H.264 Ipod Mp4 Movies?

[kev187]

My entire movie collection of 90+ movies is coded to the h.264 formate. .m4v or .mp4 aac audio.

I have used handbrake for mac & formatted using an ipod friendly h.264 format.

Am I going to be able to get a media player for my Pandora that will support playback of this format?

On the go movie watching will be so much nicer on the pandora than the ipod, but I don't want to have to re-encode my entire libray of movies???

 

[HackModford]

It should play it fine. You can probably use VLC or the KMPlayer. They'll play anything...

 

[Vitel]

It should play it fine. You can probably use VLC or the KMPlayer. They'll play anything...

+1 mplayer plays everything

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

I would use SMplayer for mplayer, not KMplayer, as Kmplayer would want some kde libs as well, and you wouldn't want those unless you actually use kde, to save space ofcourse.

and keep the package count at a minimum.

 

[typs lik dis]

The Pandora should play any x264 an iPod can; however, the iPod Touch's screen, greatest of all the iPods', is only 480 x 320 pixels. The Pandora's is 800 x 480. If you've been encoding to iPod display resolution to save battery life and space, you might want to re-encode to Pandora display res.

 

[kev187]

The Pandora should play any x264 an iPod can; however, the iPod Touch's screen, greatest of all the iPods', is only 480 x 320 pixels. The Pandora's is 800 x 480. If you've been encoding to iPod display resolution to save battery life and space, you might want to re-encode to Pandora display res.

Not so much worried about the quality of the movies, more interested in saving space. I run the ipod movies full screen on my macbook pro 17" and they are still very watchable of decent quality. I am sure they will look great on my Pandora

Good to know, I have a massive movie collection. I am going to be buying two 32GB SDHC cards when pandora is in hand... when do the 64GB come out :-D

 

[pizlo]

64 gig SD's wont work on pandora, you can use 2 32's though

 

[dflemstr]

64 gig SD's wont work on pandora, you can use 2 32's though

They *will* probably work but nobody has tested them yet.

 

[Kramy]

iPod videos are likely H.264 4.0 profile.

I wonder if the Pandora will play 5.1 profile vids. I've encoded a few DVDs to that - if you really ramp up the settings, it can hit the memory and CPU usage quite hard.

For comparison, H.264 (4.0 profile) uses about 30MB RAM in my media player (MPC-HC), and ~4-6% CPU usage. The 5.1 profile with B-Frames, CABAC and all quality enhancements enabled uses closer to 12-18% CPU usage, and around 90MB RAM.

After playing back the entire vid, the CPU time (task manager) is literally 3x higher. And that ~15% average is on an Athlon II 3.5ghz. The upside is the smaller filesize.

As soon as I get my Pandora, I'm putting it through a barrage of video tests to find out where the playback line is.

 

[EmuGuy]

As soon as I get my Pandora, I'm putting it through a barrage of video tests to find out where the playback line is.

I'm interested in this as well. There was talk long ago about how the software side of Pandora might need to or can be optimized for video playback. I haven't followed it since then though. Wonder how that's coming along? H.264 can be pretty taxing depending on your system.

I play most video podcasts on my iPod, or PS3 when I'm at home, but it'll be nice to simply drag n drop avi's and stuff onto Pandora without converting. I assume there's a Linux video player that can playback at 1.5X or 2X, with sound? That'd be quite handy.

 

[fischju2000]

Does anybody have the information on hand about what profiles of h264 the TI codecs for DSP can handle? I doubt they work with the highest, but it would greatly reduce CPU power needed.

 

[Pleng]

64 gig SD's wont work on pandora, you can use 2 32's though

They *may* possibly work but nobody has tested them yet.

Fixed that for ya

 

[Chip]

64 gig SD's wont work on pandora, you can use 2 32's though

They *may* possibly work but nobody has tested them yet.

Fixed that for ya

SDXC cards are unlikely to work at all. When someone eventually releases a 64GB SDHC card, it will almost certainly work. At worst, only a minor change to the SDHC driver would fix it.

 

[Pleng]

Well I don't know Chip. I've heard many opinions from many different people on this here forum. And responses are pretty varied even from the most technically minded. The general position seems to be that they will probably work but not at higher speeds. As such, I think maybe is the safest answer.

 

[HackModford]

I would use SMplayer for mplayer, not KMplayer, as Kmplayer would want some kde libs as well, and you wouldn't want those unless you actually use kde, to save space ofcourse.

and keep the package count at a minimum.

I'm not talking about Kmplayer I'm talking about "the KMPlayer"
http://www.freewareg...-rule-them-all/

I love it more than vlc...

Edit: And then I just noticed it's not for Linux Bummer... :angry: This player is a real gem!

 

[Shock-Socks]

what about protected itunes AAC files? is there a media player that will play those plus like every other kind of audio file for linux that will work well on the pandora?

 

[MattF]

AAC-with-DRM files are defective by design - only authenticated iTunes installs or the iPods that sync with them, can play them. There have been tools around which can beat the encryption for you, or you can burn them to audio-CDR from iTunes and re-rip back to MP3.

However, Apple stopped using DRM on the iTunes Music Store a little while back, and you can (or at least could, when I last needed to do it) buy the "upgrade" for your existing iTMS purchases to get them in DRM-free flavour.

If the file extension is .m4p then it's "protected" from being used fully by the person who paid for it. If it's .m4a then it's DRM-free - I'm listening to "02 Killing In the Name.m4a" (which came from the iTunes Store) in VLC as I type this. (Yep, I bought it for the RATM xmas #1 campaign!)

 

[Dead1nside]

However, Apple stopped using DRM on the iTunes Music Store a little while back, and you can (or at least could, when I last needed to do it) buy the "upgrade" for your existing iTMS purchases to get them in DRM-free flavour.

If the file extension is .m4p then it's "protected" from being used fully by the person who paid for it. If it's .m4a then it's DRM-free - I'm listening to "02 Killing In the Name.m4a" (which came from the iTunes Store) in VLC as I type this. (Yep, I bought it for the RATM xmas #1 campaign!)

I suppose at least you can, as you say, buy the 'upgrade'. How steep are we talking about for the DRM free files on top of your DRM'd ones? This just shows why DRM has always been a no-no, vendor lock-in etc. stupid really that you've bought this music and you can't play it on anything else.

 

[Shock-Socks]

However, Apple stopped using DRM on the iTunes Music Store a little while back, and you can (or at least could, when I last needed to do it) buy the "upgrade" for your existing iTMS purchases to get them in DRM-free flavour.

If the file extension is .m4p then it's "protected" from being used fully by the person who paid for it. If it's .m4a then it's DRM-free - I'm listening to "02 Killing In the Name.m4a" (which came from the iTunes Store) in VLC as I type this. (Yep, I bought it for the RATM xmas #1 campaign!)

I suppose at least you can, as you say, buy the 'upgrade'. How steep are we talking about for the DRM free files on top of your DRM'd ones? This just shows why DRM has always been a no-no, vendor lock-in etc. stupid really that you've bought this music and you can't play it on anything else.

lol, dude it's called a converter. i can use the music for whatever i want to, i just have to convert it first, the reason i asked the question was to see if i HAD to convert it.

 

[Dead1nside]

lol, dude it's called a converter. i can use the music for whatever i want to, i just have to convert it first, the reason i asked the question was to see if i HAD to convert it.

Sorry then, doesn't seem like you're interested in why you cannot play your music more easily, but I suppose mp3 is a proprietary codec anyway as well.

Personally I don't see the point in converting it apart from having access to the music, when transcoding like that you're going to lose a lot of the quality, especially when you didn't have to but like I said, you don't seem to care about the ideology.