Database Users

XOOM vs Ipad 2 Video playback

Ipad 2:
Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
XOOM:
If you stick with H.264 Baseline Profile, you can achieve up to 1920x1080p at 30 fps at 20Mbps.
Baseline Profile means:
- No CABAC entropy coding.
- No B frames
- No 8x8 transforms (DCT)
- No Weighted Prediction
For 1280x720p at 30 fps, you can go up to 20Mbps and Motorola XOOM should still be able to handle it. More Realistically, depending on the content, you can get away with 4Mbps and up with varying degrees of quality. If you are tight on space, use 4Mbps. If you want something to look good you can use 10/12 Mbps. At some point though the higher the bitrate will only translate to decreasing amounts of quality improvement. In other words, 20Mbps will probably look as good as 15Mbps, but will just use up more space. Ultimately, there is really no one size fits all solution and it may take a little experimentation to find the settings that work best for the content you wish to view.
Additionally your device does not have a limitation on certain types of B frames (Main profile tool). So you can add in B frames and not affect performance that much. If you are using a encoding tool that uses B frames, such as QuickTime Pro, you should be able to achieve main profile encoding.
If you are using a lower resolution that 720p (such as 720x480 resolution size) in order to encode longer length video , you can get away with using more tools (High and Main profile tools). However, encoding become more complex and may require more experimentation to achieve acceptable results.
In general, if you are concern about performance, use baseline tools and possibly b-frames (with no weighted prediction). This will give you the best performance.
Also as side note, if you are upscaling from a DVD to 720p try to use the best upscaling algorithm provided and don't expect to get true 720p quality from upscaled DVD.
Looks like Xoom is a tad bit better in terms of supported Hardware video decode capabilities.
In terms of GPU - it seems that the Ipad 2 may have a bit of an edge with the new power VR 543 - though this is not official as there are no direct comparisons yet.

Well my Epic4g with the Powervr SGX540 plays back high profile 720p FLAWLESSLY. The iPad will be capable of much more than that with the newer chip. The video standards that they "support" are the ones that they use through itunes and in no way represent the highest possible encoding of video that will play back. The instant XBMC hits the iPad2, I expect at least 1080p main profile to work since 1080p high profile ALMOST works on the iPad1.

muyoso said:
Well my Epic4g with the Powervr SGX540 plays back high profile 720p FLAWLESSLY. The iPad will be capable of much more than that with the newer chip. The video standards that they "support" are the ones that they use through itunes and in no way represent the highest possible encoding of video that will play back. The instant XBMC hits the iPad2, I expect at least 1080p main profile to work since 1080p high profile ALMOST works on the iPad1.
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What's that you say, the iPad can output 1080p? Well sort of. The iPad can mirror its 1024x768 display in 1080p but it still won't decode 1080p H.264 videos, and we don't know what type of TV you have, but we'd bet ours does a little bit better job of scaling than the magical iPad. All that being said, the iPad 2's new form factor will increase its desirability as a couch companion --not to mention we'll buy anything with magnets -- but an HD source device, not so much.
That's from engadget
http://hd.engadget.com/2011/03/02/the-ipad-2-and-1080p-theres-nothing-to-see-here/

There are a lot of threads about xoom video limitations.
Am I the only person who just copied dvd rips from my iTunes folder straight to the xoom, and watch them with zero issues?
Maybe my handbrake settings arent top-notch, but the quality/size trade off worked fine on my old I pad, and work fine for the xoom. If I wanted full crazy HD, i'd watch from the blu-ray disk directly, on a TV that does it justice.
Am I crazy?
Sent from my Xoom using XDA App

It won't do it officially. Once it its jailbroken though it will have xbmc and will have ridiculous capabilities. For example the current ipad can play 720p high profile with xbmc now.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Bauxite said:
Because the specs page for the iPad 2 lists SO many more formats.... stop trolling.
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What the specs page lists for the iPad 2 is irrelevant. Here my iPad1 playing a 720p [email protected] h.264 mkv file:
http://vimeo.com/20636064
Pretty sure the iPad never had that listed on its specs page. For a comparison, here is the Notion Ink and the Xoom playing back that exact same clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXWu6m33EP0&feature=player_detailpage#t=231s

muyoso said:
What the specs page lists for the iPad 2 is irrelevant. Here my iPad1 playing a 720p [email protected] h.264 mkv file:
http://vimeo.com/20636064
Pretty sure the iPad never had that listed on its specs page.
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How long did it take from the MOMENT the iPad was released to when that became supported by some app?
People act like just because there are no apps RIGHT NOW for the xoom to play additional formats that there never ever will be.

Bauxite said:
How long did it take from the MOMENT the iPad was released to when that became supported by some app?
People act like just because there are no apps RIGHT NOW for the xoom to play additional formats that there never ever will be.
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It took a while for XBMC to be ported, 9 months or so. Dont know if they were working on it that entire time. The reason people act like that BTW is because the Tegra 2 is incapable of hardware decoding [email protected] or higher. Here is the guy who ported XBMC to the iPad and AppleTV and who was tasked with porting to Tegra 2 devices talking about it:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=735285&postcount=41
Believe me, I wish that were not the case. Wants me some Xoom or Galaxy Tab 10.1 action.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only thing difference I seem to see from baseline and high profile h.264 is compression. My Xoom is fully capable of displaying the converted 720p mkvs with no chop/stutter in widescreen format on its screen. I've yet to test out hdmi out to my TV though.
Unless you want to talk about bitrate, but I can hardly tell the difference in quality loss vs source on something that I downloaded off the internet.

iceytea said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but the only thing difference I seem to see from baseline and high profile h.264 is compression. My Xoom is fully capable of displaying the converted 720p mkvs with no chop/stutter in widescreen format on its screen. I've yet to test out hdmi out to my TV though.
Unless you want to talk about bitrate, but I can hardly tell the difference in quality loss vs source on something that I downloaded off the internet.
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Oh there is no doubt that you can convert the video to play back perfectly on the Xoom. That isn't in question. I personally just think its ridiculous to have to.
Good read on the differences here, especially on page 3:
http://www.polycom.com/global/documents/whitepapers/h264_high_profile_wp.pdf
Warning, above is a direct link to a pdf.

Thanks for the read, I skimmed it and it pretty much sums up as higher compression without visual quality loss. I never put it together that the development of high profile was used for bandwidth savings though, interesting.

muyoso said:
Oh there is no doubt that you can convert the video to play back perfectly on the Xoom. That isn't in question. I personally just think its ridiculous to have to.
Good read on the differences here, especially on page 3:
http://www.polycom.com/global/documents/whitepapers/h264_high_profile_wp.pdf
Warning, above is a direct link to a pdf.
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Thank you for your posts, and yes, I COMPLETELY AGREE with you! Once I began my due diligence today comparing the iPad 1, iPad 2, and the Xoom I thought to see if high profile h.264 was supported.
I was shocked to find out that the Tegra 2's hw (and Nvidia has confirmed this) does not support high profile h.264. BUT.... the iPad 1 does?! It's ridiculous quite frankly, and in my eyes, Tegra 2 is partial failure because of it.
Anyway, iPad 1 handles that Planet Earth clip (i.e. the de facto pseudo h.264 720p/1080p benchmark for years it seems!) beautifully. How's the batter life when watching h.264? How long can you get? Also, I would think the iPad 2 is capable of 1080p high profile yes?
In any event, I won't be buying a zoom. For the steeper price point, that is just insulting. I'm gonna try to find one of the remnant ipad 1s from Verizon that have been creeping around for ~$300, however unlikely at that price point it may be to find!
Kudos to your efforts and exposing this massive fault in the Xoom. I have NEVER been a fan of reconversion of the years, from divx in its earliest days through xvid (when apple ironically pushed 'reconversion' into mainstream)... glad that w/ this bad boy that won't be necessary as I'd never do it, too much hassle and insulting, imho.

Not being able to play 720p videos is the main reason I returned the xoom. If I am forced to convert videos I might as well do it for the ipad.

I am so tempted to sell my xoom because of this video playback issue...
I have a lot of bluray rips and I cant watch them on the xoom.
They were encoded using the Apple TV2 preset in handbrake, which I'm guessing is high profile

Oh wow, if this is that serious most of the Honeycomb tablets will be losing quite a lot of sells. I hope Samsung doesn't use the Tegra in their tabs. I'm fine with their Exynos, assuming it has the amazing codec support their Hummingbird does.

Its not the chip ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html ) supports 1080p h264 just fine. As it stands right now, best I have been able to gather, it is a software/firmware (likely drivers) issue causing the poor playback.

pjcforpres said:
Its not the chip ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html ) supports 1080p h264 just fine. As it stands right now, best I have been able to gather, it is a software/firmware (likely drivers) issue causing the poor playback.
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That would seem to make since, but I believe in Google...A phrase I never thought I would be saying ever lol.

Sorry. But there isn't much doubt at this time that it IS in fact the "chip"
There are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of articles at this point citing the same thing: Tegra 2 CANNOT DECODE HIGH PROFILE VIDEO.
Period.
If you need me to cite about 50 different sources, I would be happy to do so.

Digital Man said:
Sorry. But there isn't much doubt at this time that it IS in fact the "chip"
There are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of articles at this point citing the same thing: Tegra 2 CANNOT DECODE HIGH PROFILE VIDEO.
Period.
If you need me to cite about 50 different sources, I would be happy to do so.
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No, no, I'll take your word for it. I guess some of us were hoping that it was just a honeycomb issue that would be fixed with an update.

pjcforpres said:
Its not the chip ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-2.html ) supports 1080p h264 just fine. As it stands right now, best I have been able to gather, it is a software/firmware (likely drivers) issue causing the poor playback.
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The Xoom can play baseline 1080p h.264. The Xoom cannot play 720p high profile h.264. I would venture to guess that 90% of all video that people have that they didn't videotape themselves is high profile h.264 with 9.99% of the remainder being main profile h.264.
hakujin said:
Anyway, iPad 1 handles that Planet Earth clip (i.e. the de facto pseudo h.264 720p/1080p benchmark for years it seems!) beautifully. How's the batter life when watching h.264? How long can you get? Also, I would think the iPad 2 is capable of 1080p high profile yes?
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The iPad 1 handles the Planet Earth clip perfectly, but do realize that it is a jailbroken iPad with XBMC installed. The iPad does not natively support high profile h.264 even though the hardware is capable, because Apple wants you to buy media through iTunes.
The iPad 2 SHOULD be capable of 1080p high profile, but we won't know for sure until it too is jailbroken and XBMC is installed/optimized.

For Those That Doubted The Xooms Full HD Playback

Like the thread title says ive seen way too many posts bashing the playback quality so to those people watch this video on your xooms browser and you will be impressed and appreciate it more
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?deskto...e.com/watch?v=iFohN2-Hqhg&v=iFohN2-Hqhg&gl=US

I think most people are talking about videos that they load onto the device sometimes has choppy playback. We know YouTube plays great. I haven't loaded much onto my device yet but you do experience some slowdown or choppyness I some videos. Most play without a hitch for me though
Sent from my Xoom

I have several blu ray rips on mine and I haven't experienced any issues so far I converted using handbrake

I think the issue is the software people use to rip.

Granted I don't have my Xoom yet but I've read a lot of threads in preparation and I think the problem is the profile used to rip rather than the software. Apparently high profile 720p isn't working on the Xoom.
Hopefully it's a codec thing and fixable by either Moto adding the codecs or some third party app like CorePlayer.
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App

PaulG1488 said:
I have several blu ray rips on mine and I haven't experienced any issues so far I converted using handbrake
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I dont have my Xoom yet, but just so i know for when i get it, what profile/settings do you use for the converted rip?

kcm117 said:
I dont have my Xoom yet, but just so i know for when i get it, what profile/settings do you use for the converted rip?
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There is a Xoom profile out there that works perfectly. See middle of this page http://www.xoomfaq.com/video/
1080p is a size not a measure of quality. I had a standard def camera that will shoot a better picture than my handheld HD cam and will shoot better than any phone or tablet camera. I do not know many that can tell the difference between high quality 720 vs 1080. Probably the same folks that can tell the difference between a 160kbps MP3 file vs a 300kbps one
Real HD, that plays off your BluRay player, is 48 Mbit/s. No tablet made today can play that level of quality.

Just because nobody mentioned it..
The problem was/is that users feel that most downloadable HD content files should not have to be re-encoded to play on an $600-$800 device. It is not that we can't use handbrake, or can't figure out how to download the preset which has already been posted on XDA. It is time consuming.
I got over it though, because watching 720P Tv shows on the train with the Xoom is awesome.

I loaded a Kenny vs. Spenny episode onto a store display via my Evo's bluetooth and it played fine. If the videos I converted for my Evo work on my Xoom, then that's fine with me, and it looks like they will. I cant tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on a 10 inch screen unless I stare so hard I get a head ache anyway.

DebianDog said:
There is a Xoom profile out there that works perfectly. See middle of this page http://www.xoomfaq.com/video/
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The link provided takes you to a page with XML code...how do you import this to Handbrake? Did you create a notepad file, copy/paste the text, and rename it with a .plist or .xml extension? I couldn't find any info on this in the Handbrake wiki.

As others have stated, its a tegra 2 issue. Tegra 2 is incapable of playing high profile h.264 video @ L4.1 or higher. Its a limitation of the video decode processor. As it stands right now, no tegra2 device has been seen playing ANY high profile video at all smoothly. Tegra 2 can play some main profile h.264 as long as its encoded exactly how the tegra2 likes it, ie no b frames etc.
The reason people like myself take issue with this is that the original ipad can play 720p high profile h.264 and my epic4g can play 720p high profile h.264. Neither of these devices were sold as being particularly capable of playing hd content. The xoom on the other hand was specifically sold as being able to play hd content, and the tegra.2 was advertised at being particlarly good at doing so. Then when both the xoom and tegra 2 are released we come to realize that it was a bs marketing ploy and "technically" it can display videos that are 720p and 1080p, but only if they are formatted in a ridiculously specific encode.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

muyoso said:
As others have stated, its a tegra 2 issue. Tegra 2 is incapable of playing high profile h.264 video @ L4.1 or higher. Its a limitation of the video decode processor. As it stands right now, no tegra2 device has been seen playing ANY high profile video at all smoothly. Tegra 2 can play some main profile h.264 as long as its encoded exactly how the tegra2 likes it, ie no b frames etc.
The reason people like myself take issue with this is that the original ipad can play 720p high profile h.264 and my epic4g can play 720p high profile h.264. Neither of these devices were sold as being particularly capable of playing hd content. The xoom on the other hand was specifically sold as being able to play hd content, and the tegra.2 was advertised at being particlarly good at doing so. Then when both the xoom and tegra 2 are released we come to realize that it was a bs marketing ploy and "technically" it can display videos that are 720p and 1080p, but only if they are formatted in a ridiculously specific encode.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
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This pretty much sums it up.
While I'm keeping my Xoom and have made peace with transcoding my videos I'd be lying if I said I wasn't expecting more from the video playback when I bought it.

MichaelWestin said:
Just because nobody mentioned it..
The problem was/is that users feel that most downloadable HD content files should not have to be re-encoded to play on an $600-$800 device. It is not that we can't use handbrake, or can't figure out how to download the preset which has already been posted on XDA. It is time consuming.
I got over it though, because watching 720P Tv shows on the train with the Xoom is awesome.
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This nails the issue right on the head. Most 720p TV shows available on Usenet or via Bittorrent are encoded using video codec H264 "high" settings. From what I've read, the xoom struggles to play these files, which I would not have expected given its hardware specs. I'm still going to pick up a wifi-only model from Costco on Sunday, but I may jump to the Galaxy Tab if it is able to play "high" H264 files.

patass said:
I cant tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on a 10 inch screen unless I stare so hard I get a head ache anyway.
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DebianDog said:
I do not know many that can tell the difference between high quality 720 vs 1080.
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I'm pretty sure I read awhile back that for small screens (like 27" and smaller), if you're sitting/standing within a distance (say within 10 feet) it is pretty much impossible to tell if something is 720p vs 1080p. It only becomes more apparent on larger screens. Other people have mentioned it's probably too difficult to tell on a 10.1" screen, but I'm pretty sure it IS impossible to tell by just looking at it on a screen of that size. So 1080p is just overkill to me, only if you're going to output it on a large screen or something.

pekosROB said:
I'm pretty sure I read awhile back that for small screens (like 27" and smaller), if you're sitting/standing within a distance (say within 10 feet) it is pretty much impossible to tell if something is 720p vs 1080p. It only becomes more apparent on larger screens. Other people have mentioned it's probably too difficult to tell on a 10.1" screen, but I'm pretty sure it IS impossible to tell by just looking at it on a screen of that size. So 1080p is just overkill to me, only if you're going to output it on a large screen or something.
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You have it wrong. You lose the ability to distinguish the resolution the further away from the screen you get. Since a tablet is right in front of you, you can certainly tell the difference. That said, it isn't really relevant because the Xoom only has a 720p screen and that isn't the point. We already have 1080p video encoded for use on other devices/screens and we don't want to have to re-encode them to play on the Xoom.

khov07 said:
The link provided takes you to a page with XML code...how do you import this to Handbrake? Did you create a notepad file, copy/paste the text, and rename it with a .plist or .xml extension? I couldn't find any info on this in the Handbrake wiki.
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Try this one

sangreal06 said:
That said, it isn't really relevant because the Xoom only has a 720p screen and that isn't the point.
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Yeah, totally forgot to mention that. 1280x800 definitely can't play full 1080p.
And yeah, I didn't factor in the "you sit way closer to a tablet than a TV factor," but I still would find it hard to believe that people could tell the difference of 720p vs 1080p on a 10.1" screen (even if you are 1-2 feet away, assuming the screen does support 1080p). Definitely not old people - my parents at first didn't see the difference between SD and HD. Now they can definitely tell and even laugh about how they couldn't distinguish the two at first.
Yes, they don't have the best eyesight at their age now. This is why I usually drive when we go somewhere.

sangreal06 said:
You have it wrong. You lose the ability to distinguish the resolution the further away from the screen you get. Since a tablet is right in front of you, you can certainly tell the difference. That said, it isn't really relevant because the Xoom only has a 720p screen and that isn't the point. We already have 1080p video encoded for use on other devices/screens and we don't want to have to re-encode them to play on the Xoom.
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I have the "problem" that I ripped all my movies and shows to fit my iPod classic screen (and the car stereo) at 640x480. I unless I want to watch a mini video I'll have to convert the movies anyway. I don't see what the big deal is. If you change your hardware you should expect to run into some kind of trouble. And honestly, our 720p HDTV in the kitchen has a brilliant picture and is hardly any different from the 1080p HDTVs that we have in other rooms.

The "big deal" is for warez peeps who can't play their warez HD videos. They know nothing about video encoding, and they don't want to know. But they do like to get on forums to whine about how they can't play their stolen goods. I've explained enough times that I feel like a broken record, but willful ignorance is a hard habit to break. But once more into the breach...
@muyoso
>Tegra 2 is incapable of playing high profile h.264 video @ L4.1 or higher
There's nothing that said a H.264 video has to be encoded at level 4.1. For 720p @30fps, 3.1 is fine. Check the H.264 wiki you're so fond of quoting. L4.1 is a warez standard.
But if you want, I can post a high profile @L4.1 clip, and I'll bet it will play just fine. Will you then shut up and leave?
>original ipad can play 720p high profile h.264 and my epic4g can play 720p high profile h.264
Great, no need for you to buy anything else then.
>Tegra 2 can play some main profile h.264 as long as its encoded exactly how the tegra2 likes it, ie no b frames etc.
BS. The Handbrake script I've posted, and people have used, used straight main profile (which allows B-frames).
>Then when both the xoom and tegra 2 are released we come to realize that it was a bs marketing ploy and "technically" it can display videos that are 720p and 1080p, but only if they are formatted in a ridiculously specific encode.
What's ridiculous is expecting devices to support warez videos, all of which are encoded for the PC platform, and many of which are badly encoded.
The problem with your whining is that it's all predicated on warez, and that's not something you can offer as evidence when it's put-up time and you're asked for proof.
>Its a limitation of the video decode processor.
And you know this because how? The Xoom is the first HC Teg2 device, and it's still in beta status. Every other Teg2 tab available thus far were Froyo, and all of them were also in beta status. Everything points to the driver support.
I asked you this twice before, and I'll ask it a third time: If you think the Teg2 is incapable of playing your warez vids, why are you still here?

e.mote said:
>Its a limitation of the video decode processor.
And you know this because how? The Xoom is the first HC Teg2 device, and it's still in beta status. Every other Teg2 tab available thus far were Froyo, and all of them were also in beta status. Everything points to the driver support.
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driver or not, high profile decoding of h264 is a know limitation of tegra2.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4181/...-a9s-coming-to-smartphonestablets-this-year/3
One of the stones we've thrown at NVIDIA is the lack of high profile H.264 decode support. Tegra 2 can decode main profile H.264 at up to 20Mbps, but throw any high profile 1080p content at the chip and it can't do it. This is a problem because a lot of video content out there today is high profile, high bitrate 1080p H.264.
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tips for playing back 720p mkv

I am having problems playing back 720p move on the device. They stutter with rock player and qqplayer. Any suggestions?

Transcode them to different profile - like mp4 or avi. Or still mkv but main or base profile (I suspect that your movies are in High Profile) that is not supported by Tegra 2. :-(
This problem showed up with release of Xoom and everyone with Tegra 2 tablet has the same problem. As all Honeycomb tablets on the market are essentially the same it is not possible to see if it would be OK on a different CPU/SOC. :-(

>Any suggestions?
Drag-drop.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1102922

galtom said:
Transcode them to different profile - like mp4 or avi. Or still mkv but main or base profile (I suspect that your movies are in High Profile) that is not supported by Tegra 2. :-(
This problem showed up with release of Xoom and everyone with Tegra 2 tablet has the same problem. As all Honeycomb tablets on the market are essentially the same it is not possible to see if it would be OK on a different CPU/SOC. :-(
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That's dissapointing. My epic 4g can play 720p mkv straight withou conversion. Is this a problem that can be fixed in the future or will they always need conversion?

Vplayer, maybe? Try the 7 day Trial version first, though it's just about 5 usd. It seems to have more coded emmbedded too.

fhurricane said:
That's dissapointing. My epic 4g can play 720p mkv straight withou conversion. Is this a problem that can be fixed in the future or will they always need conversion?
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3.1 brought the update to be able to play certain high profile 720p movies in a mp4 container, which was a big step. I'm not sure how much further it'll get since it's a Tegra 2 limitation. This is why Boxee Box dropped the Tegra 2 chipset. We'll have to rely on the devs of market players to take advantage of the 3.1 release for high profile MKV support (not sure if any of the players are capable yet as I haven't been reading the Transformer or other tablet forums. There's at least a couple threads on 720p playback in each tablet forum). Hopefully they can also incorporate the lights out mode instead of having the whole home task bar on the bottom. These limitations are also another reason why a lot of us are very much looking forward to Kal-el.

songmeesay said:
3.1 brought the update to be able to play certain high profile 720p movies in a mp4 container, which was a big step. I'm not sure how much further it'll get since it's a Tegra 2 limitation. This is why Boxee Box dropped the Tegra 2 chipset. We'll have to rely on the devs of market players to take advantage of the 3.1 release for high profile MKV support (not sure if any of the players are capable yet as I haven't been reading the Transformer or other tablet forums. There's at least a couple threads on 720p playback in each tablet forum). Hopefully they can also incorporate the lights out mode instead of having the whole home task bar on the bottom. These limitations are also another reason why a lot of us are very much looking forward to Kal-el.
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Is there a official source for this limitation?

The limitation that every android Tegra 2 tablet owner is experiencing is official enough for me. When I said I'm not sure how much further it'll get, I was more talking along the lines of 1080p High Profile.

songmeesay said:
The limitation that every android Tegra 2 tablet owner is experiencing is official enough for me. When I said I'm not sure how much further it'll get, I was more talking along the lines of 1080p High Profile.
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I really don't think we'll ever see any 1080p high profile playback from Tegra 2 based devices.
I've watched many full length action movies in high profile 720p h264 on the XOOM under HC 3.1, and 720p playback is much improved, but still not perfect. The video will seem flawless for a while, and then when you come to a scene with a lot of heavy action, particularly where the camera pans across the scene, the video will sometimes fall totally to pieces. Slowdown, stuttering and skipped frames - a real mess. These occurrences are very brief and infrequent, but seriously annoying when they occur. For full length action films I've gone back to transcoding the video to baseline profile.
The Tegra 2 handles high profile 720p video only well enough for casual viewing in my opinion - TV shows, comedies that sort of thing.

Digital Man said:
I really don't think we'll ever see any 1080p high profile playback from Tegra 2 based devices.
I've watched many full length action movies in high profile 720p h264 on the XOOM under HC 3.1, and 720p playback is much improved, but still not perfect. The video will seem flawless for a while, and then when you come to a scene with a lot of heavy action, particularly where the camera pans across the scene, the video will sometimes fall totally to pieces. Slowdown, stuttering and skipped frames - a real mess. These occurrences are very brief and infrequent, but seriously annoying when they occur. For full length action films I've gone back to transcoding the video to baseline profile.
The Tegra 2 handles high profile 720p video only well enough for casual viewing in my opinion - TV shows, comedies that sort of thing.
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Click to collapse
That input is greatly appreciated. It'll save me some time when I do my re-encodes.

e.mote said:
>Any suggestions?
Drag-drop.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1102922
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Click to collapse
I used this, still yielded an unplayable file.
edit: nvm, plays with stock player, but not rock player

[Q] Chances for better hardware-accelerated media playing?

Hi Iconia-Lovers,
I really love my Tab for web-browsing and gaming, but you have to admit it sucks at video playing. MP4 and 3GP are crappy formats that are hardly used in RL und converting your whole video and movie collection isn't a real option.
I had have an Archos A70 which plays even 1080p MKV flawless with a single core 1GHZ CPU, but relies on an additional decoding chip if i get this right.
In theory, the Tegra 2 has more than enough power to play 1080p files, right?
I already tried like 6 different media players but all of them weren't able to play 720p mkvs nice and even non-HD-avi-files felt a little slowed-down.
So can we hope for a hardware-accelerated media player that enables alle the joy of moving pictures for us? Will possibly acer itself help us out on this issue? What are Samsung and Motorola doing on their Gingerbread tablets to enable nice media playing?
Hoping for a better tomorrow
Cheers
pint

pintness said:
Hi Iconia-Lovers,
I had have an Archos A70 which plays even 1080p MKV flawless with a single core 1GHZ CPU, but relies on an additional decoding chip if i get this right.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you sure about that?? my 101 throws a fit with 1080p mkv videos and both use the the firmware.
but i agree, i would love better video support on the iconia, since it runs circles around my archos when it comes to everything else.

pintness said:
Hi Iconia-Lovers,
I really love my Tab for web-browsing and gaming, but you have to admit it sucks at video playing. MP4 and 3GP are crappy formats that are hardly used in RL und converting your whole video and movie collection isn't a real option.
I had have an Archos A70 which plays even 1080p MKV flawless with a single core 1GHZ CPU, but relies on an additional decoding chip if i get this right.
In theory, the Tegra 2 has more than enough power to play 1080p files, right?
I already tried like 6 different media players but all of them weren't able to play 720p mkvs nice and even non-HD-avi-files felt a little slowed-down.
So can we hope for a hardware-accelerated media player that enables alle the joy of moving pictures for us? Will possibly acer itself help us out on this issue? What are Samsung and Motorola doing on their Gingerbread tablets to enable nice media playing?
Hoping for a better tomorrow
Cheers
pint
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried VPlayer? it costs like $4/ £2.30 but it can play practically all standards, not sure how it fares for 1080p tho.
I had it playing .avi and .mkv fine though.
Vplayer--
Video formats: divx/xvid, wmv, m4v, flv, rmvb, avi, mkv, mov, mp4, 3gp, ts, tp...
Streaming: http, rtsp, mms and m3u(apple http stream, m3u8)

I use UPnPlay (network streaming) along with MoboPlayer and it has played everything i have on my NAS very well.

Also I know Rockplayer gives you the option of hardware/software decoding so you may want to give that a try if you haven't already. There is a free version.

Both moboplayer and rock player are useless for my 720p and 1080p videos... total stutterfest, but that's a known thing for tegra devices on 3.0...
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk

godashram said:
Both moboplayer and rock player are useless for my 720p and 1080p videos... total stutterfest, but that's a known thing for tegra devices on 3.0...
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
Hmmm... I use moboplayer, and every 720 did I've tried has been great! I haven't tried any 1080p vids though.

tested 1080 quality....the videos lag and the audio missing....
hope acer will figure it out....

Avatar & 10,000 B.C. in 1080P using UPnPlay & MoboPlayer streamed from my WD NAS, looks great. No lagging at all.

not another one of these threads..

edgie168 said:
not another one of these threads..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess what? You aren't being forced to read this thread.

lord_voldemort666 said:
Guess what? You aren't being forced to read this thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess what? It pushes down other, more quality threads.
Guess what? There's already something like 6 or 7 threads EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE already.
Guess what? People need to learn to use the search function.
Guess what? Guess what? Guess what?

^ If you don't like it, report it to a mod and move on...

edgie168 said:
Guess what? It pushes down other, more quality threads.
Guess what? There's already something like 6 or 7 threads EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE already.
Guess what? People need to learn to use the search function.
Guess what? Guess what? Guess what?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guess what? You've just caused this thread to get bumped several times.
XP

I have been trying all the suggested encoders to get smooth playback for film material as 60/50hz works fine. I maybe more sensative to it than others as I tent to look for it on moving objects. But I got it to replace a media player too.
I tried the script posted in another thread with good results but the jump is still there.
Bought DVD Catalist 4 with same results.
Freemake with custom profile same again.
Handbreak I find too slow but I read it works but can't verify it.
Any Video Converter Pro with xoom profile WORKS - it has very little judder but having to strip the subtitles out of the MKV every time is a real pain ( Anyone know how to disable them ) and it's too expensive anyway.
Trying to edit DVD Catalist 4 profile now but no success yet
Oh and I tried Vplayer , Rockplayer , Moboplayer and any others I could find
Hope my two weeks at this helps somone else out.

@RaveOn911
With any problem, you need to find its parameters. Only a handful of people notice the "micro-stutter" deal, so it's either a user sensitivity issue, or a tablet-centric issue (which could be hardware or software, user-caused or device defect).
Ask somebody to watch a video clip on your tablet, and ask them if they see anything wrong with playback. Don't tell him beforehand about "micro-stutter", as you don't want to bias his observation.
If he notices the stutter, it's your tablet. If he doesn't, it's you.
If the first, then bring a video clip on a uSD card into a store and try it on other tablets (hopefully with same or similar make as yours). If it doesn't happen on other tabs, then replace your tab. If it happens on every other tab, then again it's you.
If you have heightened sensitivity, then there may be params that can alleviate the issue. The default interleave for MP4Box is 0.5s. You can reduce this interleave, eg
MP4Box -inter 250 -add infile.mp4 -new outfile.mp4
(or)
MP4Box -tight -add infile.mp4 -new outfile.mp4
MP4Box works on MP4 only. Given that MKVs can only play in software mode currently on Teg2 tabs, it's a fool's errand to play MKV and claim that they don't play smoothly. Avail of the native support.

Mobo Player plays my mkv and xvid/divx AVI's just fine. I'm no codec/encoding expert, but from what I've read it's worth re-encoding some of the files to a more manageable bitrate for both audio and video and maybe dump the 5.1 or AC3 audio. I haven't looked at every file I've played, but a couple that would choke on my Win7 Asus netbook, I re-encoded with Handbrake. They still look and sound great.

e.mote said:
Given that MKVs can only play in software mode currently
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Click to collapse
I understood that that's the whole point the OP was trying to make: he wishes that someone makes a video player application that can handle MKVs via the hardware decoder. It's not a bad thing to wish for, either; it would provide better performance and hardware playback uses less battery, too.
The question remains: is it possible? As far as I know, the chip itself doesn't get relayed anything more than the actual video stream inside the file, regardless of the container, and thus an app should be able to do exactly that. But since I don't know anything about Android internals are applications given any such access?
My N900 phone uses regular GStreamer stack and thus you can demux anything you want and supply the video stream to the hardware decoder. As long as it's H.264 normal profile and not too high a resolution it'll play, regardless of the originating container.

There's nothing wrong with wishing, but until it happens, we have to use what we've got. For HC, for now that means MP4 for native support.
3.1 thus far has been worse than 2.x insofar as multimedia, probably because vendors have had 2.x for much longer, and were able to add enhanced support. A good case in point is the Samsung GalTab 7 vs the GalTab 10.1. The 7, released last year, can play MKV. The new 10.1 can't. Ditto for all the "my old phone can play MKV, why can't my tablet" complaints. It is what it is.
From all indications, HC was and is a rush job. It had to be pushed out the door because of competition from the iPad. I think the prospective buyer should understand that s/he is buying into a beta, and temper his expectations accordingly. Android has high potential, but now isn't then.
I've written a script that does fast remux/convert to MP4. A straight remux takes a few minutes, and it can process batch. It's a more productive route than wishing for a HW-accel player to come along.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1102922

e.mote said:
It's a more productive route than wishing for a HW-accel player to come along.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suppose that's a matter of viewpoint.
I took a look at the MediaPlayer class in Google's APIs and it seems to me that it should be fairly straightforward to demux the MKV file in software on-the-fly, create named pipe with mkfifo and feed the MediaPlayer class the raw video stream via that. Just throw a simple GUI on top of that and you have a rudimentary video player capable of playing MKV files with hardware accelerated video.
I'll try it out once I receive my tablet, was planning to learn Android programming anyways.
PS. Bah, doesn't allow me to post links yet :/

HEVC/H265 Capability - How Good Is It, Really?

Hey guys, after repeatedly spending a considerable amount of hours trying to find specifics on the Shield's HEVC/H265 capabilities, I remembered I'm an XDA member and decided to query your collective wisdom here.
Here's my situation, I'll be thankful for your help:
I'v got a growing library of video encoded with HEVC/H265, with max resolution of 3840x2160 @ 60fps.
My encodes are of varying complexity, the highest complexity so far being '[email protected]@Main' according to MediaInfo.
As I do a lot of encoding myself it is possible the encodes will get more complex and will move up to a higher tier and/or level.
My TV has HDMI 2.0 ports and supports 3840x2160 @ 60fps, no 3D.
What I'm looking for is a box that can smoothly play anything my TV can display, specifically video encoded in HEVC/H265. Basically something I can buy and don't have to replace until I also buy a better TV. All around the web I find great reviews about how the Shield has full HEVC/H265 support, but I seem to be unable to find what 'full support' really means here. Even NVIDIA's own whitepaper on the Tegra X1 is sorely lacking this information. There are competing products, most notably by Minix, that also tout full HEVC/H265 support. But in actual tests of use noticeable frame-drops occur with UHD videos and this is unacceptable to me. I've been unable to find reviews that test the playback of UHD video encoded in HEVC/H265 on the Shield thoroughly. The reviews I do find just report that UHD playback is smooth, and move on.
So, what I really need to know is what is the most demanding HEVC/H265(please report tier and level, plus resolution and framerate) you've played on the Shield, and how did it fare? Were there any frame drops, or stutters? Or is the Tegra X1 in the Shield really as good as I keep reading everywhere? How full is 'full support' really, that's what I'm trying to find out.
Hopefully your answers will help me decide whether the Shield really is the perfect companion to my TV, but will also help others with the same video-related questions.
UPDATE
I found a sample vid online. It's on this page and this is a direct link to the vid. It's demo vid for an UHD TV. If anyone could test this on a Shield connected to a UHD TV that supports 60fps, and report the results back here, I'd be very grateful! Basically, if this plays smoothly, I can throw practically any 'normal' HEVC/H265 vid at it.

I played a 1440p H.264 Hi10P 30Hz rip of Berserk with no (perceivable) issues. It did downsample to 1080p for my display, but up until now the only device I own that could play it was my gaming desktop. My work laptop and netbook would stutter with it. The Shield had no problems. Not sure about quality level, but at that resolution I imagine it was at least 5.

I have tested Big Buck Bunny at 4k hevc and done a TON of hevc main10p 1080p with absolutely no chance of getting close to issues. I'd be willing to bet that it would work perfectly. If I have time I'll test the sample, but the only thing that I could not manage to play was a 6K clip I found online, but that was a vram issue, not crunch power, so I'm willing to bet with 95% certainty that it'll be perfect for you.

kdb424 said:
I have tested Big Buck Bunny at 4k hevc and done a TON of hevc main10p 1080p with absolutely no chance of getting close to issues. I'd be willing to bet that it would work perfectly. If I have time I'll test the sample, but the only thing that I could not manage to play was a 6K clip I found online, but that was a vram issue, not crunch power, so I'm willing to bet with 95% certainty that it'll be perfect for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My TV can't handle 6K, so that's fine. It would be great if you could test the sample, then I'd truly be sure it can handle everything I could possibly throw at it with my current TV.
Your input so far is greatly appreciated
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

talk

Tested the sample, plays absolutely flawlessly as expected.

kdb424 said:
Tested the sample, plays absolutely flawlessly as expected.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, should you be an undercover employee of NVIDIA then you've certainly earned a bonus!
Ordering one now, thanks!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Evil Alex said:
Well, should you be an undercover employee of NVIDIA then you've certainly earned a bonus!
Ordering one now, thanks!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=WXpuNFg4Ukg1T2drREZxa2tZS0xiN05PTnNNYVRB
Proof in case you didn't believe that I tried it. I don't work for Nvidia, though I do sell them where I work. Not because I'm told to, but they seriously impressed me and that's very hard to do.

I believed you, just ordered one. I've been looking for a good media player and the shield appears to be the only one truly good enough. Competitors say they can play UHD at 60fps, but reviews state that there are noticeable stutters. So that left the shield. Granted, it's more expensive, but I also have compatible NVIDIA cards in my PC and laptop so streaming games makes it worth it for me!
Many thanks!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

kdb424 said:
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=WXpuNFg4Ukg1T2drREZxa2tZS0xiN05PTnNNYVRB
Proof in case you didn't believe that I tried it. I don't work for Nvidia, though I do sell them where I work. Not because I'm told to, but they seriously impressed me and that's very hard to do.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just noticed the monitor in your photo, it does not appear to be UHD. But I could be wrong, there are UHD monitors of that size. To be honest, I don't know whether downscaling is harder than rendering at full resolution.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty hopeful it'll work out fine. If not, I'll report back before the end of next week. The shield should be delivered by next Thursday. Can't wait!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Evil Alex said:
Just noticed the monitor in your photo, it does not appear to be UHD. But I could be wrong, there are UHD monitors of that size. To be honest, I don't know whether downscaling is harder than rendering at full resolution.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty hopeful it'll work out fine. If not, I'll report back before the end of next week. The shield should be delivered by next Thursday. Can't wait!
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are absolutely correct. It's a 1080p monitor. It's actually harder on the hardware to downscale as it's rendered at full resolution then it has to downscale after. It's known as supersampling. It's a better alternative to anti-aliasing. When the device plays a file, it plays at native res, then has to post process weather it's up or downscale, but playback is native. I can add post processing to see how far it'll stress if you'd like, but it's still so underutilized at 4k HEVC that it'll handle a lot more. There's native hardware decode for HEVC which is why it works as well as it does. I have played 24mb/s 1080p H.264 Hi10p files on here and it played near perfect. Sometimes it would go over 28mb/s and that's when it hit it's limit on h.264 hi10p, but that's with absolutely NO hardware decode as 10bit wasn't supported by hardware till HEVC (main10 vs hi10p).
Let me know how it goes for you. Glad to see there is someone else that plays some extreme media files other than myself.

Cool, thanks. You don't need to stress test it on my account. I don't have any h.264 hi10p encodes, I believe. And if so, no problem. I'm aiming to encode my entire archive to HEVC anyway
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

I have my Shield TV connected to a Samsung UHD TV (60HU8550). I downloaded yesterday 4 different versions of the Martian. 3 were 4k (3840*1600, 24fps) and one was 1080p (H264) for comparison purposes. Out of the 3 4k ones:
- one H264 around 48Gb
- one H264 around 25Gb
- one H265 around 5Gb
Kodi on the shield TV played all files beautifully. Smooth, no lag, fast loading times, even when jumping through the movie. There was a noticeable difference between the 1080p and the 4K versions, and I am really excited of 4k rips to finally enjoy 4k content on my TV!! And I am also amazed about the H265 compression ratio / quality! I used to download many 1080p H264 movies weighting around 10Gb, and to find 4k ones for only 5Gb is really amazing. I used to have an MX2 linux box dedicated for Kodi, and bought the shield knowing that the MX2 would not decode H265. The Shield TV has been a wonderful experience so far...I would recommended it to anyone.

Thanks, I'm getting even more excited now. H265 can maintain the same quality at roughly a little over half the size. I'm a big fan, though encoding takes quite some time.
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Evil Alex said:
Thanks, I'm getting even more excited now. H265 can maintain the same quality at roughly a little over half the size. I'm a big fan, though encoding takes quite some time.
Sent from my A0001 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wasn't stressing it for you on the hi10p actually. That's my norm when it came to things before HEVC. I watch a lot of anime and colorbanding bugs the CRAP out of me, so I only do 10bit video, so I was thrilled for HEVC getting main10 and hardware decode. That being said, there is a massive drop in file size for the same quality, along with the hardware decode. One thing to watch out for though I found is sometimes HEVC performs worse (visually) depending on the content. I have the anime movie "Garden of Words) using what should be very similar encodes, one h.264 hi10p and one HEVC main10. The main10 doesn't have the same quality in some scenes and has more visual flaws. That's the only one that I have found an issue with, but the rain scenes just destroy HEVC for some reason. It's amazing to have, but I'm glad that h.264 hi10p plays amazingly for those rare occurrences. To quote the team that released that encode "There is a reason for not using HEVC encode: x265 performs very bad on scenes like rain-dropping or snowing, and this movie just have enough of those scenes." Yes, I do legally own the blu-ray of this media, their encode was just better than mine, but I digress.

kdb424 said:
I wasn't stressing it for you on the hi10p actually. That's my norm when it came to things before HEVC. I watch a lot of anime and colorbanding bugs the CRAP out of me, so I only do 10bit video, so I was thrilled for HEVC getting main10 and hardware decode. That being said, there is a massive drop in file size for the same quality, along with the hardware decode. One thing to watch out for though I found is sometimes HEVC performs worse (visually) depending on the content. I have the anime movie "Garden of Words) using what should be very similar encodes, one h.264 hi10p and one HEVC main10. The main10 doesn't have the same quality in some scenes and has more visual flaws. That's the only one that I have found an issue with, but the rain scenes just destroy HEVC for some reason. It's amazing to have, but I'm glad that h.264 hi10p plays amazingly for those rare occurrences. To quote the team that released that encode "There is a reason for not using HEVC encode: x265 performs very bad on scenes like rain-dropping or snowing, and this movie just have enough of those scenes." Yes, I do legally own the blu-ray of this media, their encode was just better than mine, but I digress.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is kind of odd, HEVC should be able to at least match AVC/H264, regardless of profile. However, as I encode myself, it is true that the open source HEVC encoder is still relatively new(x265). It's still under heavy development, but still a far cry from how optimised the open source AVC encoder is (x264). This translates to (far) longer encoding times, and fewer available options. Let me give you an example, I have a setting for AVC which I call 'Super Quality'. If I use it to encode a 1080p BluRay movie(90-120 minutes), that'll take around 8 hours. Since HEVC and AVC use similar command-line switches, I've also got a 'Super Quality' setting for HEVC that's virtually identical. If I use the HEVC 'Super Quality' setting to encode an episode of a given show(40-50 minutes), that takes around 24 hours! The system I use has an i7 which runs at 4Ghz, so it's not my system lacking power. So, for now, if you want the best control over your encode, as well as good speed, AVC is still the way to go.
I imagine rain scenes are hard because the HEVC encoding library can't handle them properly yet(or requires disproportionate amount of time), but that should change. It's probably a macro-block issue. If you watch a lot of anime(I don't, though I do have quite a bit of it) you'll love the more modern profiles HEVC has. It has profiles that support more than 10bits colours, for instance.

Evil Alex said:
That is kind of odd, HEVC should be able to at least match AVC/H264, regardless of profile. However, as I encode myself, it is true that the open source HEVC encoder is still relatively new(x265). It's still under heavy development, but still a far cry from how optimised the open source AVC encoder is (x264). This translates to (far) longer encoding times, and fewer available options. Let me give you an example, I have a setting for AVC which I call 'Super Quality'. If I use it to encode a 1080p BluRay movie(90-120 minutes), that'll take around 8 hours. Since HEVC and AVC use similar command-line switches, I've also got a 'Super Quality' setting for HEVC that's virtually identical. If I use the HEVC 'Super Quality' setting to encode an episode of a given show(40-50 minutes), that takes around 24 hours! The system I use has an i7 which runs at 4Ghz, so it's not my system lacking power. So, for now, if you want the best control over your encode, as well as good speed, AVC is still the way to go.
I imagine rain scenes are hard because the HEVC encoding library can't handle them properly yet(or requires disproportionate amount of time), but that should change. It's probably a macro-block issue. If you watch a lot of anime(I don't, though I do have quite a bit of it) you'll love the more modern profiles HEVC has. It has profiles that support more than 10bits colours, for instance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Completely agree. Most have switched to HEVC, and I am also, just wanted to let you know that there are some limitations to HEVC, and from my research you are most likely right on the nail. The macro-block code is in need of looking at when it comes to rain and whatnot, but even if that's the only downside, it excels massively and has hardware support. I've encoded an a 4.7GHz 8 core intel, all 16 threads, and I know how insane the encode times are. Well worth the time for archival purposes though, just have to do test encodes when I'm unsure if it's the right tool for the right job. When it's not, dang does it require some massive performance to play back hi10p files. Eh, tradeoffs

Evil Alex said:
I found a sample vid online. It's on this page and this is a direct link to the vid. It's demo vid for an UHD TV. If anyone could test this on a Shield connected to a UHD TV that supports 60fps, and report the results back here, I'd be very grateful! Basically, if this plays smoothly, I can throw practically any 'normal' HEVC/H265 vid at it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The sample played back perfectly on the shield to my sony xbr55x850b (4k TV).
I went through several chinese 4k boxes and the fire TV 2 before eventually forking out the extra cash for the Shield TV. It was the only box that could play everything I threw at it.

Hey guys, I'm checking in with my experience so far.
It's splendid! I've had the Shield for close to a week now, and it has been able to play everything so far. This challenges me to find its limits, and I'll report back should I have found them!
Thanks to all who were willing to help me before, you've helped me made a good purchase.

good choice!