Hi,

Well, one reason to get the N810 was to play videos. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be able to handle 800x480 videos so I wanted to see what it would handle.

While doing that I found there weren't really any super-appropriate converters around to let you fuss with settings. The best was Media Converter at https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mediaconverter . It's made for the N770 and N800, though, and didn't have quite enough control and capability to deal with the N810. To make a short story I ended up editing the source and created a converter for the N810.

The converter is here:
MediaConverter2
Version 2.06 - posted Dec 05, 2008

[Changelog]
2.06 Added multicore/processor support
2.05 Reformatted for more space in Linux
2.05 Added a Stop button
2.05 Improved mousehelp
2.05 Fixed space characters in Linux filenames
2.05 Updated mencoder.exe win32 to latest binary
2.04 built with backrev 5 java to help with compatability - fixed a few version issues
2.04 repaired volume normlization switch
2.03 Added audio transcoding options. Improved xvid,divx5 quality.
2.02 Added xvid,divx5,h.264 support
2.01 Added xml settings, fix a few bugs
2.00 Support additional frame rates and resolutions, fix cropping

The next two posts describe installation/ how to use it and my video findings.

Mark

Installation:

The file is a zip file. Just unzip it anywhere and run the batch file or double-click the .jar file. Note that I default preview to on!

If you want to add additional resolutions, that can be done by simply editing the Resolutions.txt file. Anything labeled N810 will be used when you select the N810. As you can see from the format of it, you set width and height and (optionally) fps. The only widths supported are what you see there but you can set any height and fpts you want. You'll have to restart the program to have it read in the file.

Some of the resolutions set the video bit rate. I didn't do that since for the N810 it's subjective. You'll want to set it manually as a mix between resolution and frame-dropping.

I added an aspect ratio setting for the auto-crop mode. If you select to crop, the input movie will be first cropped to 15/9 and then resized to fit the frame. If you don't crop it will just be resized. If you do crop, the program decides on an aspect ratio by looking at Y/X. The mpgs I have are anamorphic and Y/X is 5:4 but the movie aspect is 16:9 or 4:3. Check the Set Aspect button and select an input movie aspect ratio to have Y/X essentially ignored (i.e. for mpegs where you know the aspect ratio).

Mark

Findings:

I tried lots and lots of variations to see what would and would not work.

1) Mplayer is noticeably higher in performance than what comes with the OS. If you want the highest possible res use it. If you prefer to use what comes with the OS you'll need to crank the video rate down a notch. The problem with Mplayer is that it has no on-screen control at all. The keyboard control is nice.

2) I couldn't get anything >= 600 wide to run without dropping frames. There may be a magic size or videorate or maybe a better compression scheme but using the MP4 with Mencoder that was my limit.

3) Using 560 wide produced very nice results. You can crank up the audio resolution and still use about 896 kpbs for the video rate and it plays smoothly with mplayer. At about 700 kbps it plays smoothly with the built in video player. It looks better than 400x240,

4) The higher resolutions look great - they just don't play well. The built-in player doesn't support 800x480.

M

under OS2008, the N800 and N810 are capable of the exact same things. Same RAM, same processor, etc. You should have been able to just use the regular MediaConverter with the N800 settings.

Hi,

The regular converter doesn't really work right in a number of ways.

The 1.4 version:

1) doesn't do anamorphic cropping right since it has no aspect setting

2) doesn't support 560 width

3) names files poorly

4) doesn't convert to 24fps

Mark

I've updated the converter to support Divx5 and Xvid. Both of these are better compressors than the Divx converter used by the version 1 media converter. Among other things they keep the maximum bit rate better controlled.

Mark

I noticed that DX50 (same as Divx5?) plays smoother as well - I use the Super video converter for my N800.

I converted a TV show to the medium N810 settings (480x360) and played it back on my 2007 N800 (Mplayer v1.0rc1-maemo.24) and I really couldn't believe how well it played. Hardly any stuttering at all (in my experience, everything on the N800 stutters).

I tried a preview of the 560x336 setting, but the stuttering became a little more apparent.

I did use the Xvid encoder for both tries, mainly because that was the format of the original file, so I'll try a DivX5 pass later on.

One question: Would Mplayer support a resolution of 512x384 (that's in 4:3 aspect ratio)? I have quite a lot of material in that resolution (it's what my Archos PMA430 records in) and it would be nice to be able to keep it. I realize the pixel count is a bit higher than the medium setting, but it is lower than the high quality.

Hi,

I think you can just edit the resolutions.txt file to try the resolutions. I'm pretty easy-going about allowing stuff in there. Let me know if that doesn't work.

fwiw as far as I can tell the best resolution seems to be Divx5 at 768kbps at 560x336 at 24fps for my 16:9 stuff. I get the tiniest bit of stutter on tough-stuff using mplayer but otherwise it's great. I think the xvid decoder is noticeably slower in mplayer (I'm running 2008 on an 810).

Mark

I've added Audio transcoding in the 2.03. If you encode at 44.1 Stereo at 64kbps the N810/Mplayer can handle 560x336 almost exactly. Hopefully with speedups to come this will be easy.

Mark