Best way to play Movies on Rhodium :)

umetnic

Senior Member
Apr 9, 2004
171
13
38
www.gumitvist.com
Dear Friends!

I spent last two weeks trying different app's to get best solution for Movie experience on our beloved Rhodium/Tilt2/Touch pro2 device.

The main idea was to get divx movie to play smoothly and to get best quality as possible.

As we know H.264 codec (mp4) is hardware supported and it gives best results.

So considering that, I got best video experience with inbuilt HTC player that supports hardware acceleration for video.

It does not have a lot of options, and scrolling forward and backward is a little cumber stone, but it provides the best picture so I think (IMHO) is still the best choice.

When Choosing right software my main goal was to have as few steps as possible.

I found that the easiest way to do the conversion is with ImTOO Video Converter Ultimate 6. (http://www.imtoo.com/video-converter.html)

I tried a lot of different software, Trial and Freeware, and ImToo proved to be the best from lot of different perspectives. So it's my number one choice for this task (and also some other video encoding stuff.)



STEP1. Subtitles (Skip to STEP2 if You don't need them)
In case English is not your native language, you would probably (like me) want to have some subtitles with your movie:

You will need to convert *.srt and *.sub subtitles to *.ssa type, so You could get 'Outline and Drop Shadow' effect.

'Subtitle Workshop' (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Subtitle_Workshop) seems perfect for that. (It has all needed settings and also Batch conversion option)


Press Shift+Alt+L to get to Settings/Output menu, where You can set the subtitle settings like Font, Color, etc.

Choose SubStation Alpha (*.ssa)
Border style: 'Outline + drop shadow'
Font:Arial, Bold, 22, (works best for me), encoding...

Load Subtitle and save it as SubStation Alpha format or use Batch Converting option under Tools/Batch Convert options (Ctrl+M) (if You have more than one subtitle to convert):

-set the source folder for subtitles, output folder, FPS and SubStation Alpha format.



STEP2. Encoding to H.264 format with Imtoo

a.Load your video file
b.Load the profile in general video format/ 'H.264/MPEG4 AVC video'
and set conversion settings to

Video: (Manually enter!) Video Size 800x480,

Note: If You enter for example 576x432 instead 800x480, there will be no sound on your HTC, only video. Don't ask me why, it's the same thing that happens to lots of people with many different encoders and it has something to do with AAC settings detailed, which will also change, when you change video settings....but I am not enough in to hardcore encoding, to understand what is the reason, I only know that this problem appears to be very common when converting for Rhodium with different software....:)


Bitrate 256K, Frame rate 25FPS(should be same as sub file FPS!)
Audio:Mpeg-4 AAC, 44100, 128K

Now You should set/add Subtitles:

Go to: Edit/effect/Subtitles. (Note: only Ultimate version of Imtoo!)
Add Sub if not already there, and set font to Arial, Style to Bold and Size to 22 (or smaller if You prefer)

Convert the movie and transfer it to Your Touch pro2

That's it! :)

Enjoy playing Your file on HTC.

Final Output size of the file is not the same as stated Output Size, nor it is the Bitrate. Imtoo bug I guess...But File plays smoothly enough at least for my taste. :D

Try and let me know how it works for You! :D
 

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the show stopper

Senior Member
Jan 9, 2010
512
40
0
Tampa, FL
What i do is open you tube in chrome and i already have chrome extension installed on chrome.http://www.chromeextensions.org/music-videos-photos/chrome-youtube-downloader/. So when i play video i get options to save video in all the available formats and the Mp4 video i get is usually 20mb or 25 mb (sometimes less than that) in best quality.

Other thing you can do is go to this site http://keep-tube.com/ and downlaod video in MP4 format in great quality.

I think the best option is chrome extension because you get best quality video/audio with less size :D


Give it a try.
 

horizons1

Member
Nov 27, 2007
39
6
0
I use Pocket Divx Encoder to make xvid files of my favorite videos and then play them with CorePlayer using the QTV setting for best quality.