Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

what is that guy wearing???

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

What, I thought we all wore our construction hats when we've got our pink polo collar flipped-up inside our Member's Only knock-off. No?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

White construction hats were so last year...

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

[click]Note to self: Remind Reggie to add a per-post "Off Topic" or "Ignore" button so we can self-regulate our fun. It seems I enjoy strange fashion sense banter during useful threads. In the meantime, maybe I'll just add a tag.[/click]

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Daperl, no, your post is usefull, it's the first time i see a so clear demonstration about deinterlacing ! THANKS !

DVD are still interlaced, it means that if you encode above 352 pixels wide, you will have to deinterlace during encoding. But most of the videos you can download (free or non-free) are progressive, so, no deinterlecing needed.

HANDBRAKE does a good job for deinterlacing, you just have to select it in the video page, (where you can crop and resize, in the bottom right)

Low resolution video don't have to deinterlace, because they just keep half of the frames (1 line of 2), so you loose practically half of the details.

The temptation to go for a low resolution video to avoid to deinterlace is strong, but if you want the best possible picture on screen ... you will definitively chose to deinterlace an pick the highest possible picture size.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Another interesting thing: I was able to play a 640x480 video without problems, but then I added ao=sdl and "softvol" settings to my mplayer config file (to allow the volume to be boosted dramatically higher [1] [2] ) and suddenly the video started stuttering. I'll play around a bit more, see if I can figure out exactly which setting causes the slowdown...

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I have an .avi video file with German subtitles displayed on the screen.

Is there a way to remove these subtitles while playing it under mplayer?

I'm not seeing an option for this.

Thanks.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

If your subtitles are inside the frames, you cannot remove it. If they are just in a separate file, you can always remove the file, but it seems you are in the first case ...

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

This was a very good and informative thread when it comes to what resolution, etc to save movies in. Thanks.

I know the N810 supports a number of formats like MP4, AVI, etc - is there one format that provides better results than others?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

the best way to view videos on the nokia n810 is downloading mplayer. there is no need to convert videos because it recognises most file formats and the quality of the video is very smooth compared to the default media player for the n810

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

mp4 is usually what I end up going with. haven't had any problems.

check the video conversion link in my sig. it turns out a nice vid with decent size (compared to original)

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I've got one more question, it should be the last of them... I hope. :)

Is it possible to kill all running processes before using mplayer to get that extra little kick in speed and performance?

If so, how can this be done?

I'm running on a N800 with latest Diablo kernel.

Thanks!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Killing everything at once may not be possible/safe but you can at least go in plane mode.

I don't agree with the previous comment about Mplayer and videos.
Many videos downloaded will NOT play properly because of format, size, bitrate, decompression process being too heavy for our little NITs ... This is not a problem with Mplayer however, it's quite natural.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Okay, I'm feeling like throwing out another question here.

Hope you guys like math problems. :D

So I have a video that is exactly 704x400, and yeah, It's much too big for the tablet to rifle off.

How can I find a lower dimension that has the same 1.76 aspect ratio?

I could write the program in BASIC language but I have nothing on my computer, and using a calculator takes too long.

Is there a simple math utility program to figure this one out to make it easy on me?

352x200 carries the same aspect ratio of 1.76 but is there something a little bigger than this that stays under the 200,000 pixels suggestion?

Thanks!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Addison,

Why don't you use HANDBRAKE ?
It helps you to keep the aspect ratio (Video / Picture Settings / mark "keep aspect ratio / Anamorphic : none) then you change one of the sizes and it adapts the other one as best as possible.

1,76 ... but it's 16:9 video !!!
Didn't you read all the settings I gave in this thread ?!
:confused:
I worked a lot on this, so please, at least, read it and try it !
:mad:

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Was it so difficult to find ?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I've always been happy using N800 Video Convert, but I'm giving Handbrake a try. There is something I don't get. (OK, a number of things, but I'll start here.)

I'm working from files ripped with DVD Shrink.

Handbrake says my source is 720 x 480, but it also says the aspect ratio is 1.78. Since 720/480 is 1.5, where does 1.78 come from? (Or where does 720/480 come from?)

Also, does anybody know if you can use N800 Video Convert if you want subtitles? (I'm still encoding my first movie with Handbrake, but it looks like it's going tolet me include subtitles. Woo-hoo!)

In Handbrake, are people using Mpeg-4 (Xvid) or Mpeg-4 (FFmpeg)? Are you starting from a Preset and modifying? Under Picture Settings are you just ignoring Crop and Filters?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Totololo, if you think this is the apex of your Video-Conversion research, I recommend that you edit your Post #1 with a comment and a link to this one (that is, to your Post #40).

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

1/ Handbrake is perfect for DVD ripping, using a pre-ripped dvd is only making things more complex.

2/ I guess that your 1.5 / 1.78 ratio question is involving anamorphic system ... if i remember correctly, someone posted a link earlier in this forum to explain what is anamorphic. My tip : in Handbrake, go to video settings, and look at the picture (you can change chapter in the preview). Then change anamorphic setting from "strict" to "non" and see what looks natural and not streched/compressed. If your DVD seems to be in anamorphic mode, set Handbrake in anamorphic LOOSE, so you can easilly resize the movie.

3/ Handbrake allows you to select easilly languages and subtiltles.

4/ You can try both, on my Mac, i just use FFmpeg.


About editing my first post, good idea ! It's done.
If somebody comes with better settings, i 'll change it again !

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I talk a little bit about resizing / cropping over in this thread. Bonus: an actual example, with pictures!

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Video & Battery Life?

What kind of life are people getting from their batteries while watching videos? N800

I tried watching yesterday and hit the dreaded red battery after ~30 min ( on headphones and screen @ brightest setting)


Thanks

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

It's been a while since I tried using my n800 for video, but I think that 30 minutes was it, yes.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

@luca

Thanks

I was afraid of that... was hoping a new battery would help....oh well

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

That sounds very wrong... When playing local content in offline mode, I'm getting 4+ hours on my N810, not on brightest screen, though (but with speakers).

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Don't thank me, it's possible that my unit (and yours) is faulty: most people here rave about amazing battery life, while I seldom get 2 hours of use, (I mean normal browsing, emailing, rssing, not playing videos).
Or maybe my original battery was faulty or not very "fresh" (lithium batteries age badly even when not used).
Now I'm using cheap hong-kong batteries and they last more or less the same than the original battery (when it was new, now it's almost useless).

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I was streaming content over wifi (actually, playing from an nfs mount) or from an usb stick, so it may also explain why I got such lousy times.
Besides the n810 is more power efficient than the n800 (or so they say).

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I used to get 3+ hours of video out of my N800 -- playing from an SD card. I usually get 4-5+ hours out of my N810 (constant video) -- from the SD card.

On my trip from the US to Berlin last year, I watched two full-length movies, played games, read a little, and wrote this blog post. The battery was coughing during the last paragraph of the blog post, but I was able to do it.

Tim

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Same amazing battery life here.

Luca, Snoshrk, your machines (hardware or software) have something wrong. Even if streaming uses logically much more power thant reading from SD card, you should'nt get so poor results !

As usual in this case try :
0/ charge fully your battery
1/ deactivate ALL your applets/taskbar applets
2/ go to in flight mode
3/ close ALL your running programs
4/ play a long video from your SD card

How long does it play now ?

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Well, I don't actually care about videos, but if I do 2 I could well stop using the internet tablet at all ;)
Note that I always had lousy time with no applets at all, that's why now I have the clock and omweather (it doesn't make a difference).
Since the tablet doesn't tell me what is actually using the battery, trying pinpoint the cause (I suspect the swap on the sd card and the lousy access point) it's not worth it for me, since I have a couple of cheap spare batteries: when the first one is over I put in the second one.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Doh! :o

I had forgotten that I had been trying to glom onto a free wifi access point at extreme range before giving up and deciding to watch a movie (wife was shopping....craft store.....testosterone free zone....) :eek:

Thx

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

I've found that downloading iPhone versions of iPlayer content (using this method) then converting them from h.264 into XviD works amazingly on the tablet. 480x272, so not too bad, and I think the original video is something like 384kbps, so 500-600kbps in XviD does the trick. Mplayer really seems to struggle, which I find odd, but it's perfect with the default media player. Of course, those of you outside the UK, are scuppered :p

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

For iPlayer content there is a much better tool get_iplayer which is a perl script based application so is equally usable on Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD etc. You can download programmes in a variety of quality settings from HD (usually available) through high quality flash to regular low quality streaming flash and the video is automatically transcoded to h264+aac....and no DRM of course. It also has full PVR functionality in conjunction with cron/your OS's scheduler, and all kinds of useful options (can obtain subtitles, thumbnails etc). I've found that the flashvhigh1 and flashvhigh2 settings are ideal for obtaining something that can be transcoded for MPlayer on the N810, giving a very good picture with no artefacts and decently small file size. I've found that the combination of tablet-encode and Mplayer or KMplayer is much more satsfactory than the default player and Nokia's own converter.

Re: Video can be better than expected !
 

Lately I mostly just convert audio and that's about it. Seriously, if it's a divx/xvid with less than 640x350 and about 800kbps (which is about a 350MB episode of a show...) it will do quite well. If I copy from the desktop through QTE I usually recompress, but mostly just to cut copy time, when I download on the tablet, I just convert audio tracks and that's it.