Announcing first beta of PocketTV - MPEG video player

[Guest toadvox]

Excuse me if I'm being thick and missed a post about it, but when i run Pocket TV and bring up Smart Explorer to get the mpeg. when I click on it, it loads Pocket MVP and plays it in there instead!!!! Am I missing something? As far as I'm aware I cant change the file associations..... or can i?

[Guest johnnygri]

ClintEastman, which codec r u using in vdub? had a quick browse through the messages couldnt see, downloaded your settings (wicked nice one) but need to get some codecs on me system...

[Guest gears0001]

This software bloody rocks - I love it.. ;) :)

Sorry - just had to say... :D

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Excuse me if I'm being thick and missed a post about it, but when i run Pocket TV and bring up Smart Explorer to get the mpeg. when I click on it, it loads Pocket MVP and plays it in there instead!!!! Am I missing something? As far as I'm aware I cant change the file associations..... or can i?

That's because you have installed PocketMVP after PocketTV, and PocketMVP has changed the file association for MPEG's.

It's easy to remedy:

In PocketTV, select Menu > Options > Files > File Associations

then press "Yes".

;)

[Guest jim80b]

ok pocket tv, your app is good, but to match the quality i want (ie the other one) i try to encode at 300, it looks fantastic, but fps dropped to around 8. i have stereo audio (big plus great quaility btw) adn the size worked out to 2 meg a min. this is mainly audio. is there any way to compress audio futher ie mp3

tmpenc says it accepts mp3 but gives me errors. also. i am a great fan on mvp and it plays the files at a similar speed, no frame rate counter but they dont look far from where you are. please implement a playlist function asap, or tell us what to put in one.

thanks

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

> ok pocket tv, your app is good,

Thanks ;)

> but to match the quality i want (ie the other one) i try to encode at 300

That's way too much. At 176x136 (or equivalent surface, if the aspect ratio is different, i.e. cinemascope), the video quality will top-off, i.e. be quasy perfect, at around 150 Kbit/sec. Adding more bits will just be a waste.

Note that the fps is also VERY dependent on the video resolution. With the current generation of Smartphone, that use an ARM processor clocked at 130 MHz with no hardware acceleration / display coprocessor, the fps becomes significantly lower when you increase the resolution to more than 176x136 (or equivalent surface, if the aspect ratio is different). For example, at 224x176 (Fullscreen), you will get 17 fps or less, even with a very low bitrate.

> it looks fantastic, but fps dropped to around 8. i have stereo audio (big plus great quaility btw)

For stereo, make sure that you select 64 Kbit/sec, "Joint" stereo mode (more efficient than just Stereo mode), and use 32000 or 41000 Hz audio sampling frequency. This should not decrese the fps significantly, especially if you play in "Medium" quality (the default).

> adn the size worked out to 2 meg a min. this is mainly audio. is there any way to compress audio futher ie mp3

Not in PocketTV. MP3 is not a standard audio format in MPEG-1 video files. PocketTV supports MPEG-1 Layer 1 and 2. Layer 2 compresses more, and is only marginally more difficult to decode that Layer 1.

By the way, since the Smartphones are already quite slow, it would be a very bad idea to use MP3, because MP3 require more complexity (i.e. more CPU cycles) to decode, compared to Layer 2. Wasting more CPU cycle in audio decoding would only reduce the video fps!

> tmpenc says it accepts mp3 but gives me errors.

Don't use MP3 when you make MPEG-1 movie files. You can use MP3 with other file formats like DivX, if you want.

> also. i am a great fan on mvp and it plays the files at a similar speed, no frame rate counter but they dont look far from where you are. please implement a playlist function asap, or tell us what to put in one.

PocketMVP (the new name of PocketDivX) has been around for a long time, but it is not quite as efficient as PocketTV for playing MPEG files, especially the ones with high bitrate. It is good for playing DivX, as it's the only one that can play those files.

Also PocketMVP lacks the stability of PocketTV and on a Smartphone is ennoying when an application hangs, as it forces you to power-off the phone to reboot it... PocketTV is very, very stable, and also free for personal use. I would have said that you can get the entire source of PocketMVP and fix what's broken, as it used to be an open source project, but recently the source code of various elements (e.g. the MPEG decoder) became closed (property of Mark Dukette).

[Guest Geary]

What can i say apart from amazing, i cant wait to show this off to my mates they will be well jealous. Any news on getting full films for it or is that something we will have to do ourselves??? But i can see maself stuck on the bus watchin a bus or watch a couple of episodes of the simpsons.

Thanks everyone involed keep up the good work. ;)

[Guest jim80b]

thanks guys, was encoding at 216*176, will re-encode and see what happens

[Guest gideonnorel]

Quality.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

thanks guys, was encoding at 216*176, will re-encode and see what happens

Try lowering the video bitrate to 100 or 150 Kbit/sec. As indicated in the first post of this thread, I found that with low resolution, using CQ_VBR works somehow better than using CBR or VBR, so try CQ_VBR with quality set to something between 12 and 15 (11 will generally give you an average of about 80 Kbit/sec for the video).

Also, remember that if your source is a movie (i.e. a film), and you see the framerate at 29.97 or 30, then you will get better results by using de-telecine to encode the original film images, that are 24 fps (always). And the resulting quality will be better, for the same birate.

[Guest jbyte]

Yes! I did install PocketTV on my Tanager (SPVx). It's really amazing!. ;)

But I did a little registry editing to associate mpg files with SmartEplorer. Nice 1 PocketTV Team.Can't wait for additional features on this this great piece of software. I'll try to make mpgs myself using the TMPGEnc (the one that is suggested on the 1st page of this thread. I'll see what can I produce. 8)

[Guest agu]

do you have to use smart explorer? how about those who are using other

"file explorer" software like IA Utiltiies, etc?

Thanks!

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

do you have to use smart explorer? how about those who are using other

"file explorer" software like IA Utiltiies, etc?

Thanks!

The next beta of PocketTV will allow you to use any File Explorer, but you will have to edit a Registry Key for that (it will be improved later...).

By default PocketTV will look for Smart Explorer (which is small, fast and works well).

[Guest jbyte]

Yes! Still working with IA File Manager. Same result as using Smart Explorer. :)

For as long you set the associations properly. ;)

[Guest agu]

cool thanks! will probably wait till the next beta comes out

8)

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

We have released a new beta. Same link. The first post of this thread has been updated.

Main changes:

1) No more need for a CAB to patch the registry. PocketTV patches the registry the first time it is run after initial installation. If you have already installed a previous beta, you may have to go in PocketTV Menu > Option > Files > File Associations to fix the registry.

2) Added Fast Forward command, mapped on the button "2".

3) nicer look with the various Home Screen Color schemes.

4) You can use any other file explorer. If you want to use another file explorer, just set the following registry string value to its full pathname: [HKCUSoftwareMpegTVPocketTV] FileExplorerPath. To edit the registry, you can use the free PHM Registry Editor from www.phm.lu/Products/Smartphone

Enjoy!

[Guest Chic0]

We have released a new beta.  Same link.  The first post of this thread has been updated.

Main changes:

1) No more need for a CAB to patch the registry. PocketTV patches the registry the first time it is run after initial installation.  If you have already installed a previous beta, you may have to go in PocketTV Menu > Option > Files > File Associations to fix the registry.

2) Added Fast Forward command, mapped on the button "2".

3) nicer look with the various Home Screen Color schemes.

4) You can use any other file explorer. If you want to use another file explorer, just set the following registry string value to its full pathname: [HKCUSoftwareMpegTVPocketTV]FileExplorerPath. To edit the registry, you can use the free PHM Registry Editor from www.phm.lu/Products/Smartphone

Enjoy!

Cannot get link to work

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Sorry... it should work, now.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Do you plan to make pocket tv play different files ie avi,wmp etc ?

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

no, sorry, we will stick with MPEG, but there are other players to play some of the other formats.

[Guest ClintEastman]

Could you tell me the current version number please?

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Could you tell me the current version number please?

You mean of PocketTV ? 0.11.0

BTW has anyone been able to use PocketTV with another File Explorer (other than Smart Explorer) ?

[Guest ClintEastman]

Ah, thank you.....

It set all my paths back to "IPSM"...

Was checking i installed the right one.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Maybe you missed that:

No more need for a CAB to patch the registry. PocketTV patches the registry the first time it is run after initial installation. If you have already installed a previous beta, you may have to go in PocketTV Menu > Option > Files > File Associations to fix the registry.

[Guest ClintEastman]

Nope, that was the first thing i did...

Did it a total of 3 times, with a soft boot just to make sure. Ended up editing them by hand.