Video conversion tools and settings?
 

so now that I've finally got a phone with a screen big enough and high res enough to watch movies on, I'd like to start using it for such. The problem is getting the right video format that'll play smoothly on this thing. I've had lots of wmv files play really stuttery on this in both CorePlayer and WMP.

What programs do you guys use to convert your downloaded file formats (avi, wmv, h264, etc) into usable ones on the TP2? And what output settings should it have? I'd like to keep it at 640 resolution for this beautiful screen.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I use Aimersoft Suite for all ripping/converting. Best program in my opinion and has NO audio/video sync issues.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I tried Aimersoft and it has a ridiculous flaw - it doesn't have any option to keep the original aspect ratio of the video. I've only got set options like 640x480, 720x480, 1280x720, etc. But say my video is 850x480. There will be parts of the video cropped out.

There's no option to keep the original resolution of the aspect ratio.

Any other options?

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

Try running your files using coreplayer with Manila (aka touchflo3d) turned off. All my files played flawlessly after I did this.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

Try this to convert your videos.

http://www.any-video-converter.com/p...or_video_free/
If you want a guaranteed playable video, in whatever media player, use standard mp4 640x480 under 25fps

Also found this info somewhere when I had my Touch Pro, same applies to our TP2.

Since there have been massive problems playing back video on the newer HTC devices, I thought I'd step in...
Below is a GUI, to ease the pain of getting nicely watchable videos on the Touch HD, Xperia, Diamond and Touch Pro.
Any device with MSM720x chipset should work, just make sure to select the correct video resolution.
I would like to give a lot of thanks to tnyynt for helping me test and find the best parameters.

Current version: 1.21
http://gm.mainframe.no/stuff/gui.png

Instructions:
1. Download http://gm.mainframe.no/stuff/Encoder.rar
2. Unpack the RAR to a directory of your choosing (on your computer).
3. Run Encoder.exe
4. Select the videos you would like to encode and the output folder, hit "Start!". If you like you can tweak the options, but the pre-set options will produce good video for the four devices mentioned above.
5. Once finished encoding, transfer the encoded video to your device and use Album (or WMP) to view them.

Do not use Coreplayer and complain about performance! Coreplayer can not utilize hardware acceleration yet and is slow!

If your source videos are SD (DVD, PAL etc), use the default 600 kbit/s or 500kbit/s.
If your source videos are HD (1080p/720p), use 750kbit/s.

Remember, there is absolutely no point to use higher bitrate, because the quality won't really increase and you will use more battery life with higher bitrate! Also, if you are using less than WVGA resolution, you can apply less bitrate. The approximate formula is (YourWidth*YourHeight)/(800*480)*bitrate. So as example for QVGA you would use 4x less bitrate.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

Aimersoft support set options, select the video you want convert on the software, then click "edit" button to crop your video.

It also support the setting with "setting" - "Video Resolution"

It just not support convert video from 640x480 to 850x480 but support convert video from 850x480 to 640x480

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I convert to XviD, since it require less processing power to both convert and playback compared to h.264. Infact, h.264 plays too slowly on the touchpro2.

For me, when the sum total of the XviD bitrates begin to exceed 800kbps is when stuttering kicks in. You can try the setting: XviD 640x360 (16:9), 700kbs video and 112kbs audio.

You can use WinFF to batch convert videos. I wrote a bit introduction on WinFF for those interested: fssi.x10hosting.com/winff.htm (It is a free software, I'm not affliliated.) Only problem with this software is if you want it to convert to specific bitrates, sometimes you have to go to "Edit -> Presets" and modify the command line settings for each preset. Therefor users who aren't used familiar with command line ffmpeg settings might not find it as useful.

In which case, AutoMen is another video converter worth taking a look at.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I have a bunch of video converters and they all seem to work pretty well - but if you want to put media on the phone, I would use the htc converter - puts the video im .mp4 format and it runs like a champ on the default media player.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I'm trying to use the above application - but 20 - 30 min episodes are still being converted down to ~100MB. I want smaller files. I've seen really good rips of a 30 min ep with res 640x480 with a ~50MB size.

My source is an MKV file. Any help?

*EDIT*

Also, is there anyway of making the application split up each section of MKV into individual files?

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

That doesn't sound right at all. I've never seen a VGA-size (that's broadcast video size, mind you) episode ~50MB. I mean, sure, you could turn the bitrate all the way down and skip frames, but it would look terrible.

I'm guessing it was actually QVGA, but you had it zoomed to fill the screen and didn't realize.

And for the record, H.264 *IS* the best way to go on these qualcomm based phones because of QTV acceleration. But don't bother trying to use it with Coreplayer, only WMP and HTC Album/Video player support the hardware accelearation (QTV needs to be licensed, and Core didn't buy it).

more on that:
http://mobile-enthusiast.blogspot.co...rformance.html
(juicy bits towards the end, should answer most if not all questions)

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

The HTC Encoder over at XDA takes approximately 3 hours to convert a 700mb .avi file...and that's only when it doesn't freeze 2/3 of the way through. All I want to do is take down the 700mb AVIs to about 350-400mbs. I have yet to find a program that can do this for TP2. I wish PocketDivXEncoder worked for TP2.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

That's weird, I never had it freeze on me half way through... It DOES take a while, though. But that's because it's using h.264, which is already computationally expensive, and underneath the scenes its using FFMpeg (or maybe it was mencoder?), which is open source and currently only supports single threading. That means if you have dual cores, its only using one at a time.

PocketDivx also used single core threading, however divx is much less overhead to compress. The tradeoff, however, is lower quality/filesize ratio. Not to mention H.264 with the hardware accelerated playback actually plays smoother on our phones than divx with a non-accelerated player (coreplayer, tcpmp, etc).

You don't have to use the free tool, there are plenty of ways to write to h.264, including quicktime pro, Adobe premiere, Sony Vegas, etc... they use more efficient encoders capable of using multiple cores (SCREAMS on my quad core @ work), but they're not free. I happen to work in video content creation so I have a selection of tools at my disposal... Hard to beat that free tool at XDA, and I would still recommend it over anything else.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

how do you feel about VDub? I'm capturing movies - just started yesterday - h264, 16:9, not sure of res though i think its around 640 in width at least (as i said i just started yesterday) - 2 hour video is about i think 700mb. Will try to see how it runs on the TP2 when i get home this evening.

Anyway, have you tried VDub, and if so, i suppose i should try to mimic the settings that were mentioned above where possible? Else any advice on that particular application. Will of course look at the apps that were mentioned.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I'm gonna give any video converter a bump here...since I have been using it for the past couple of years. The free version gives you enough "freedom" to customize the files you want to convert. .mp4, .avi, etc...The PRO version gives you device profiles from iPhone/iPods, to Zune, to PS3, to WinMo...

I was playing with the settings last night to convert some videos to play flawlessly on HTC Album. I have experienced issues with Coreplayer pixelating/lagging/video and audio not matching; also had issues with the "newest" TCPMP build not rendering properly.

Have not tried to use WMP.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

I use the HTC video converter: http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/htc/.
The program itself has a step-by-step instructions. I don't even mess with the settings and the mp4s work great. Downside, the files take up a lot of memory. Perhaps there are settings to chagne that, but I don't know what they are.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

anyone having issues with audio playback since the sprint 6.5 update?? ahy fixes? seems some of the movies/vids that worked perfectly on 6.1 now refuse to output any sound thru speaker/wired headset...but WILL play audio over BT. yet some play fine. they were all ripped/encoded the same way.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

well, i'm using spb video converter. once again, not free, but I'm converting to avi and not having any trouble playing on my divx player.

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

if you have a newer nvidia video card in your computer i suggest badaboom. it uses the cuda function on the video card to lower the encoding time significantly. i have a 280gt (Q9550 cpu) in my rig and i can take the average dvd to mp4 in about 14 minutes. the software also has profiles for iphone / zune / mediacenter, so you have some presets. you can also customize the audio and video as you see fit.

the drawbacks of badaboom are few. hasnt been updated in a while, you can only encode to mp4 / not free

Re: Video conversion tools and settings?
 

my favorite application for converting, cropping, resizing, editing is avidemux 2.5 (free). You can copy or reincode audio and video separetely. It's too bad album player on TP2 doesn't support videos with mp3 sound as quite a few of them would play right off the bat.
For video format use mpeg4-ASP (Xvid). You can do 2 pass or single pass, constant bit rate, average bit rate, basically everything you can dream of.