmedia which is availabke in the market for playing my video files as I find it slightly more stable than rockplayer.... check it out before you make a decission.

Nelson

[Guest awarner]

It worth having a look around for media help there are a few topics discussing this in this section at the moment hopefully some of them may be able to answer.

One MKV post can be found HERE