yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Xoom General] e.mote:
>What are these other settings which may require a reencode?

Things are still in flux, so there isn't an answer to this yet. For instance, the "use baseline" rule is no longer true with HC 3.1. We don't know if this is the Teg2's full potential, or if another upgrade will improve it further.

The other facet that can stand improvement is the media player. The current ones aren't very good. The "choppy MKV" and "no audio" issues are because of bad demuxers, which is an app problem, not an OS or driver problem. Subtitle support is paltry. It's simpler to wait for a good player, than to recode your video library to accomodate the current ones.

The closest "good" player to mind is CorePlayer. Per its status reports on Twitter, it's coming along. CoreCodec is the sponsor of the MKV format, so one would expect MKV support to be present.

http://twitter.com/#!/corecodec

>what's the easiest/fastest way to do the remux and/or aac reencoding

I'm not a good candidate to answer, since I use commandline tools. My workflow is a script using MKVToolnix to extract the video and audio, eac3to to convert audio to AAC, and MP4Box to mux. Perhaps others would know of a simpler solution.

>Could OP prepare exactly the same clips but in an mkv format? This is what is out there to download (99%)

The survey's intent is to find out how well Teg2 tabs can play HD H.264. The best way to do that is to avail of Honeycomb's native support, which means MP4 container w/ AAC audio.

MKV/AC3/DTS support would be the responsibility of the (app) media player, rather than the OS. The intent here isn't to test the players.

Anyway, remuxing the above MP4 clips to MKV wouldn't replicate a scene rip, because the video wasn't encoded using scene rules, and the audio is AAC instead of the normal DTS/AC3.
[Xoom General] Elysian893:
Mobo uses the stock player for hardware decoding, it only uses its own libraries for software decoding.
[Xoom General] JaredC01:
Please answer these questions:

1. Your tablet name & model

* Motorola Xoom

2. Firmware version (if custom ROM, include ROM name)

* HC 3.1 Rooted on Tiamat's 1.5 w/ GPU OC

3. Media player name & version

* MoboPlayer (latest) with ARM7 plugin (software decoding)

4. Playback quality (smoothness, AV sync) for each clip[/QUOTE]

* 720P high profile - Perfect playback (hardware decoding)

* 1080P high profile - Soft decoding, desynced audio, stuttering, ~5 FPS estimated.
[Xoom General] deafsheep:
That is really strange:

same clip in MP4 (which is a container) and in MKV (which is a container also, not a codec) play differently? Like MKV is not watcheable? That is just sad. Because a lot of stuff is put in .mkv container...

@keitht - confirm if I got the situation correctly
[Xoom General] deafsheep:
I double that.

Edit: I am sorry, you already answerred that.
[Xoom General] khov07:
OP, you seem to have a good handle on AV details...care to offer your conclusions based on the responses received so far?
[Xoom General] e.mote:
I've already posted a tentative summation here,

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=14055502

The elephant in the room would be the MKV scene rips, which at this point still aren't playable.

Until a better player appears, the interim solution would be to remux MP4, recoding the audio to AAC and leaving the video as-is. The process should take only a few minutes per movie. Some movies still won't play, but I think a large majority will be playable.
[Xoom General] mug2k:
Do you have any 720p scene rips if so how long does the conversion process take on average and what kind of PC spec are you running ?.
[Xoom General] jdavid_t:
Hello there,

could you share with us your remux and reencoding scripts?

Thanks,
[Xoom General] levenite:
Not true. See this thread. http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1058371&page=11
[Xoom General] e.mote:
>could you share with us your remux and reencoding scripts?

The scripts are customized to my environment and aren't suitable for public consumption. I'll fix them for general use and post them later. In Digital Man's thread, XenonMKV (http://xenonmkv.ev98.net/) apparently works for some.

@levenite

So can you play the 720p HP clip smoothly with the Asus TF and HC 3.0? I didn't see any report to that effect. I've posted links to the survey on several Tegra 2 forums, but only a couple were from non-Xoom'ers. It would be nice to get more data points from other tablets.

Can someone try these clips below and see if they play smoothly your tab? These are the same 720p HP clip as above, but using MP3 and 5.1 AAC, respectively. These test the flexibility of HC's MP4 support. I appreciate any feedback.

http://mediafire.com/?w5pt0warm2zopro 1280 high w/ MP3 audio

http://mediafire.com/?t4en4ihc7kds8yl 1280 high w/ 5.1 AAC audio
[Xoom General] vidriera:
Xoom Wifi US Stock nonrooted 3.1, your earlier high profile 720p's played great with the exception of the hitch when the beast rolls as others have noticed, and the 1080p baseline clip played great.

As far as these two clips go, the mp3 audio one refuses to play in the stock player, and will only play (terribly) in software decoding mode in moboplayer. The 5.1AAC skips around really strangely, and sometimes plays normally, but never with audio. I tried a reboot, same results after.

Also, I've tried two high profile 720p scene release movies that I had laying around, and used XenonMKV to transcode the audio to AAC. Worked great, and the videos play very smoothly. Thanks for testing this stuff, e.mote!
[Xoom General] e.mote:
Thanks for the quick feedback. Looks like stereo AAC is the only route. Good to hear that XenonMKV is working out. What happens if you feed it a >4GB file (which many 720p's are, even when the audio is shrunk)?
[Xoom General] Williamsmith123:
From above, many friends think that, xoom can't support high profile h.264 mkv video, if we want to to play this video, we only need to convert mkv to mp4.

In fact, this is not all right. From user manual of Xoom, I found xoom supported formats.

Audio Playback Supports: MP3, AAC, ACC+Enhanced, OGG, MIDI, AMR NB, AAC

Video Playback Supports: MPEG-4， H.264，H.263

Even through you convert mkv to mp4, Xoom still can't play this video. Xoom can't support high profile. only convert the high profile h.264 mkv to baseline profile h.264 mp4, Xoom can play it.
[Xoom General] vidriera:
It works with a larger-than-4GB file, but you have to select the option to not split the video at 4GB, because splitting is the default setting. Actually, looking at the files I fed to it, they are both larger than 4GB. Not a problem, I would say! :)
[Xoom General] SS2006:
Emote you should add mkv to op
[Xoom General] SS2006:
But this thread shows opposite with honeycomb 3.1...
[Xoom General] RinTinTigger:
1. Your tablet name & model

Motorola xoom VZW 3G

2. Firmware version (if custom ROM, include ROM name)

Android 3.1 | Tiamat 1.6GHZ kernel

3. Media player name & version

Rockplayer (always latest)

4. Playback quality (smoothness, AV sync) for each clip

Avatar baseline: abit more fluent than high stil a bit laggy

Avatar high: runs with small lags and a little slow all in all

Avatar main: went best, no greater lags, just in fast movements a little blurry
[Xoom General] luojs:
The sample from OP is High profile@L3.1, But most of the real world files is High profile@L4.1 or 4.0. any one tested 720P MP4 High profile@L4.1 sample with HC 3.1?
[Xoom General] chaval:
Tested L4.1 with good results.
[Xoom General] thdj:
Could you please give the time code for the video, I'd like to perform the same kind of tests with different encoding settings?

Thanks
[Xoom General] levenite:
The only Avatar clip that plays seemingly flawless is your original baseline Avatar clip. This is on a stock Asus Transformer and stock player with the latest update (HC 3.0.1). The 2 HP clips from the thread I've referenced play subjectively smoothly. Your lastest two clips have no sound, play erratically and crash the player after a few seconds of playing.

I appreciate your work, but there are a lot of loose facts concerning the issue that dim your effort. A more objective standard would be helpful. I find that frame drops are readily apparent when playing back something like a news crawl. The "birds" scene from

Planet Earth

is another clip that makes it relatively easy to spot dropouts. If you intend to derive a single profile for encoding that allows smooth playback on any Tegra 2 device, it seems at this time baseline would be your only choice. It may be better to provide a choice among different profile selections.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
>Could you please give the time code for the video

The scene is only in the extended edition. The timecode is 01:26:12.705 - 01:27:42.295. You may want to double-check by loading it into an editor or player. My clip is actually a little off, probably because MKVMerge only cut at the closest I-frame.

@levenite

The encode settings for both audio & video are posted in the OP, and the source is commonly available. My intent is to find if high profile 720p works well enough for HD movies to be playable on Tegra 2, which has been answered: a qualified yes for HC 3.1; a no for HC 3.0. All reports have been remarkably consistent in this.

The intent isn't to to count the number of drop-outs. Variations in system load would prevent such precise measurements. Nor is the intent to find an optimal encoding profile. That would depend on your encoding tool. FYI, the params used are the standard x264 settings I use for most everything.
[Xoom General] thdj:
Thanks I'll make some tests
[Xoom General] levenite:
So why do the two 720P HP clips from the referenced thread play well on my HC 3.0.1 stock Transformer? This would imply a yes for 3.0.1 for a particular tweaked profile.
[Xoom General] SoundSurfer:
I know this might sound stupid, but I recall seeing this "hack" on some forum last year, related to the chinese tablets (ZT-180):

Can someone just "rename" the .mkv file to .mp4 and see if it runs better?

PS: This thread was just what I needed to buy a transformer ... :)
[Xoom General] e.mote:
@levenite

Sorry, I missed your input above. Another with a TF has said otherwise, and honestly, the survey doesn't have enough input on 3.0 to make a definitive conclusion (since all Xoomers here are 3.1). You can follow-up by trying the mentioned XenonMKV tool on some of your MKVs, and see if your TF can play other 720p movies. I'd like to get further input on this.

Edit: BTW, if it's true that 3.1 does offer better performance, then I'd suggest just waiting for 3.1 to show up for the TF, which should be RSN. But if you want to tinker w/ 3.0, and if you're using either Handbrake or x264cli, I can offer some suggestions on param adjustment to make encodes go smoother.

@soundsurfer

A rename shouldn't work, as the structure is different between the two. It may work on a PC, because a Win box would see the MP4 extension and call up the media player, which then parses the header and correctly play the MKV content.
[Xoom General] Dr.Preston:
Android 3.1 on a 3G Motorola xoom. The 720p high profile clip plays perfectly with stock and mvideoplayer. Haven't tried any other samples.
[Xoom General] Dr.Preston:
Most of my high profile 1080p movies rest between 4 and 6.5 gigs, but that's probably because I rip the blu-rays myself and use custom encode settings I came up with myself.
[Xoom General] muyoso:
How is the 1920 main profile the smallest 1080p video? That makes no sense.

BTW, All files play flawlessly on first generation iPad using XBMC with perfect A/V sync.
[Xoom General] vidriera:
(quote below)
[Xoom General] muyoso:
Really? Read the OP moron.

"Please try all clips, then answer the questions below. If you have multiple tablets (eg iPad), please use a different reply for each tablet."

Even specifically mentions the iPad.
[Xoom General] vidriera:
Ok, I rescind my comment. I apologize.
[Xoom General] SS2006:
720p main fine on my tab 10.1

Android 3.0
[Xoom General] SS2006:
same with 720p high

1080p not a chance
[Xoom General] levenite:
So apple doesn't allow you to play these files without using a third party microsoft inspired hack. Oh wait, maybe they will let you buy this support later. What a company.
[Xoom General] muyoso:
No, these files would play fine in the default player as well since they are mp4. I just use xbmc for everything since it also plays high profile h.264 mkv files @ L5.1. The 1080p files may not play in the stock player on the ipad because of an artificial limit on the resolution, but im pretty sure I've played 1080p mp4's before. Ill test it in a bit and get back to you.

Edit: Yep, they all play flawlessly using the stock player.
[Xoom General] wite:
I have tried to play all 3 versions of the 720p avar clip and I get "sorry, this video cannot be played" on all of them. What am I doing wrong?

Got a rooted xoom with 3.1 and I am using the stock video player.
[Xoom General] levenite:
Sorry, I don't have MKVs, but I would welcome x264cli parameters. Thanks.:)
[Xoom General] gogol:
Nice! But, too bad ... iPad screen resolution is not even suitable for 720p. It is not HD.

So, sorry ... it is pointless for playing HD movie on an iPad.
[Xoom General] muyoso:
Very True. There are annoying black bars whenever I play anything essentially making it a 9" tablet for video. Could use HDMI out or VGA out if needed though. Waiting on an Android tablet that doesn't use the Tegra 2 SoC personally. Thought the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was it, but then they used Tegra 2 instead of Exynos. Looks like this summer Tegra 3 should be released and the video limitations will be lifted and by then Honeycomb or ICS will be perfected.
[Xoom General] gogol:
I think that is pretty much what will happen.

Google will announce ICS ... and Nexus tablet using Tegra 3, a working SD card slot, a USB port, face tracking, 10000 mAH battery, 10.1" screen PLS, at 8.5mm thick!

Made by ... hmmm :)
[Xoom General] mug2k:
What is ICS ?.
[Xoom General] vidriera:
ice cream sandwich (next android version for phone and tablet)
[Xoom General] Williamsmith123:
Hi guys, thanks for uploading those high profile movies to mediafire.com and share them with us. To test whether the Xoom can play high profile well, I download them, and directly imort them to my new xoom.

By its built-in Player, the video is OK, but I can't hear any sound. So I download QQPlayer and MoboPlayer for tring to play these two movies, but unfortunately they play erratically, the quality is bad and after a few seconds of playing the player crash.

So I conclude that Xoom can't directly play MP4, H.264, High Profile videos well, but how to play these High Profile on Xoom with high quality? I google and found a thread from android central forum, it also mentioned the similar problem. some guy refered to a solution by using a third-party tool called Fox Real Xoom video converter. i also tried and convert those high profile movies to baseline profile movies, they are played flawlessly.

Therefore, i suggest users do not attempt to play high profile on xoom, it waste our time. just use baseline profile, everything is ok!
[Xoom General] levenite:
Tegra 3 this summer? Dream on. Also the Tegra 3 chip will very likely be more expensive, since it still uses the same 40nm manufacturing process and due to its increased complexity must therefore be bigger. Then of course, there will be a markup for the first quad core ARM chip!
[Xoom General] e.mote:
>How is the 1920 main profile the smallest 1080p video? That makes no sense.

Yes, it's counterintuitive. x264's 'veryfast' speed used also produced substantially smaller file sizes than the default 'medium' speed on a frequent basis, and being twice as fast. It very much depends on the content. Higher compression doesn't always produce smaller files. I use 'veryfast' speed as default.

Re: iPad's 4:3 aspect display - I prefer the 4:3, even though it's not as good for videos. I wrote a 'resize' script to optimize video aspect for 4:3, that doesn't require recoding. An example is below. Unfortunately, it only works for the MKVs, and most players don't yet support MKV's soft-crop command. I've lobbied VLC to support it, and will lobby CorePlayer when it comes out (since they're the sponsor of the MKV format, after all).

@levenite

Start with the standard settings, which works well 90% of the time,

--crf [19-25] --tune [film|animation] --preset veryfast

Dump the help options to a file.

x264 --fullhelp > x264.txt

It shows what the presets mean in terms of encoding parameters. Go to http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings for their explanation.

From perusing the presets below, you see how the settings are gradually increased to get better compression (which per above doesn't alway work), along with higher playback requirement. Then, to lower playback demand, gradually decrease the settings. Decrease proportionally, following the speed presets as a guide. You know that baseline profile works well, so that is your floor.

The survey samples were made with the 'veryfast' preset. If that isn't smooth enough, you can use some or all of settings from 'superfast' or use in tandem with main profile. I also suggest using crf 21 or higher to keep bitrates reasonable.

- baseline: --no-8x8dct --bframes 0 --no-cabac --cqm flat --weightp 0

- main: --no-8x8dct --cqm flat

- high: (default)

- superfast: --no-mbtree --me dia --no-mixed-refs --partitions i8x8,i4x4 --rc-lookahead 0 --ref 1 --subme 1 --trellis 0 --weightp 1

- veryfast: --no-mixed-refs --rc-lookahead 10 --ref 1 --subme 2 --trellis 0 --weightp 1

- faster: --no-mixed-refs --rc-lookahead 20 --ref 2 --subme 4 --weightp 1

- fast: --rc-lookahead 30 --ref 2 --subme 6 --weightp 1

- medium: (default)

- slow: --b-adapt 2 --direct auto --me umh --rc-lookahead 50 --ref 5 --subme 8

- slower: --b-adapt 2 --direct auto --me umh --partitions all --rc-lookahead 60 --ref 8 --subme 9 --trellis 2

- veryslow: --b-adapt 2 --bframes 8 --direct auto --me umh --merange 24 --partitions all --ref 16 --subme 10 --trellis 2 --rc-lookahead 60

defaults (from x264 settings wiki): crf 23, 8x8dct*, aq-mode=1, bframes=3, b-adapt=1, cabac*, cqm=(not set), deblock=0,0, direct=spatial, fast-pskip*, mbtree*, me=hex, me-range=16, mixed-refs*, partitions=p8x8,b8x8,i8x8,i4x4, rc-lookahead=40, ref=3, scenecut=40, subme=7, trellis=1, weightb*, weightp=2 (* = not actual param)

That, or use my one-click script which does everything :). I'll post it RSN.
[Xoom General] mug2k:
is there any news on when coreplayer or VLC will be released ?.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
BetaBoy (Core founder & lead dev) is very active on Doom9.org, and from his postings there, their highest priority right now is for CoreAVC bug fixes and CoreMVC 3D. It makes practical sense, since Honeycomb is still in beta, and the market for Android tablets hasn't hit mainstream yet.

From reading the tea leaves on the VLC blog posts, kinda same deal. They have other priorities at the moment, probably because the main devs haven't yet bought a HC tablet.
[Xoom General] levenite:
In trying to optimize for video playback, it is helpful to know the hardware we are dealing with. The "NVIDIA Tegra Multi-Processor Architecture" states:

Now, Nvidia wont mention the hardware capabilities but most hardware decoders will require some common processing blocks. With that in mind, the following link provides some interesting information in that regard:

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=video+macroblock+algorithm+hardware&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=d391891e6736cb98&biw=967&bih=459

Note in particular the first two references by Chen.

{Edit} Sorry, I mean the 1st and the

Power scaling Algorythm

... post

Thanks again for your work. BTW, do you know of any issues of [Linux] piping using x264 cli or the other tools you use to make the files? I am interested in a Mediatomb script and Ffmpeg has problems piping generated x264 code in the available containers.
[Xoom General] e.mote:
>Note in particular the first two references by Chen.

You lost me. One of the white papers is about optimizing vid bandwidth across a network, which doesn't apply here. Anyway, it's dated 2002. Kinda old. Relying on published specs has its place, but real-world limitation is best found by empirical testing.

Sorry, I'm not up on encoding tools on the Linux side. I know Lin dudes like to use ffmpeg/mencoder wrappers over x264, since they handle audio as well as video. I used mencoder a while back, and it has its issues, as you need to deal with both the (many) mencoder quirks in addition to x264's.

x264cli is simple with presets. Unfortunately, it's not available in lib form for the front-ends to use, and I don't think ffmpeg/menc can use them either. If you're going to stream from a mediaserver, look into --tune fastdecode & zerolatency presets. If using MP4 format, then also look into hinting for network transport via MP4Box.

The video encoding side is no problem, since x264 can parse most video formats by itself. It doesn't do VOB/TS stream parsing, but happily we don't have to worry about those here, as the conversions folks here want tend to be for already-processed content like MKV/M4V/AVI/etc. No need to deal with IVTC or the NTSC/PAL morass.

For audio, the AAC encoding is fairly easy as well. FFDShow provides DirectShow filters for both AC3/DTS, along with most other audio. With AVISynth frameserving (Win-only), if the host PC can play the file, it can be converted. I also use standalone converters like eac3to and NeroAACEnc for less system dependency. Demuxing and muxing can be handled by MKVToolnix and MP4Box for many of the common formats.

You may need to deal with embedded subs. With no embedded sub support at the moment, my interim solution is to extract any SRT sub to external, and discard the other formats, as I don't want to deal with conversion/OCR. This would be a problem for animes, since many use ASS/SSA fansubs.

Mediainfo is essential to providing info on media content. More importantly, it has a robust interface for scripting use. Many of the problems people are experiencing with the XenonMKV tool in the other thread are because content info (like DAR, PAR, fps) wasn't passed along to the muxer.
[Xoom General] levenite:
WOW, that is amazing! The lowly a4 chip plays 1920x1080@120.5hz, 4096x2048@30hz and even 4096x2304@26.7hz flawlessly all wasted on a 9.7 inch 4:3 screen. I can only wonder what it would do if you overclocked it.

Its magic.:rolleyes:
[Xoom General] e.mote:
>could you share with us your remux and reencoding scripts?

I've posted a smart muxer/converter script to convert videos to MP4 for mobile devices. AV recoding is only if needed. Encoding 1-pass constant-quality for best speed and highest consistent quality. It's specifically geared for Tegra2's capabilities, although you can of course use it as a general-purpose muxer/converter. Try it out.

Supported formats: MKV MP4 M4V MOV WMV AVI MPEG1 MPEG2 FLV RM RMVB OGM

NB: Please read the post before running it. You need to install AVISynth and FFDShow. Links are in the post.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1102922
[Xoom General] SoundSurfer:
So, anyone else tested a 720p MKV High Profile on 3.1?
[Xoom General] kenndoe:
I just tried the 1080p baseline and high profile videos on the Playbook.

No stuttering or slowdown at all. Perfect for videos.

Too bad it does not support MKV files yet.
[Xoom General] turbulent28:
3.1 transformer.

Played all 720 great

Played only 1080 baseline

Couldnt even open main or high 1080

Tried on both stock and mobo players
[Xoom General] Srikar_NBK:
3.1 on Transformer.

720 p baseline is flawless. Other 2 720p profiles are choppy when the first beast slings into the mud. 1080p baseline is very good too. Other 2 1080p's are unwatchable. Tried on Moboplayer, stock player and Flikie Movie viewer.
[Xoom General] SoundSurfer:
I don't know if the following video is fake, but check this out:

LG Optimus 2X (tegra 2) playing 720p mkv flawlessly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72_sUCKwgXU

also:

New firmware for 2x in Korea with 720p L4.1 MKV support

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1082705