Notices

Hey everybody, i spent some time trying to get the best possible video playback on my N810 ... and managed to get some interesting results.

Most of the forums will tell you that the best definition you can get with smooth playback is something like 400x240. I had some luck to try a lot of different settings and find a better one (to my opinion) :

AVI ; MP4 video ; Single pass ; 640x352 pixels ; 24 fps ; 650 Kbps ; MP3 audio ; 44.1 KHz ; stereo ; 128 Kbps

I encode it on my Mac using Handbrake. It should work as well encoded with another software on a Windows or a LInux computer.

It's good only for 24 fps videos, but it's a lot more detailed than 400x240 and plays perfectly on the default video player.

EDIT :
HERE IS THE POST WITH THE BEST SETTINGS I GOT (post 40 in this thread):
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=40

does this affect CPU usage/battery life a lot? i mean, in comparison, is it worth having the better video quality if it sucks out your battery in 45min or isn't it really that bad?

have you tried scenes with a lot of motion? usually they are the ones that make the video stutter on playback even with moderate bitrates...

I don't believe it sucks so much more battery ... didn't tested it yet but maybe you shouldn't fear so much about it.

For High motion scenes, you have 2 options :

1/ Two passes encoding will use higher bitrate for high motion scenes, giving less or no "Mosaïc" artefacts BUT then the bitrate will be too high for the tablet and the playback jerky on these scenes.

2/ One pass encoding (650 Kbps) will use a constant bitrate, High motion scenes will show some "mosaïc" effect but will play smoothly. The good thing is that scenes with average motion will be very detailed and beautifull on the NIT !

So maybe you should choose your encoding parameters depending on your movie ... if it's pure action style, with lots of exploding things, cars races ... Lower resolution maybe better.

I tested "my" settings on the Ice Age 3 trailer and the result was very good.

Handbrake is awesome for this. People are always astonished at how crisp and smooth video playback is on my N810.

Tim

Meh, I stick with 400x240 simply because I can't see any difference in the video playback above that, save for performance. Of course, I use 2 pass encoding too. hehe.

Virtual dub is good too for this kind of task on Mac OSX, it's a pity it's not available anymore.

Lord Raiden, you really don't see any difference between videos in 400x240 and in 640 x 352 ? For me there is a huge difference in crispness, a lot more details ...

I'm sorry, if we're talking about DVD widescreen ripping, and unless Handbrake is some magic elixir, your numbers suggest that you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. You're encoding a large data set with a relatively low bit rate and you don't mention anything about black band cropping. I have serious doubts or Handbrake is doing more work than you're telling us. Your 640x352 (1.81818) ratio tells me that either you're creating unnecessary artifacts (while encoding) or your distorting the picture (if scaling) or both. Also, from much discussion on this forum, you're most likely sacrificing quality by having any dimension greater than half the screen resolution. I'm happy to be wrong, but for now I don't think I am.

Daperl,
You may be happy soon ... to be wrong

I don't think i'm sacrificing quality because i get a lot more details in final video on my N810 than with the usual 400x 240.
Upscaled 640x352 looks a lot better than upscaled 400x240.
The upscaling performed by the tablet is actually quite good, for such a device, it's not just pixel demultiplication, there is some real time treatment here. And it's efficient.

So why stick to a quarter screen definition ? When you watch a DVD on a full HD screen, do you keep it at original size ? Probably not, you upscale it, and, depending on your DVD or BlueRay player (or your screen too), upscaling can be very ugly or very nice ... thanks to the treatment ...

If i didn't mention black band cropping, it's because i think it's obvious. My source was a HD video file and the encoding software proposed me to keep the original aspect ratio. So i didn't distort anything.

You can probably test it by yourself very easily : go on itunes website, download Ice Age 3 trailer in HD, compress it with the parameters i gave in this thread ... and see by yourself.

Okay, I'm an idiot. Do I need QuickTime Pro to save this thing to a file? If so, I'm not sure that works for me. I'm just trying to get the 38MB 420p Trailer 1 file. The youtube trailer I found is only 9MB, so I'm guessing that's not the file you want me to try it on. Help!

http://wiki.maemo.org/Video_encoding
http://wiki.maemo.org/Manual_video_encoding

These cover most everything you need to know about encoding.