Video On Pandora

[mecksg1]

I'm getting my pandorra soon and was wondering what formatt will my video files need to be converted to. I think any one will work right? can someone help me out please

 

[Vitel]

I think any one will work right?

Right

 

[Prometheus]

Well, what format are they currently? They might just work.

 

[wermy]

These threads might be helpful:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54203-best-video-transcoding-settings-for-pandora/page__p__871180__hl__video%20format__fromsearch__1&#entry871180

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/53995-my-video-playing-impression/page__p__866808__hl__video%20format__fromsearch__1&#entry866808

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50532-video-player/page__p__776065__hl__video%20format__fromsearch__1&#entry776065

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/49567-video-formats-revisited-theres-an-issue/page__p__755073__hl__video%20format__fromsearch__1&#entry755073

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/49562-video-format-capabilities/page__p__754912__hl__video%20format__fromsearch__1&#entry754912

I just skimmed over them, and they seem to cover this topic.

 

[mecksg1]

they are in .mkv formatt also thatnks for the responses

 

[WizardStan]

I'm skeptical about RealMedia. Other than that I can't think of any video or audio format that would have any reason not to play.

 

[CPUnltd]

mkv files should be fine...

 

[TrashyMG]

I'm skeptical about RealMedia. Other than that I can't think of any video or audio format that would have any reason not to play.

RealMedia what is this 1997?

 

[mecksg1]

I just have a tv series that is in that format and wanted to know if I need to change it or keep it in that format

 

[paulguy]

MKV is the container. It will work (mplayer and VLC cen demux this.).

The question is what it contains as far as codecs. Chances are they'll play but if they're some big, high bitrate HD h.264 videos, it will play but awfully. As for audio formats, you probably won't have to worry at all. Most stuff is MP3 or AAC, and both play back just fine.

If it doesn't work, you'll have to transcode the video to something like xviD or less heavy type of h.264, at a resolution that'll properly fit the screen (800x480). Make sure not to transcode perfectly good audio, though, as it's unlikely the issue... unless it's like, 7.1 or something crazy... and even then not a big deal compared to video.

EDIT: Also, most real media, quicktime and windows media video seem to playback just fine without the win32 codecs. As a 64 bit linux user, I have to do without them and most everything I've tried plays back just fine... though I haven't tried any of the more modern HD windows media codecs.

 

[Zotty]

Fresh from the press: Announcing the world’s fastest VP8 decoder: ffvp8

Makes me wonder what the possibilities are Pandora wise

 

[Mofokubik]

Well I wouldn't say ANY video format/codec will work. I tried for hours to get my mp4 h.264 720p videos to work in vlc. It shows the first frame with messed up colors and just plays sound. This is tricky too, because i've encountered several multi-core pc's that also have trouble playing them, so it's hard to believe I could get the pandora to play these either way.

I have not yet tried any other video formats. Converting video always was, and always will be a pita.

 

[Aninhumer]

MPlayer can play practically any format that exists, except a few obscure realmedia ones as Wizardstan said.
The only issue would be whether the Pandora is powerful enough to play them smoothly.
IIRC 720p is a little heavy at the moment, but is likely to be possible with DSP codecs.

Well I wouldn't say ANY video format/codec will work. I tried for hours to get my mp4 h.264 720p videos to work in vlc. It shows the first frame with messed up colors and just plays sound. This is tricky too, because i've encountered several multi-core pc's that also have trouble playing them, so it's hard to believe I could get the pandora to play these either way.

Sounds like they might just be broken videos, or at least non-standard.
h264 and mp4 are pretty common, if VLC has trouble playing them, the problem is more likely the videos themselves.

 

[Mofokubik]

MPlayer can play practically any format that exists, except a few obscure realmedia ones as Wizardstan said.
The only issue would be whether the Pandora is powerful enough to play them smoothly.
IIRC 720p is a little heavy at the moment, but is likely to be possible with DSP codecs.

Sounds like they might just be broken videos, or at least non-standard.
h264 and mp4 are pretty common, if VLC has trouble playing them, the problem is more likely the videos themselves.

Well the computers I was trying to play them on kinda suck to begin with, but I figured they'd at least be able to handle 720p vids, sheesh. My main comp at home plays them perfect with an out-of-date version of VLC.

When playing them on the pandora, I get the first frame which looks like the tint is way off, then the sound continues to play. These videos are straight from a flip slidehd camera, and it seems you need a beast of a cpu/gfx card to play them. I COULD convert them to another format, but I thought it would have been awesome to just plug the camera directly into the pandora and start watching.

Maybe pandora needs a video converter. Is virtual dub doable? How about vlmc. Wait.. I forgot vlc could convert by itself. Has anyone tested this on their pandora yet?

 

[sebt3]

Maybe pandora needs a video converter. Is virtual dub doable? How about vlmc. Wait.. I forgot vlc could convert by itself. Has anyone tested this on their pandora yet?

The VLC pnd include "mencoder" and even ffmpeg (if my memory deserve) so if you want to give a shot, you can try.

But I would'nt try to re-encode a video on the pandora that it struggle to play already : encoding is heavier than playing.

 

[urjaman]

I wouldnt try anything h264(at or above 480p) or anything >=720p on the pandora at the moment (before we get DSP decoding).
For the lulz I tried to play a 848x480 (Im not sure on the 8xx, but >800) h264 youtube video with mplayer.
Firstly the video overlay will apparently only upscale video, so it wont accept input over 800x480. I had mplayer crop the video to 800x480. It would show the first frame, and the frame in the paused position if i paused+continued, but meh. I disabled sound, then i had about 80% speed (my guestimation) @800Mhz (as it was no longer trying to sync with audio it could actually display something moving), so as you see decoding h264 is real hard, and it matches with my experiences with (nowadays standards) slow and old (sub-Ghz) x86's.

BUT, on the bright side Xvids (that you can easily get from you-know-where) play and look great on the pandora LCD

So regarding re-coding 720p to something simpler on the pandora... It will propably do it but expect... some real slow speed (Id throw from my nonexistant hat certainly much less than 10% realtime, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong)...

 

[Aninhumer]

Well the computers I was trying to play them on kinda suck to begin with, but I figured they'd at least be able to handle 720p vids, sheesh. My main comp at home plays them perfect with an out-of-date version of VLC.

When playing them on the pandora, I get the first frame which looks like the tint is way off, then the sound continues to play. These videos are straight from a flip slidehd camera, and it seems you need a beast of a cpu/gfx card to play them.

I assume you have tried playing them in both mplayer and VLC.
Sometimes MPlayer glitches when starting a video for me, but if I just seek back to the start again it plays fine.
Although I don't think that's ever happened every time I opened something...
Otherwise, the only way I can think a video being heavy would make it do that is if it was deciding to drop every frame, you could try turning framedrop off (it will be way out of sync if it's too heavy though).
One thing you might want to try before re-encoding is remuxing, it would take a lot less time (since it's basically copying), and it's possible the issue is a some kind of non-standard mp4 container.

 

[paulguy]

mplayer is a bit picky with videos, and it won't be able to easily compensate for sync if it's slow, since it seems to use the frames to handle sync. This is why desync happens with otherwise fine files, the muxer put either too much or too little audio with each video frame, so mplayer will try to speed up or slow down the frame rate to compensate. And of course bugginess and broken containers probably just make it freak out. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how split and recombine videos to be correct (-ovc copy -oac copy just moves the frames over as-is, in their broken state.).

If they're from a camcorder, you better believe they're malformed. These awful embedded encoders are usually terribly programmed and output whatever kind of crap because they were programmed by a monkey for some really cheap processor.

 

[Aninhumer]

And of course bugginess and broken containers probably just make it freak out. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how split and recombine videos to be correct (-ovc copy -oac copy just moves the frames over as-is, in their broken state.).

Not really sure what you're asking?
If the "frames" are broken that means the bitstream is broken. A remux can't fix that.

Unless you're asking about how to split a video on an p-frame without breaking it?
I think mkvtools can do it, although that said, I may just have always been splitting on keyframes.