Codec Support on Pocket PC

[DeathTheSheep]

Don't get me wrong. People here don't think all too highly about Pocket PC devices, or anything else runnin' Windows Mobile, but in all honesty, every single one of my friends have one, and these things are spreading fast.

I have a good one. It has QVGA res (I know, I know), 634 Processor w/312 or 324 mhz FSB, 64MB 150+mhz ram, etc.

With betaplayer ( betaplayer.corecodec.org ) this thing can decode a lot of stuff, but only ... "older" stuff. DivX3 (And therefore other MPEG-4 ASP), MPEG-1, and some elementary asf/wmv.

No support for snow, realvideo, vp6 (surprising and saddening), avc, ND in that specific (excellent) program.

However, I was merely wondering whether anyone here knows of anything for PPC that can decode such new video codecs. Specifically, VP6 or AVC (for the 2.4MB, 20 minute anime episodes I made with x264 vs. the 25MB ones with XviD).

Anything out there? Google didn't help all too much, but I naturally suck at googling... heh.

[Razorblade2000]

Concerning Real Video:
http://www.realnetworks.com/industries/mobile/operators/products/player/ppc/index.html

[DeathTheSheep]

My, my... I would never even have imagined such a thing existed.

Any luck in the VP6 department guys? How does open MPlayer/ (vlc?) decode it? Or does it use vfw too?

[Razorblade2000]

afaik it uses the vfw dll

[Irwin]

Real Video on pocketpc is very ultra hiper ;-) slow:
320x240 25 fps 600kbps xvid with 128kbps mp3 runs very smooth - on slow h1910 pxa250 200@333mhz (even 300mhz is good for this)

240x176 15 fps 128kbps rv9 codec 20kbps mono cook sound - jerky and slow like hell on h1910 pxa250 200@333mhz

[Razorblade2000]

On my Ipaq 3660 (VCD Resolution display + 204 mhz cpu) I encode to half vcd resolution (100 kbit/s real video 8 + 32 kbit/s cook audio ) and let the player double the videosize while playback :D

Runs smooth and delivers good quality :D

[Irwin]

Yes, but you use rv8 - it's faster. Try rv9 and 240xXXX.

[Razorblade2000]

Already did that... but only an episode of "The Daily show"... so not thaaat much motion :D

[Irwin]

Yea! Probably RealNetworks lefts Pocketpc - no upgrades since 2002, no wmmx and new graphics card (ati, i2700g) support, no VGA ;) , etc.

Xvid on yours 3660 runs well at 320x176 25fps with stereo 44khz sound

sorry for my poor english - RMVB rocks! (but no for PocketPc)

[Razorblade2000]

xvid will run well, but it will suck on those low bitrates :)

With RMVB I can fit an average 90 minute movie to 85 MB :D

[Irwin]

mpeg4 avc is much better in low bitrate then RM - and maybe next year ;) in betaplayer.

[Razorblade2000]

not for my needs...
I tested nearly all h.264 codecs at about 270 kbit/s
None was able to beat real video 10 :D

[Irwin]

I test too: 320x176 25fps in 100kbps h264 nero recode with bframes is much better then rv10 ehq100 (in this small bitrate rv10 is details eater ;)

and see this http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87317

[bond]

to my knowledge there are two pocketpc players freely available that are able to play .mp4:

- philips platform4 player (available on rarewares)
- gpac osmo4 player

maybe some pocketpc versions of mplayer, videolan exist too?

Originally posted by DeathTheSheep
DivX3 (And therefore other MPEG-4 ASP)btw, divx3 (aka msmpeg) is not mpeg-4 compliant!

[Irwin]

BetaPlayer (http://betaplayer.corecodec.org) - It's fast, freeware, plays many audio-video files:
- containers -> mp4, matroska, ogg,ogm, mov,avi, mpeg, mp3, aac, asf, wmv-a,
- Video codecs -> iso mpeg4, divx 3-5,xvid, mjpeg, mpg1 (maybe mpg2 and h264 soon)
- Audio codecs -> vorbis, aac (lc , he and he ps), mp1-2-3, mpc, ac3, adpcm, wav.

Performance is amazing : On Dell x50v with 3.7" screen 640x480 - sample file xvid 640x480 2Mbps (2000kbps) with sound ac3 runs smoothly, without dropped frames - It's better then my old Cel 416mhz PC and of course better than Microsoft WMP10 for pocketpc.

VideoLan exists on pocketpc but ... in sample 320x240 xvid on my h1910 i have 1-2fps - in betaplayer in benchmark mode about 40 fps.

[DeathTheSheep]

VideoLan for PocketPC? What is it able (or not able, heh) to play?

Does it do AVC/wavelet/rv10/whatever? This is sure news to me!

[Irwin]

No avc, snow, r10 support and many others.
Player is very ultra hiper slow - and no sound on many pocketpc, hangs nonstop

wm2003 - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=113348&package_id=122937

wm2002 - http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=113348&package_id=122936

[Palmnut]

Are there any XVID settings that betaplayer can't handle? Thinking of GMC, multiple B-Frames etc etc?

[Irwin]

GMC and qpel not supported (yet) - all others works - multiple bframes too

[Palmnut]

Hmm .. encode I did lst night just plays with big blocks on a green ground :-(

Hang on, can betaplayer handle interlaced? My source is a direct PAL DVB-T recording, so is TFF interlaced. I turned on the Interlaced switch in the encoder, with TFF enabled. Other encoder settings were:

Latest 1.1 build from Koepi
Two pass
320 x 176 res, 25 fps
Single B-Frame
Custom Matrix (eqm_v3ulr)
200kbps
Ogg Vorbis audio
Matroska container

[Irwin]

Sorry but interlaced movies not supported - I forget this. Mea culpa. ;-) And custom matrix often not works - h263 runs perfect, Mpeg too, but with minor bugs, others - i don't know.

[DeathTheSheep]

I've encoded a few clips using Xvid 1.1b, and some of them crashed betaPlayer after 1 or 2 seconds. Everything else still works. Anyone know what's happening here?

[Irwin]

I don't know - maybe new xvid 1.1b produce different stream.

BTW if you use 0.096 - new betaplayer have lots of bugs - maybe this.

[DeathTheSheep]

OK, this platform4 player boasts a "deblocker filter." This would really help low-bitrate movies. The problem is, I don't know what it plays. It says "MP4" but that is really quite stupid, because MP4 is obviously a container and I could stick in wmv video if I wanted to. What does it play, really?
And What fourcc should I use to stuff it into MP4UI?

[bond]

Originally posted by DeathTheSheep
and I could stick in wmv video if I wanted tono, practically you cant atm

What does it play, really?mpeg-4 sp video and aac

And What fourcc should I use to stuff it into MP4UI?.mp4 doesnt have fourccs comparable to avi

[DeathTheSheep]

no, practically you cant atm
Um, you can stick *anything* into MP4 if you use a private stream and have a decoder capable of recognizing it... Ain't that so? (Forgive me if I'm wrong, I just hate MP4 quite a bit--back to VFW hacks!!)



.mp4 doesnt have fourccs comparable to avi
I'm pretty sure it has a similar means of identifying the video stream (tags, etc), but when I muxed in a really old 3ivx mpeg-4 asp encoded video stream, it didn't play with Plat4, but when I changed the fourcc to divx, it worked fine. What the heck is with that? I thought MP4UI identified them and stuck them in with the standard ASP tag...?


One more thing... Is full-screen mode working at all? In my experiance it displayed warnings that it couldn't go into full screen mode on "this platform." :scared:

[st_fly]

Hey, I know my comment is a bit late but the commercial version of TCPMP called core player plays back avc just fine, since I exclusively encode in xvid for my standalone philips, my first x264 encode was the final motorcycle sequence from FFVII advent children and not being familiar, I maxed out all detail settings and kept res at 320x176 at 300 kbs, my jasjar played it beautifully fullscreen using the core avc player.

[zambelli]

Isn't AVC on PPC somewhat contradictory to the design goals of AVC? MPEG-4 ASP or SP would seem far more suitable choices for a platform of limited CPU power.

[st_fly]

zambelli, you're right, even though I'm a relative newbie when it comes to x264, even I knew that it took extensive cpu power to run h264 content and was a bit surprised that active support was being affered for the codec albeit via third party devs, but even then, as I stated earlier, it played back on the pda like a dream and I've read that even 640x480 res h264 vids play back smoothly full-screen on the pocket pc.

[rack04]

I've read that even 640x480 res h264 vids play back smoothly full-screen on the pocket pc.

With what decoder? My Axim X51V with TCPMP doesn't stand a chance at smooth playback for 640x480 h264.

[st_fly]

rack04, I suggest you try Corecodec Coreplayer, its the commercial version of TCPMP, and although it looks nicer and does h264 very well, it doesn't support a lot of codecs that tcpmp plays e.g mp4 and flv. If you use TCPMP, try to run the movie in benchmark mode. I think by default, TCPMP sucks at playing back H264 and you have to download a seperate H264 codec plugin for it to work nice.

[rack04]

rack04, I suggest you try Corecodec Coreplayer, its the commercial version of TCPMP, and although it looks nicer and does h264 very well, it doesn't support a lot of codecs that tcpmp plays e.g mp4 and flv. If you use TCPMP, try to run the movie in benchmark mode. I think by default, TCPMP sucks at playing back H264 and you have to download a seperate H264 codec plugin for it to work nice.

With the cutomer complaints that I've seen with CoreAVC I think I'll pass on CorePlayer. Using TCPMP with the AVC plugin I'm able to view 640x272 MPEG4 files (AVC/AAC) at 107.69% average speed.

[st_fly]

Well, you are right there, other than h264, it won't play much any other format....unlike TCPMP. Hey, I was wondering if you'd be kind enough to share the settings you use for x264 pda encodes, as I stated earlier, I'm almost an expert now with xvid but have encoded h264 just once for my pda, perhaps some way of squeezing some more compression while maintaining good quality.