[Maemo 5] Video playback problems in PR1.1
 

If this is posted elsewhere on these forums please link me, I did a search but couldn't find anything relevant.....

I have about 200 movies that I've converted into h.264/avc over the years when I had my iPhone, I've always had problems playing them on my N900, they play beautifully on iPhones (2G, 3G, 3GS)/iPod Touch's (1G)/Archos Box's/Blackberry Storms, yes I've tested all these devices over the years, these are the basic settings

I use Handbrake for mac

Size: 640x272 or 640x320 depending on the aspect ratio of the film
Encoder: x264
Quaitly: 53-60% constant depending on 'my opinion' the quailty of the film, I generally do action/sci-fi films at 60%, cartoons and dramas at 53%
FPS: same as source
Audio: AAC (Core Audio)

I've been using these settings for years and have worked over numerous devices...

When I first got my N900 the movies playback was very choppy with skipped frames, the minor update last week improved the playback slightly but skipped frames were still noticeable in fast moving scenes and now PR 1.1 refuses to play any of my media..

I have installed the extra decoders pack from devel but still no luck, as I do not have a Windows PC re-flashing my N900 is a problem, I know there is a flasher tool for mac's but to be honest I don't really wan't to risk 3rd Party Software fubar'ing my phone.

Any one got any ideas????

PS If anyone suggests re-encoding over 200 DVD's I will put a HEX on you..... :D

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

if the built-in player (gstreamer) fails then try mplayer from devel repository. if you want to have a gui install SiB as well. ;)

there is a discussion on videos on the n900 too -> http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...256#post473256

but i have to say that your settings seem really low. in this discussion the videos that have been tried had much higher settings and played nearly smooth.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Well this is interesting :(

I installed mplayer and SiB, but SiB does not even list these movies files but does list other files I have on there, some DivX stuff etc.. weird!!!

I really want to get this sorted, I watch a lot of movies on my phone (well did on my iPhone) when the wife watches crap like Big Brother.. :)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

this is mentioned in this thread:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40315

if your videos are in the .video folder you have to add this folder manually. in the folder choosing window click long on the screen then you should be able to enable viewing of hidden folders and select the folder where your videos are placed in. ;)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

I haven't had a problem with downloaded content or converted videos.

I don't think you need to rip every dvd again, but you may need to run each video file through handbrake again (ie your vids that play choppy). Look for the wiki article on n900 video conversion.

A few movie trailers for the n900, ignore my instructions they are for apple movie trailer conversion.
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=449583&postcount=1

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Okie Dokie....

the .video folder was already added to SiB, so I copied an offending movie file to my memory card and removed the folder paths to video and .video but added the link to the folder housing the movie...

I restarted SiB but it is still not showing the video on the memory card...... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I also tried navigating the file manager and selecting the movie directly for playback but it refuses to play

my head hurts :(

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

what container are you using?
mkv? <- isn't well supported right now
mp4? <- this should work

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Dude firstly Mucho Kudos to your continued help..

All the files on my N900 are m4v.

I tried using mplayer in the command line and got it to play the file but it crashes after 3 or 4 seconds.....

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

mhm... m4v is similar to mp4... just with additional DRM..
m4v isn't recognized by gstreamer (the built-in player)
mplayer seems to have trouble with this container.

you only have to change the container from m4v to mp4.
if it has DRM information in it remove it with requiem like stated in this wiki-entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4V

changing the container format should be done very quickly.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

I believe I have some similarly ripped movies, if not I can recreate your settings and test it out. Not a lot of mac users on this forum :-D

I'll give it a look in the morning (not now, the real morning, like noon, hehe).

EDIT: b666 is probably right about the container. Since the files aren't DRM'd you can probably even get away with changing the extension. You can make an automator script to batch change them (test one first!)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

i looked at the documentation of handbrake and i can't see m4v as container. there's only mp4 and mkv?! huh?

EDIT: aaaah... m4v is enabled under mac... i see...
BUT: m4v is the exact same as mp4 when it doesn't contain DRM - which your case should be.

so just rename movie.m4v in movie.mp4 and give it another try :)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Yes I did that already, had to search the interweb for xterminal commands :)

so now:

- mplayer plays the file but again the video is very jumpy and the sound is out of sync
- built in media player still refuses to play the file
- SiB recognises the file and actually plays it, but again the audio is out of sync and skipping frames all over the place

Its probably worth re-mentioning that these movie files played directly on the N900 with the built in media player before the 1.1 update, but they were very jumpy then...... but the audio has always been in sync

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

??? indeed when the program output the file they are m4v, at least on the mac version

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

try to rename movie.m4v to movie.mp4 and the default player should recognize and play it (!?)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Lol, ok I'm getting out of bed gimme a few minutes.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Did you try Kmplayer mplayer frontend? It seems to find m4v files for me just fine (and mplayer plays them ok).

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

LOL nice one

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

it plays in mplayer but choppy video and audio out of sync

plus media manager still isnt finding the video as mp4

WTF in going on

LOL

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

which bitrates do video and audio have?
average for video is 1500kbps in documentation.
if audio bitrate is relatively high too... could be causing the problems.

mhm.. reboot? *smile*

maybe kmplayer has optimized commands for m4v videos?!

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, kmplayer seems to be playing the video perfecly, its smooth and the audio is in sync....

you are a GENIUS among men.. but theres a horrid black bar along the bottom of the screen in-between the dark grey bars....

but at least its progress :D

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

no i use a constant quailty setting which is actually a variable bitrate,

ive rebooted so many times im going to have nightmares of that nokia boot video

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

kmplayer also appears to be playing m4v files as well, its just a shame that the GUI for kmplayer is pants :)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Ok I popped over a rip of Rambo II I made using similar settings. It shows fine for me in the default media player but I just get the 5 white dots forever.

EDIT: Tried a second video same thing.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

hehe, disable or change the video ;)
(disabling with powatool or changing over the maemo.org-search ^^)

btw: i may try sib and kmplayer for different container-types and codecs (:

EDIT: no difference between AVI, MP4 and MKV playback at all.

it's very surprising that the gui makes a difference in playback. they seem to start mplayer with different commands/options.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

yep thats the one!!

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

If there seems to be a problem with the decoder, why can't you just encode in xvid as that seems to work quite well? Atleast what I've tried watching some episodes were fine with no problems with sync or frame dropping. Not sure what settings are used as I haven't encoded them by myself. But seems that all my "special discount" series and flicks work when acquired from "special places".

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

lol like i said at the start of this thread, ive got over 200 of my dvd's encoded with these settings, so re-encoding them is a serious no-no for me, thats almost 5 years of DVD ripping and encoding, sod that!!! :D

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

This may be broken actually. My 9 trailer and N900 commercial won't play now either, endless white dots...

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

I deleted my 9 trailer but my N900 trailer plays, but i aint exactly a video your going to want to show off, its very choppy :(

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Could someone please upload video that doesnt work? Small clip is enough. Trailer would be good.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

i have the same problem and the only way i can get them to play is to reboot and open the file via file manager (bypassing the built in media player completely). it might have something to do with the video thumb caching process.

let me know if opening via file manager after a reboot plays anything. quite interested to follow this up

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Ok. Someone search the thread where they guide how to reset tracker and scan your media again. I cant find it right now.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

been trying that, I even used the xterminal command

tracker-processes --hard-reset

to kill the media indexer and did a N900 reboot - sill the same problems with video and the media player

Stupid Nokia :(

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

darn, sorry dude, i also tried killing the tracker but that didn't work either. i can still watch stuff, i just can't ever open via media player. it's annoying

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

I get the following error on the 9 trailer with gst-launch:

I may be doing something wrong because I'm pretty stupid at xterm though.

EDIT: Rebooting seems to have fixed playback for the 9 trailer and N900 ad, still endless white dots on the m4v files. Also it seems I just can't get gst-launch to work at all, maybe someone can help with the syntax.

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

Yes very annoying, but at least kmplayer seems to work

Its my pride thats in harms ways, the guys I work with are all iPhone girls, so when I sold mine to get the N900 i got a lot of stick, and now when theres problems like this i gotta listen to their gloating ..... now thats annoying.. lol

wonder if this is something the community can fix or whether we will have to wait for nokia...??

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

wonder if the n900 uses Quicktime for decoding h.264 codecs, if not could we put it on there???

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

VLC uses same codecs as mplayer I believe, but you could give it a try as well

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

hmmmm vlc?? would be a gimmic really if nothing else, what we need is a solution to another Nokia omission....

WTF is up with the N900's movies playing capabilities, and why does it get worse with every update?? (well the last 2 (only 2) updates, at least)

:)

:)

Re: Getting tired of Maemo/N900 movie playback
 

I put a bunch more movies on my device to test out subtitles. Getting super flaky playback of what I think are mostly h264 videos, some in avi containers as well. Some won't play, some required a reboot to play, one that played flaky in week 42 firmware won't play at all now. I'm gonna try and get a couple more hours sleep but I'll post up codec info later. There definitely seem to be video playback problems.

EDIT: I'd also suggest renaming this thread to something that doesn't sound like a whining thread. "Video playback problems in PR1.1" or something like that.