x264 codec decoding limitations

[Medieval123]

I recently got a Pandigital Supernova android ereader/tablet. It has an hdmi out and I've been experimenting with it playing downloaded HDrips. Really like it so far.

To my understanding, it has a Samsung S5PV210 - Cortex Arm 8 processor (similar to the IPAD) and as such has limited hardware x264 720p codec playback capability (only MAIN profile decoding method supported- HIGH is not).
The processor/GPU combo on these just aren't fast enough to process the 720p through software if the processor does not support that feature - i.e. x264 high profile. I've tried software mode in various players (mine came with U Player, tried Rock player and V Player) and it's typically very choppy (verifying I need the hardware support). I've heard similar issues exist with other processor sets (i.e nvidia Tegra pretty popular).

So far I've tried various x264 .mp4 rips to discover that it was the high profile that was causing the files not to play in hardware accelerated mode (using Rock Player).

The rips that were in high profile I converted to main profile using ImTOO MPEG Encoder (I ended up selected Apple TV H.264 HD video and set the bit rate to 2500 - as that was the original files were encoded at - resulted in the output file being similar in file size). With only this single conversion it didn't seem much noticeable quality was lost.

Anyway, to my actual question, I've used this same output format converting from various .MP4 x264 files (slightly diffferent bitrates and high profile levels), and have found a few of them won't play in Rock Player.

The converted ones that do play play fine, but the ones that do not give me the following error:
"This File CAnnot Be Played with SYstem Player"
if I try software mode I get the error "Cannot open FILENAME to play" (I've only gotten this error with converted files)

Wondering if anyone had any insight as to what may be the issue (maybe I need to use a different version of Rock Player - currently using 1.7.4).

Thanks!

-Matt

 

[dvdcatalyst]

I recently got a Pandigital Supernova android ereader/tablet. It has an hdmi out and I've been experimenting with it playing downloaded HDrips. Really like it so far.

...

Anyway, to my actual question, I've used this same output format converting from various .MP4 x264 files (slightly diffferent bitrates and high profile levels), and have found a few of them won't play in Rock Player.

The converted ones that do play play fine, but the ones that do not give me the following error:
"This File CAnnot Be Played with SYstem Player"
if I try software mode I get the error "Cannot open FILENAME to play" (I've only gotten this error with converted files)

Wondering if anyone had any insight as to what may be the issue (maybe I need to use a different version of Rock Player - currently using 1.7.4).

Thanks!

-Matt

Hi Matt,

If the same settings were used for the files, they should play. If you are using an SD card for your videos (since it has a limited amount of storage, it is likely) it could be that the files that do not work are larger than 2GB, or, if you picked up a cheap 32GB card from eBay, you got a fake card, and everything stored over the real capacity of the card will end up corrupted.

As for Rockplayer, try your files using the build-in video player. Since you are converting your files already, I would focus on getting them to play properly in that to ensure full hardware compatibility. The main advantage of using Rock/Mobo/Dice/MX player is because of their multi-format video playback support with software-decoding. At HD resolution and quality, their software-decoding engines are not able to handle the video files.

 

[Medieval123]

dvdcatalyst,

The file I was having an issue with after conversion played but stopped around 80% mark, and it was 2.5 gb (corresponds to about 2 gb into the file).

DO you know if this is an Android limitation? I would have thought the file wouldn't play at all, but it appears to play up to the 2 gb limit (I'm going to purposely encode a 2.1 GB file to see if I can view the credits )

I've heard Android uses signed 32 bit representation (so 2 GB max addressable) - my tablet runs Android 2.2, wonder if they've increased this in later releases?

Thanks.

Matt

 

[dvdcatalyst]

dvdcatalyst,

The file I was having an issue with after conversion played but stopped around 80% mark, and it was 2.5 gb (corresponds to about 2 gb into the file).

DO you know if this is an Android limitation? I would have thought the file wouldn't play at all, but it appears to play up to the 2 gb limit (I'm going to purposely encode a 2.1 GB file to see if I can view the credits )


I've heard Android uses signed 32 bit representation (so 2 GB max addressable) - my tablet runs Android 2.2, wonder if they've increased this in later releases?

Thanks.

Matt

Some older Adroid versions (2.2-) have a 2GB limitation for files, but on newer ones (I think even 2.3) the internal memory can hold larger files. I successfully played a 14GB 1080p MP4 on my Xoom. But if you use memorycards, they come formatted as fat32, which on Windows has 4GB as a limit, but on just about everything else its 2GB