Notices

Hello,
I've been testing video players in my N800, and mplayer is by far the fastest video player in this tablet.

Now, I'm looking for the best video quality that mplayer can run smoothly in the tablet.

Most of the topics in this forum discussing video encoding for N8x0 are old or are based on the build-in video player.

So far, what I've found, is that I can play 640*360 without any lags.

Container: AVI
Width 640
Height 640/Aspect Ratio
Video Codec: Xvid (with 1 pass)
Video bitrate: 800
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio Bitrate: 128

This works like a charm for 16x9 videos, even with subtitles, I'm looking forward to see what can you get from the N8x0 processor.

EDIT:
Finally, here is what I think the best quality mplayer (MPlayer 1.0rc1-maemo.29.n8x0) can play on N8x0:
Container: AVI
Width: 480 for 4/3, and 640 for 16/9
Height: 360
Video Codec: Xvid (with 1 pass only)
Video Bitrate: 800
Framerate: 24 f/s
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio bitrate: 128
SampleRate: 44.1 Khz

Encoder used: HandBrake

Again, these values are based on my experience, If you think they should be corrected, feel free to post.

Do you encode those at full frame rate? I've never managed to get any video player on the N800 play smoothly at that resolution and bitrate, unless I dropped quite a few frames per second(something I intensely dislike).

Also, why only one pass?

I'm going to give it a try with PocketDivxEncoder. I'll let you know how it fared.

I use
avi
width 400 (with widescreen source) - variable on 4x3 source
height variable on widescreen source - 240 on 4x3 source
video codec xvid, 1000 kbps
audio codec mp3 - 128 kbps, stereo

no skipping when using mplayer

*I'm using 24 f/s

*I choosed 1 pass to get a constant video bitrate (I'm not sure, I may be wrong) because I remember reading that mplayer in N8x0 performs correctly when the bitrate is equal or lower than 800.

I remember also reading in this forum that it's possible to play 800*480 video at full framerate when the video is encoded in mpeg1, but hadn't the chance to test that.
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Again, this is all based on simple experiences, that's why I created this thread, so that you can report you own experience, and ultimatly get the best of the Tablet.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Video_encoding

After some tests, I find that 640*480 and 640*450 doesent play smoothly.

Although,
640*360 seems to work perfectly(I can upload a video)
680*382 looks also fine, but I cant really say it is perfect.
700*394 it starts to lag ....

So, for 16x9 sources 640*360 should be ok .
for 3*4 ... I'm still looking

Thanks ...

So the Media player limitations in this wiki page are not the MPlayer limitations. Someone will have to set the new limits

Also, it depends on the scene, so some vids will look/ run better than others, despite the same settings; a dialogue-based movie look better than a fight scene which will look better than an action-based sci-fi movie with tons of camera pans and odd backgrounds. A camera pan across a cluttered room seems to be the toughest to handle, whereas a boxing match might run smoothly at the same setting since there's less work being done.

Frankly 400:240 500/96 kbps is very good for everything I've watched on the N800, and 480x360 at 600/ 128 kbps is better than I've seen a "need" for, though of course quality is subjective, and tastes vary. Remember, of course, that we're viewing on a sub-5-inch screen and following from that, probably less-than-perfect audio situation, so there's no need for "perfect," but of course that shouldn't stop us from finding a set of "best." If someone can either recommend or email me a clip where I will notice a benefit of going from 480 to 600+ in resolution, I'd appreciate it, because so far I haven't been able to detect much of a difference.

In the "probably more info than you wanted" department:

At the moment, I'm playing with this cli statement, refined (and still refining) for my personal taste from the original which I saw on raiden's site, <http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=515> :

...on a pre-ripped DVD.

It seems to ignore the 800 video bitrate and the pass=2, and seems to set the bitrate by the scale setting, meaning 480:360 gets a higher bitrate than 400:240 no matter what setting of bitrate=XXX. Also, a different audio bitrate seems to change the video bitrate inversely; a higher cbrreset=XXX means a slightly lower video bitrate, while vid bitrate seems to have no effect on audio bitrate. Audio bitrate seems to be pretty stable, staying near whatever I set it to.

So yesterday with this statement I ended up with "ST:Voyager Endgame" at 87 minutes, 416M, 480x360, 557/ 96 kbit, while "Time Bandits" came in at 116 minutes, 714M, 480x360, 747/ 96. Why the large difference in video bitrate? I don't know, probably because the letterboxing in "Time Bandits," shrinks the screen, which I forgot about and intend to re-do later. "Endgame" runs perfectly, without a single hitch, while I have yet to view "Time Bandits," but an initial scan-through looks good.

You can set the scale to a single number and that will be the height, while the width sets "automatically," which is sometimes handy.

Next I'll be playing and looking to change to 44.1kHz from 48kHz audio, and taking suggestions if you can save me some time.

Joe

No, those limitations are hardware bound.

That's a vague statement. Of course any software is limited by hardware capabilities. But reaching the real hardware bounds is possible only with really well optimized software. And mplayer/ffmpeg is not optimized well for ARM11 currently.