Question on 720p vs 1080p playback - Verizon Galaxy Note 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

So for the longest time, my Note 3 always lagged a bit with 1080p videos, but a few days ago when I just updated to the newest MX Player, 1080p videos now play perfectly.
A majority of my videos are encoded in 720p mainly because 1080p couldn't play right, but now I'm thinking of re-encoding all my movies in 1080p. My question is will it make a difference in quality? I can always tell the difference in quality when I watch on my 42 inch TV since there's some distance between me and my TV, but when I watch my videos on my phone, I usually have it in front of my face pretty close. Would a video in 1080p make a difference to a 720p video even on a small 5 inch phone? I can tell a huge difference between another one of my phone which is 4 inch (480p) vs my Note 3 (720p) when playing videos. I just want to know if there is no real difference, I was going to keep 720p because 1080p videos are damn huge.
Sorry for the long question. Kudos to anyone who has any knowledge on this subject.

The fact is 1080p will technically appear better than 720p. Whether or not you notice the difference will depend on how well your eyes are attuned to high pixel images. While I've never done a comparison on my note 3 I have clearly noticed the difference on an 8in tablet. I can notice pixelation on 4k images and higher but I've been exposing my eyes to them for years now. I honestly don't think it would bother you (or me) if watching videos, but if you are ocd like me and have the original files at higher resolution with the storage space I would probably make all my videos the highest res available based on the original (understanding that without high end video editing software there is no benefit to increasing resolution beyond the original).

Oops I forgot to mention. I actually never had problems with 1080p videos. It was always the ones that were encoded in 10bit + 1080p that lagged. With the latest version of MX Player, SW decoder can actually play the damn thing without much lag. And this is with the subtitle enabled which is pretty amazing.
My eyesight is pretty horrible so maybe I won't notice the sharpness of 1080p much...
Edit - So I tested a few videos. Looks like I overestimated the SW decoding. It's definitely come a long way because there isn't as much as lag as before, but there IS still lag. I actually tested some 10bit 1080p with insanely high bitrates and it lags like a mother still. The lag isn't as bad as before, but it is still there. Guess I will just stick with 10bit 720p for now. No matter how much better 1080p may look, it doesn't beat 720p with perfect playback and no annoying lags.

You brought up the one thing I forgot to mention about differences between the two, bitrate. When it comes to encoded videos (not on a disc), bitrate is almost everything when it comes to quality. My previous post holds true as long as the bitrate remains comparable. If a 720p video has a significantly higher bitrate than a 1080p video, the 720p will view better in almost every scenario.
I don't know at what point the Note 3 will be unable to support smooth playback, but depending on what format you have encoded your videos will determine the quality. What I do know is that bluray level bitrate if far too high for the Note 3. I would take a guess that somewhere between 3000 - 4000 kbps would be the limited to what the hardware could handle but I could be mistaken. What I do know is that using MP4 (or MKV with MP4 encoding) at around 2k kbps is close to the same visual quality (on smaller screens) as any container using H.264 encoding at 3k-4k kbps.

kinstre11 said:
You brought up the one thing I forgot to mention about differences between the two, bitrate. When it comes to encoded videos (not on a disc), bitrate is almost everything when it comes to quality. My previous post holds true as long as the bitrate remains comparable. If a 720p video has a significantly higher bitrate than a 1080p video, the 720p will view better in almost every scenario.
I don't know at what point the Note 3 will be unable to support smooth playback, but depending on what format you have encoded your videos will determine the quality. What I do know is that bluray level bitrate if far too high for the Note 3. I would take a guess that somewhere between 3000 - 4000 kbps would be the limited to what the hardware could handle but I could be mistaken. What I do know is that using MP4 (or MKV with MP4 encoding) at around 2k kbps is close to the same visual quality (on smaller screens) as any container using H.264 encoding at 3k-4k kbps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I encode most of my videos in MKV format which is why the bitrate is already high enough. Most of my 720p videos have a bitrate of around 2k-2.5k and that's good enough for me. Most of the 1080p videos are almost triple that amount so I guess it's not surprising that the Note 3 will have some hiccup here and there. Not to mention the size of the files are almost 3-4 times big which isn't really ideal for my small storage.
Anyway, thanks for the helpful reply. Wish I can do HW+ decoding with MX player, but alas that's not possible so I guess I will stick with 720p.

Related

Rock player lags.......

Ok i have 1080 movie on my vibrant the default player does not support it so i downloaded the rock player. It works in there but it lags.....
Help.... How can i play 1080p on my vibrant
Doesn't 1080p video require more horsepower than is available from a mobile phone ?
Rock player is a software accelerated player vs. The stock hardware accelerated video player. It plays a broader range of codecs but relys on the cpu for video decode so can't do hd video or video with high bitrates.
Unfortunately, you wont be able to make 1080p content watchable on your phone without a reencode at 720p in one of the right formats or less with a non standard format.
Like previous post called into question, the hardware in fact, on current smartphones isn't capable of rendering 1080p content, unless the bitrate is cut down significantly enough as to make it almost unwatchable.
pyun said:
Rock player is a software accelerated player vs. The stock hardware accelerated video player. It plays a broader range of codecs but relys on the cpu for video decode so can't do hd video or video with high bitrates.
Unfortunately, you wont be able to make 1080p content watchable on your phone without a reencode at 720p in one of the right formats or less with a non standard format.
Like previous post called into question, the hardware in fact, on current smartphones isn't capable of rendering 1080p content, unless the bitrate is cut down significantly enough as to make it almost unwatchable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
your wrong i just converted the same movie to avi and it works like a charm. VIBRANT DOES PLAY 1080P THE QUALITY IS AMAZING...
You are aware that your phone's resolution is 800x480
1080P resolution is 1920x1080
Therefore, all that extra resolution is for nothing. You're phone can't display more than it can. So 1080P is a waste, 720p is also a waste. EXCEPT for the fact that it is easy to find software to encode to 720p, OR if you are going to use video out.

Encoding video for the Epic

How should I encode HD videos for my Epic? I'm starting with 1080p ultra-high bitrate.
Should I encode the video to match the Epic's resolution 800x480, or stick with some even fraction of 1920x1080, like 960x540 and let the Epic scale it to the screen?
What's the maximum bitrate the Epic is able to handle? What's a good codec to use?
Bump 10char
did you ever get an answer to this, I need to find this out too.
Assuming you are wanting to encode from bluray I follow this method. should work with most video files I would think.
http://www.knowyourcell.com/samsung/samsung-epic-4g/epic-4g-guides/526581/how_to_convert_videos_and_transfer_them_to_the_samsung_epic_4g.html
I have made high quality full length movies from both bluray and dvd around 1gb in size. and they play and look great.
Edit: I normally "rip" the movie only files to hd and mount em as an iso rather than from disk.. Not sure if I can name the "sly" software I use to do so as it sits in the grey area between legal and not
I use handbrake and encode to 800x400. The advantage is most films can be reduced to 1 to 2 GB depending on source. Sometimes I crop sides a bit if original is 2.35. I playback on epic with mvideoplayer. For some reason, sometimes mvideoplayer sometimes does not do mkv embedded subtitles well but there is an mkv subtitle extractor android app.
Ok 2 things to note...
1) if you keep your SD card as Fat you gotta break up the video if its too large filesize. I think 4gb is it..
2) Realistically speaking our phones have the processing power to play 1080p but its locked ...so you'll have to re-encode them to less until someone figures it out...I would keep the aspect ratio the same though..so if your dealing with 16:9 1080p..make it 16:9 720p...if you change the aspect ratio it will make the video stretch...
I think you mean Transcode, not encode. Typically most recording devices encode at the source, because storing raw video in HD has a high capacity and performance requirement.
These are the formats I've played with:
DivX, XviD, MPEG4, WMV, MKV
I've liked MKV in general.

Play 1080p Video?

I've tried MX player, rock player and the default video player to playback my 1080p videos but they all still lag and play slowly. All videos are in mp4. Are there any apps out there that would be able to do this?
Cheers
try out dice player, and overclock, if ur tf is rooted, should be able to play smoothly. anyway I believe there are threads ard discussing this, please go do a search for them.
darkstar09 said:
I've tried MX player, rock player and the default video player to playback my 1080p videos but they all still lag and play slowly. All videos are in mp4. Are there any apps out there that would be able to do this?
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dice player is the best by far IMO, even gets rid of the home and back buttons illuminating.
It plays mkv files and I have files over 3gb which also play without any problems.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.inisoft.mediaplayer.dice&hl=en
Just for fun I searched this forum for "1080p" in the thread title only. This doesn't include all the other random ways someone has asked this exact same question at least 100 other times.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1251784&highlight=1080p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1051629&highlight=1080p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1199268&highlight=1080p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1192865&highlight=1080p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1121428&highlight=1080p
And there are more. I believe on of the rules of xda is to search first and I know it asks if you have searched for existing threads before you start a new one. Granted it searches all of xda to show you threads but the search button is easily found and searches a specific forum.
This is the first rule of xda
1. Search before posting.
I guarantee this has been asked and answered many times this week alone
not sure about 1080p that's going to be hit and miss especially if you have big file sizes.
I'm using revolver 3.2 at 1.3 and can confirm 720p playback with file sizes of 3 gig or so play perfectly with dice player.
This can play back 1080P files just fine....DEPENDING on the bitrate. It's a limitation of Tegra 2. If the bitrate is high, it will have problems. Just like 720P files with really high bitrates have the same limitations.
Honestly, why does it matter? If you're outputting through HDMI to watch things, then I can kinda understand, but the screen itself only supports 720P. Why bother with 1080P?
Just out of curiosity, does overclocking improve video playback?
darkhawkff said:
This can play back 1080P files just fine....DEPENDING on the bitrate. It's a limitation of Tegra 2. If the bitrate is high, it will have problems. Just like 720P files with really high bitrates have the same limitations.
Honestly, why does it matter? If you're outputting through HDMI to watch things, then I can kinda understand, but the screen itself only supports 720P. Why bother with 1080P?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bitrate, uh?
How much is "really high"? 10mbps? 16mbps? and why the lower the resolution the higher the bitrate it can handle, if I got your post right?
Nah. I have a 1080p file, 16mbps. Plays well without overclock. I have another 1080p file, 10mbps, dosen't play well even at 1.6ghz. 720p file, still 10mbps, needs overclock (even 1.2ghz is enough). The difference between them? the kind of encoding. All this with Diceplayer, not the horrid Rockplayer, mind you.
Diceplayer works on most of my DSLR footage 1080 with 40-60datarate
AlexTheStampede said:
Bitrate, uh?
How much is "really high"? 10mbps? 16mbps? and why the lower the resolution the higher the bitrate it can handle, if I got your post right?
Nah. I have a 1080p file, 16mbps. Plays well without overclock. I have another 1080p file, 10mbps, dosen't play well even at 1.6ghz. 720p file, still 10mbps, needs overclock (even 1.2ghz is enough). The difference between them? the kind of encoding. All this with Diceplayer, not the horrid Rockplayer, mind you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm struggling with 720p encoded @L4. 1.. Mostly all L3. 1 plays nice in diceplayer.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
If I remember correctly, movies encoded in High Profile will not play back well. Main Profile is the best this machine can handle. I believe it's a Tegra 2 limitation in general.
CptJimmy said:
If I remember correctly, movies encoded in High Profile will not play back well. Main Profile is the best this machine can handle. I believe it's a Tegra 2 limitation in general.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, high L3. 1 is ok with some oc.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
hairyonion said:
not sure about 1080p that's going to be hit and miss especially if you have big file sizes.
I'm using revolver 3.2 at 1.3 and can confirm 720p playback with file sizes of 3 gig or so play perfectly with dice player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let me comment on that:
LOL
Without OC, DICE player (and transformer itself) can only play Level3.1 content and it will slideshow on 99% of internet standard (scene) releases. If you think 'plays perfectly', then you're brain and eyesight damaged.
With OC, you can play play simple 720p content (think WebDL releases) with decent quality (though they will still drop frames in more complex scenes), but more complex releases (think blueray rips) will drop frames on most scenes and slideshow totally on more complex ones.
You would have to be really lucky to find a 1080p movie that will play. Many won't open at all, rest will be dropping frames constantly. When ASUS said that 3.1 update make 1080p playback possible, by playback they meant rendering first frame of the movie.
Dice player is the best
go for it
As mentioned on the other posts about HD playback, the hardware decode of 720p or 1080p H264 with AAC is currently broken in 3.2. Worked fine in 3.1, then got broke. Asus are aware of it and have promised a fix.
If you have such files (e.g. BBC iPlayer HD content) then no player will be able to play them back smoothly as software decode simply can't handle them. Only option is to either transcode or downgrade to HC3.1 to get hardware decode back.
Let's hope the fix is not far off now.
bro just play 720p. trust me you THINK you can tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on a 10' screen but you cant......unless your not human
uploder said:
bro just play 720p. trust me you THINK you can tell the difference between 720 and 1080 on a 10' screen but you cant......unless your not human
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, there cannot possibly exist a difference between displaying 720p and 1080p on a 1280x800 screen, since all 1080p content would be scaled down to 720p. Where 1080p would actually matter is if you often connect to a big monitor or HDTV that is capable of 1080p, such as I do on a regular basis for when I want to watch movies without having to boot up my desktop computer. There is definitely a noticeable difference between 720p videos I've converted with Handbrake and the actual 1080p Blu ray movies, but it's not really a big deal for me.
My suggestion for those truly concerned about high quality 1080p playback would be to buy a netbook equipped with a Nvidia ION or comparable video chipset, as I have had no issues playing Blu ray from my own ION-equipped nettop.
yeah my MX player would lag like crazy. Dice is the way to go!
earlyberd said:
Well, there cannot possibly exist a difference between displaying 720p and 1080p on a 1280x800 screen, since all 1080p content would be scaled down to 720p. Where 1080p would actually matter is if you often connect to a big monitor or HDTV that is capable of 1080p, such as I do on a regular basis for when I want to watch movies without having to boot up my desktop computer...........
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ah i see. then YES. there would definitely be a difference. I just assumed you were watching directly on the TF. my mistake

Video formats

Can we discuss what video formats you use for dvd rips and settings . What works what doesnt. App you use and on what os.
Me personally i make 720p mp4 videos using mpeg streamclip on my mac. I always hear ppl talking about making 1080p mkv files or whatever does the quality even matter on our none hd screens ?? Arnt dvds only 480 or 720p any how. Anyone here rip bluerays .
Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk 2
Resolution:
DVDs are 480p max. If you encode to higher res, all you're doing is stretching the video for no purpose.
Stretching the res just makes the end product bigger with no quality gain, and your player or device
will stretch the video anyway.
Blurays are 1080p. The scale (e.g. 720p size reduction) and quality you use are dependent on what you
intend to play the videos on. 720p is perfect for the Galaxy Note 10.1 with its 800p screen
Suggested format:
The best video codec: h264
The best audio codec: aac
The best container: mkv (for multiple audio and subs) or mp4 (subs as well as more than two audio streams a bit troublesome)
My preference (h264 video +aac audio) in mkv.
As a rough guide:
A practical DVD rip = ~1.3-1.7 GB (~1500 kbps @480p)
A decent BluRay rip would be ~2.7 GB (~2500 kbps @720p)
A fairly transparent BluRay rip ~5 GB (~4000 kbps @720p)
Free or Commercial:
Depending on how much control you want over quality, as well as ease of use, I'd say go with a commercial solution (WinAVI is quite good).
Otherwise free solutions are quite good (e.g. RipBot264, StaxRip, Handbrake) but you will need to decrypt your purchased discs to your hard drives.
I almost exclusively watch 1080p MKV files on my Note 10.1. At first the audio had trouble staying synced with hardware decoding on every player I tried. Luckily VLC recently fixed that somehow with their Android app. I think MKV is good if you have multiple audio or subtitle tracks. Logically I know I shouldn't see a difference in quality between 720p & 1080p on this tablet, but I do. Think it has something to do with how it's scaled.
thas5 said:
I almost exclusively watch 1080p MKV files on my Note 10.1. At first the audio had trouble staying synced with hardware decoding on every player I tried. Luckily VLC recently fixed that somehow with their Android app. I think MKV is good if you have multiple audio or subtitle tracks. Logically I know I shouldn't see a difference in quality between 720p & 1080p on this tablet, but I do. Think it has something to do with how it's scaled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 1080p could probably show better. Though the difference should be negligible.
If the video has black bars, these may be cropped in encoding. Which means the 1080p video is closer to 900p.
Encoding a cropped video to 720p may actually be closer to 544p (i.e. 1280x544p) to maintain the aspect ratio (so the video doesn't look "tall").
If the audio stream is 5.1 DTS audio, you're gonna probably have stuttering due to processing the larger audio file.
2 Channel (stereo) audio is all you need for the Note 10.1
Thanks guys so making my dvd rips 720p isnt doing anything but making a bigger file eh. Dont think mpeg streamclip has mkv which is why i use mp4 so far with no issues. My settings are h.264 aac 3000kbps bitrate limit and files are around 2 gb...
Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk 2
Think im gunna look into an external blueray ripper for my mac. Any good programs for mac?
Tried handbrake but it doesnt take dvd rips, ie vob files.
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I usually rip my DVD's and convert them to .avi or mp4 at 480p or lower and purchase fullHD movies and re-encode them to 480p or 720p when i want to load them in my tablet. As long as the audio is good (i tend to favor conversion to stereo for tablet playback), i'm willing to sacrifice a little in image quality since having movies in fullHD can eat up a lot of space pretty quickly.
Thanks im trying some 480p conversion . Saving about 1/2 to 1 gb going down to 480p...
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DJsCrIBbLe said:
Thanks im trying some 480p conversion . Saving about 1/2 to 1 gb going down to 480p...
Sent from my GT-N8013 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The difference of 480p against 720p isn't very noticeable if you watch movies with your tablet at arm's length.
720p is HD, and 1080p is Full HD so we do have an HD display. And I enjoy a good MKV Bluray rip on this device using BS Player.
And watching 480p isnt as bad due to the resolution.
Very nice app to convert videos on the fly...
...is Video Converter Android, an app for the Note 10.1.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...wsMSwxLDEsInJvbWFuMTAubWVkaWEuY29udmVydGVyIl0.
I have many videos in different formats, which sometimes cannot be played on the note 10.1. So I loaded them on my extSD, search in this app for video files, and all are found (3Gp, MPG, everything). Then I just tap on "convert" and the app changes format so that the movie can be played with stock video player.
I do not like to wait hours for video conversion at home til my pc is done with the task. The Note works on even with display switched off, and conversion is really fast.
ensure you rip them as summed to stereo if you are using large bitrates, BS player can deal with 5.1 audio but struggles with higher bitrates as it can only decode 5.1 in software. Stock player can play 5.1 AC3
REWORDED: On this tablet, is there a way to watch a wider-than-16:9 movie so the view size is enlarged/zoomed proportionally to fill the screen vertically? Instead of stretching and distorting a wide-screen movie vertically to fill the screen to get rid of the black bars (top and bottom), is it possible to enlarge the movie proportionally for fill the screen vertically while cropping the sides? That way, the sides are cropped-off, but there's no distortion. Maybe there's other movie viewing apps that can achieve this? I'm referring to only when watching, not encoding. Thanks.
What frame height & frame width do people recommend ?
blud7 said:
Resolution:
DVDs are 480p max. If you encode to higher res, all you're doing is stretching the video for no purpose.
Stretching the res just makes the end product bigger with no quality gain, and your player or device
will stretch the video anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To be accurate NTSC DVDs are 480 horizontal lines max. PAL are (up to) 576.
But back to the OPs question, I use makemkv to RIP the DVD and then Freemake to recode to generic Android supported codecs - which also decreases the file size by a factor of 3.
Freemake allows you to set a "up to" resolution so one setting of 720p will do for all DVDs and BluRay/HD-DVDs ...
With this tablet, is there a way to watch a wider-than-16:9 movie so the view size is enlarged/zoomed proportionally to fill the screen vertically? Instead of stretching and distorting a wide-screen movie vertically to fill the screen to get rid of the black bars (top and bottom), is it possible to enlarge the movie proportionally for fill the screen vertically while cropping the sides? That way, the sides are cropped-off, but there's no distortion. Maybe there's other movie viewing apps that can achieve this? I'm referring to only when watching, not encoding.
Anyone? Thanks.

10-bit video hardware decoding

Since I don't think it's been mentioned in any reviews or anything yet, unfortunately the Z1 Compact doesn't support hardware decoding of 10-bit colour video, not even at 720p.
That being said, the snapdragon 800 is thankfully just about fast enough to play 720p 10-bit with styled subtitles smoothly through software decoding. 1080p is unwatchable (major frame drops).
Hopefully this helps someone researching the phone for anime watching purposes (it is sad that so many fansub groups have turned to this colour format)
Darkimmortal said:
Since I don't think it's been mentioned in any reviews or anything yet, unfortunately the Z1 Compact doesn't support hardware decoding of 10-bit colour video, not even at 720p.
That being said, the snapdragon 800 is thankfully just about fast enough to play 720p 10-bit with styled subtitles smoothly through software decoding. 1080p is unwatchable (major frame drops).
Hopefully this helps someone researching the phone for anime watching purposes (it is sad that so many fansub groups have turned to this colour format)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried several hi10 720p anime vids, using bsplayer with an option "hardware decoding for hi10" enabled and had no problems playing any of them. Not sure if it was really software decoder or not, but in any case vids played perfectly (no frame drops, full color, no problem with sound)
ziprar said:
I have tried several hi10 720p anime vids, using bsplayer with an option "hardware decoding for hi10" enabled and had no problems playing any of them. Not sure if it was really software decoder or not, but in any case vids played perfectly (no frame drops, full color, no problem with sound)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep 720p does play perfectly, as the cpu is fast enough.
Using MX Player you can see that it fails to play with hardware and reverts to software decoding
Screen is 720p after all. No point of 1080p playing in terms of picture quality.
Option58 said:
Screen is 720p after all. No point of 1080p playing in terms of picture quality.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe because you can hook it to 1080p monitor using mhl? I see no point using the phone with monitor if you also have desktop/laptop nearby though.
How about the subtitle? Is it easy to read it for prolonged time? I try to watch on my xperia ray before, but I guess 3.3 inch display is really too small to watch it comfortably.
A phone is never as good as PC, blu-ray players and such in terms of picture quality when viewing movies at home. I see no point in plugging to external monitor for that.
HDMI is used to show your pictures and videos taken by phone camera to your family.
EDIT: Oh wait yeah, plugging it on hotel TV and using it as a media player is a good use indeed. But 720p is good enough for hotel TV's.
And let's not forget it can play 1080p MKV movies but only not those hardcore quality animes.
Just to clarify the focus isn't really on the fact that it can't play 1080p 10-bit, but the fact that it has to use software decoding for 720p 10-bit. The battery drain is going to be quite significant to say the least, even if the playback quality is perfect (which it is).
For perspective, a snapdragon 600 can't handle software decoding of 720p 10-bit, so it's very cpu intensive
I'm glad that I'm already fine with just ripping videos from streaming links hahaha! And oh I can watch animes with subtitles fine on my Nokia n95 years ago... I'm pretty sure I can live with Xperia Z1 Compact's screen.

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