[Xoom General] MichaelWestin:
So I did some conversions last night with Handbrake. I used the "Normal Profile" and unchecked some things that said this should be taken off for baseline profiles. I set the bitrate to 15000 kbps regardless of the videos.

Here is what I converted:

Justified.S02E02.The.Life.Inside.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-RANDi

Justified.S02E03.The.I.of.the.Storm.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-RANDi

Life.BluRay.BBC.1080p.x264.H@M Episodes 1 and 2

They came out close to their original files sizes, roughly 1.5 gb and around 6gb.

I used Rock Player because I have always had great performance from it. It was the one from the site, not Lite, but somebody on the boards recommended it the other day.

Justified played great. I didn't change anything with the audio settings or encoding. The video looks great and I'm not an audiophile but the sound was good enough for me. There is a significant increase in quality from the ~350 mb xvid rips (for a ~40 min video). I mean, obviously it is higher quality video, but the difference is very noticeable on the Xoom, notably a huge reduction in pixelation. The output was .m4v but an mp4 container, and played with hardware acceleration.

Life, with the same preset settings (but at 1080P resolution), would not play with hardware or software acceleration. It just said there was an error opening the file. I would play with it some more, but to be honest I just plan on watching TV shows (720p Rips) on it so I don't really want to bother with figuring out the problem right now.

I started this thread off pissed about having to convert, but it only took like 30 min to convert each Justified ep, and it looked so good on the Xoom I'm giving up on my *****ing about MKV's not playing properly out of the box. If it happens, it happens.

NFO information is below in case anybody needs it for further testing.

NFO For Justified 2x03:

General

Complete name :

Justified.S02E03.The.I.of.the.Storm.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-RANDi.mkv

Format : Matroska

File size : 1.25 GiB

Duration : 41mn 37s

Overall bit rate : 4 306 Kbps

Encoded date : UTC 2011-02-24 11:04:28

Writing application : mkvmerge v2.9.8 ('C'est le bon') built on Aug 13 2009 12:49:06

Writing library : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video

ID : 1

Format : AVC

Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec

Format profile : High@L3.1

Format settings, CABAC : No

Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames

Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@3.1

Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC

Duration : 41mn 37s

Bit rate mode : Variable

Bit rate : 3 836 Kbps

Width : 1 280 pixels

Height : 720 pixels

Display aspect ratio : 16:9

Frame rate : 23.976 fps

Color space : YUV

Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0

Bit depth : 8 bits

Scan type : Progressive

Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.174

Stream size : 1.12 GiB (89%)

Language : English

Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177

Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361

Matrix coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

Audio

ID : 2

Format : AC-3

Format/Info : Audio Coding 3

Mode extension : CM (complete main)

Codec ID : A_AC3

Duration : 41mn 37s

Bit rate mode : Constant

Bit rate : 384 Kbps

Channel(s) : 6 channels

Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE

Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz

Bit depth : 16 bits

Stream size : 114 MiB (9%)

Language : English

NFO for Life (BBC):

Technical Specs

Video Codec.......: x.264@L4.1

Video Bitrate.....: ~14200 kbps

Resolution........: 1920x1080

Display asp ratio.: 16:9

Frame rate........: 25.000

Runtime...........: 1h episode

Size..............: ~6gb episode (~60gb total)

Audio ............: English@AC3 640 kbps

Subtitles.........: English

Chapters..........: Yes (as in bluray)