Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I'm sure that it has been probably posted before this thread, but I had no idea on what a power horse the tablet could be until totololo here came along. :)

Anyway, I have a load of cartoons (please don't judge my short comings on this) that are 512x384 in size, both original and after the conversion through Handbrake.

When I run them through mplayer, while in full screen mode by default, it stretches the picture greater than this size.

It looks and plays fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it would be nice to view them in it's original dimension while in full screen mode since I'm kind of a pixel purist.

If I minimize it so that the video is in a window, I think that it reverts back to the 1:1 original ratio, but I'm not quite exactly sure on this.

So yeah, is there any way to have it appear normal and in it's correct dimensions and also centered while in full screen mode?

I'm only asking since I can't seem to find an option for this.

Thanks ahead boys!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I'm pleased if i can be of some help, many people on this forum helped a looooot more tablet users than i did until now, as i'm still a nooob ;)

About your video problem :

I don't think the default player can do 1:1.In windowed mode, it's not 1:1, if your video is too big, it's downscaled (and very slow then), and in full screen, it's upscaled.

Maybe you could try another player, like Kmplayer ? But anyway, i'm affraid that your exotic size Anime video will still be too heavy (too many pixels.

My advice would be to scale down a little your video in HandBrake, when converting it, so it maches one of the sizes I tested, following the fps. I guess that 400 x 304 would be good. Then the upscaling will work perfectly.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

It sounds like the problem is that it is stretching Addison's video. This isn't something I've seen before with mplayer. Usually it honours the aspect ratio. You can force an aspect ratio on mplayer from the command line or in the config file, but if you do it from the command line, you'll have to run all your videos that way, and if you do it from the config file, all your videos will be forced to that aspect ratio, even the ones that aren't that ratio.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

You're speakin' gibberish to me son. *lol*

512x384 is under 20,000 pixels. I think your recommendation is 202,752 pixels if we're just going on the math. So I don't think I'm being too exotic on this unless I'm missing something here.

Hey qole, any chance you have that command line on how to launch a video without any type of aspect ratio corrections while in full screen mode?

It would be interesting to see how these videos look with a pixel perfect display on the tab.

Thanks!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

- Sorry for my bad English ! ;) but if i post in french you may not be happy lol !!!

- In my tests, i noticed that it's not only a question of pixels count, i noticed that 30 frames per second videos in 4:3 ratio would not play well above 400 x 304. Maybe it has something to do with the upscaler in the tablet ... So i still suggest you to try 400 x 304. ;)

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I'm not sure the aspect ratio of the video you're trying to watch, but it sure sounds like it is 4:3 (square TV) but being stretched to 16:10 (tablet screen).

To watch your video 4:3, use the following command line:

(put the correct path and file name in there of course)

By the way, I downloaded and played your sample Go anime, and it worked perfectly on my N800 in mplayer with no aspect ratio correction needed. I'm not sure why your version is getting stretched.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Because I converted one and stretched it :) Sorry about that. The problem is in the conversion.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Bundyo, can you give us the details of your video ?
Size, fps, format, bitrate ?
How is it played by your tablet ?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Its almost the same as yours - 576x352 avi mpeg4 one pass. Didn't have the nerve for two passes.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Are you by chance looking for -nozoom mplayer option?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

[QUOTE=qole;291970...but being stretched to 16:10 (tablet screen)...[/QUOTE]
Tablet should be 15:9 (800 X 480)

/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf add,
aspect=15:9 will get you a full screen with, well, acceptable stretching.

@Addison: More aspect discussions here, http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=24067

bun

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Here is an email thread that I stumbled upon:
http://www.mail-archive.com/maemo-de.../msg08831.html

It basically brings about 2 points. First, "Using a closed CPU like the TI OMAP (2420) in an open device like the N800
wasn't the best pairing." By this they mean the hardware accelerators. Yes, the OMAP 3 is open source now, (with hardware accelerators and all) but the new devices will open up with monstrous price tags which will make many to wait for sometime.
The N800/810 seems to be an ideal device for me. Basic browsing, reading documents and watching videos at D1 res, and I know the 2420 has all the muscle to do this. Waiting and upgrading to the (more expensive) next version does not seem a prudent solution.
The second point being "...solution would be that the open source community can convince TI
to release those technical documents to the public."
Now this is prudent.
I think the user as well as developer community should go ahead and do this, and harness the full power of the N800/810.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Thank you very much Serge!

That was all I was looking for and it works perfectly!

Many thanks again! :D

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Bunanson, Addison,
I would suggest to go for a slight cropping instead of a slight stretching, but it's a matter of taste.

Bundyo, i suppose your video is 24 fps ?
Does it play well ?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I prefer a slight stretching. To me, it takes a lot of stretching to see distortion. And cropping - you dont know what you are missing. I HATE borders. And of course, as you said it well, it's a matter of taste :)

bun

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Hmm that depends on the footage your watching. I took camera footage I recorded using my Canon (standard box video) and it looked terrible stretched. Granted the video was never looked that great to begin with so a toss through tablet-encode did the job well.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

You know, after changing the zoom option that Serge suggested, I don't even bother converting videos anymore.

Two benefits from this. Pixel perfect display (no stretchy weirdness like bunanson likes and no need for cropping) and not having to constantly waste time doing all of the video conversion junk.

The only negatives are that you've got a smaller display and it will chunk up a little during moments of extreme video changes.

Granted, the video files are already in .avi format and are cartoons.

Well, at least I thought this deserved a quick mention.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Scaler has high quality (bicubic) and preserves aspect ratio. Pixels are stretched keeping all the proportions. So you just get a bigger picture. Nothing is cropped, so you still see black bars around the picture for the videos which are not 15:9.

No time is wasted on scaling, so no win here. This operation is HW accelerated and done by LCD controller.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Hi,
I stumbled upon this thread and got the idea to target the amount of pixels when encoding. I put the option to do this in my GUI for mencoder (SubVideo.exe). Windoze users can get it from http://www.tulehdus.com/SubVideo/

It seems to be ok to target 200.000 pixels for the N800

-mil

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Addison & Serge :
The HW scaler in our N8xx is a lot better than what is written in the old topic about video on NIT. But i noticed that it works better with certain picture sizes than others. I don't believe that any video form the web will be nicely played thanks to the scaler.

Mil : In fact, it depends a lot on the framerate too.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I have NEVER encode/convert video for my tablet. They just play fine. If not, I will look for another copy.

bun

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Sorry there chief.

I thought since you liked maximizing the display on your screen in some way, that in order to do that, you were recoding all of your videos.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Since this is the most active Video Conversion thread, I figure I'll throw this out there.

I'm a windoze user (ya, ya) and all the progs on the wiki suck.

I found this one, that seems to work well: MediaCoder

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/editions.html

It's super customizable and very easy to use.

I'm converting a 179mb 22min AVI file right now @

(double pass)400x240 30fps MP4 / 128kbps 44.1 MP3 = 110mb

and it looks awesome. I even fullscreened it on my 23" screen, and it is even watchable there!

just a little food for thought.

///EDIT
yup, just played it on the N810, it's as perfect as I would want it to be (and at around half the size!)

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Thanks for this information, would you like to try the settings I suggested in post #40 of this thread ?

You would be able to get a better image resolution ... and let us know if it works with this software you found !

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Totolo, just a question: how long does it take to convert a movie using handbrake with your specs?

Sure my PC is not a very powerful one (Athlon 64 3200+ running XP 32bit + 1gb RAM + Geforce 7300 GT (old school, I know...)), but it was going to take 6 hours. Damn!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

@Bobbe

Don't believe the estimated time... mine keeps saying 600+ hours :eek: on my 2Ghz Athlon.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

It really depends a lot on your computer and the video file ... on my macbook unibody, i would say it takes about the same duration than the movie itself ... but i only do 1 pass !

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

This is a great thread!

As I am moving from a PSP as a mobile media device to the n810, my immediate experience for high quality video playback was quickly shakened but now with all your encoding parameters, I think I will find as good if not better an experience as I had with the PSP!

Thanks all!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

i did your recommendation for 24fps wide.

i personally don't see much of a difference, save for the aspect ratio change. the file size actually ended up roughly the same.

all in all, the native resolution works better for me, because I personally want as little black on the small screen as possible (myopia).

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

If you don't see a difference I recommend going to the first page of the thread and check out my experience with that HD trailer. Along with the other encoding recommendations of this thread, and like mil referred to, a resolution near 200,000 pixels seems to be the silver bullet for the tablets.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Of course, you must take into account that I'm not converting HD videos here, just TV rips.

Watching HD video on a NIT is like killing a spider with a rocket launcher IMO.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

On a similar note, I discovered that just converting sound to 96kbit/44K1 makes most of videos playable straight off the net in full resolution. I know this sounds like snake-oil, but it works. It might get jittery on Matrix class scenes but 850kbps 640x350 divx video (which is roughly what you will find on the net for most shows) is just fine.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Yeah, but your NTSC numbers and totololo's NTSC numbers don't differ that much. And totololo is assuming 29.97 fps. But since you're going from 29.97 to 23.98 fps, you should definitely bump up the resolution. I recommend 528x384 (just greater than 4/3). And if you're not already, I would also throw in a deinterlacing filter.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

im converting @ 30fps. where did 23.98 come from?

anyway, I'm not really talking about getting *better* video quality to run. I think the way i did it looks fine, and should be good enough for most people. the whole concept of *needing* super-hq video on a nit sort of perplexes me.

I was merely sharing a decent / easy / customizable way to convert videos, because I had a moderately difficult time finding a good, free program.

Maybe my post should be in a different video conversion thread, but I figured this one was more active, so it would be seen.

///EDIT

oh, i see now about the 24fps. well that was using his parameters. when I did my conversion to the native resolution (400x240), i used 30fps.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Handbrake is free and has a Windows version.

http://handbrake.fr/

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I think I get it now. You were only referring to totololo's 24 fps wide resolution spec. I thought you were also going to change the fps. Sorry.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

No prob. i also realize that this thread IS about achieving "super hq-ish" on the nit.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

One definite advantage of Handbrake is the ability to set a target file size -- very handy for putting lots of movies on a card, eg., for travel.

The program comes very close to whatever you set.

Joe

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Hq ? it's like beauty : in the eyes of the beholder ... it's a matter of taste.

for me 400x240 is ugly, 576x 352 is acceptable, 800x 480 would be better ...

but sometimes ... i'm an annoying guy !
:D

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Cool. You're right, and it seems that everything having to do with quality NTSC video capture (S-Video or better) always leads back to this demonstration. But obviously for the tablet, the filters would be applied on the encoding side.