HD mkv playback - With Sample Links

[wickwire]

* Update *

Youtube Video Samples below for comparison - some compression artifacts showing there, not from the sony tablet playback (it was flawless on either mode), most likely youtube recompression tools



Hi,

I bought one of these tablets just yesterday - 16GB version - and so far I'm extremely pleased with it! Typing is a breeze, image quality is superb, gaming is pretty decent even for 3D, I bought Riptide GP after upgrading Honeycomb to 3.2, but I'm having issues with HD mkv playback.

Basically, watching 720p or 480p even (anime mkv files) I get jerky video playback when the movie player is set to HW mode. The jerks are subtle and steady, but mostly noticeable especially on panning scenes. If I change the player settings to SW or Fast SW, playback is smooth but slightly less quality there (but totally fine though). I've tried several players other than the built-in video player and results are the same.

HD flash plays OK, so I don't think this is a hardware performance issue, probably some HW / codec compatibility issue....

Can anyone else confirm this? Horriblesubs releases (Naruto Shippuuden / Fairy Tail).

SD xvid releases play just fine, both HW and SW settings on the player.

Better .h264 codec support perhaps?
(apparently, not .h264!)

Oh, and quite pleased with the fact that video files can in fact be played directly from the SD card, without having to copy them to the internal memory storage!

I tried posting from the XDA free app in the Market, but somehow, it crashes everytime I try to post from it, so I'm using the android browser - already submitted a report.


Video Info:

Codec 4CC: AVC1
Image Size: 1280x720
Frame Rate: 23.976 fps

Global Motion Compensation: No
packet Bitstream: No
Quarter Pixel: No

Audio:

Codec: AAC
Channels: Stereo
Bitrate: 16000 Bps / 128 Kbps
Variable Bitrate: No
Frequency: 44100 Hz


SW Mode (Fast): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiAj80cC0s8
HW Mode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AXWH3RE-R4

 

[drdarknyc]

Hi,

I bought one of these tablets just yesterday - 16GB version - and so far I'm extremely pleased with it! Typing is a breeze, image quality is superb, gaming is pretty decent even for 3D, I bought Riptide GP after upgrading Honeycomb to 3.2, but I'm having issues with HD mkv playback.

Basically, watching 720p or 480p even (anime mkv files) I get jerky video playback when the movie player is set to HW mode. The jerks are subtle and steady, but mostly noticeable especially on panning scenes. If I change the player settings to SW or Fast SW, playback is smooth but slightly less quality there (but totally fine though). I've tried several players other than the built-in video player and results are the same.

HD flash plays OK, so I don't think this is a hardware performance issue, probably some HW / codec compatibility issue....

Can anyone else confirm this? Horriblesubs releases (Naruto Shippuuden / Fairy Tail).

SD xvid releases play just fine, both HW and SW settings on the player.

Better .h264 codec support perhaps?

Oh, and quite pleased with the fact that video files can in fact be played directly from the SD card, without having to copy them to the internal memory storage!

I tried posting from the XDA free app in the Market, but somehow, it crashes everytime I try to post from it, so I'm using the android browser - already submitted a report.

I am having the same problem you described? Is this typical on all android tablets?

Looks like i'll need to convert unfortunately... I wonder if there is an app for that.

Unless it is a codec issue and there is an alternative codec or fix..

 

[wickwire]

I'm curious, do you feel the quality between HW mode and either SW mode available to be that worse? I'm using SW for now on these particular files, I was thinking about converting the files original formats but SW still seems pretty good I think! I will try to snapshot the differences and post them here!

 

[wickwire]

Hadn't noticed before, the tablet comes with 3 HD sample videos inside all play just fine, no jerks - seems more and more like a specific codec compatibility issue with tegra possibly, to me...

 

[Maedhros]

A software issue. I can play videos fine on my Jetstream and Ipad2 which play badly on the tablet S.

So it isn't an android issue.

 

[yhzhrm]

For MKV playback try DicePlayer and install the Diceplayer plugin for tegra.

Try the trial version to see it meets your requirements (before buying).

----- snip -----
Diceplayer uses HW video decoder.

It use HW video decoder at various containers and audio codecs combination. ( H.264/AC-3/MKV, H.264/DTS/MKV , H.264/AAC/MOV )
-------------------

 

[wickwire]

For MKV playback try DicePlayer and install the Diceplayer plugin for tegra.

Try the trail version to see it meets your requirements (before buying).

----- snip -----
Diceplayer uses HW video decoder.

It use HW video decoder at various containers and audio codecs combination. ( H.264/AC-3/MKV, H.264/DTS/MKV , H.264/AAC/MOV )
-------------------

Tried it, perfect playback with the plugin - bought it already, many thanks!

 

[exkaizen]

yeah DicePlayer indeed the best HW accelerated player in the market... support MKV, AC3 audio codec, subs... wooot

 

[MrZippo]

yeah DicePlayer indeed the best HW accelerated player in the market... support MKV, AC3 audio codec, subs... wooot

+1 I tried out MX player too but found that DicePlayer had smoother playback.

 

[PullMeUnder]

Working container / video / audio combo and easy conversion

I've tested several combinations of container / video / audio formats with several players. First of all, I didn't notice any significant differences in playback quality between the players I tried, but I might not have tried Dice player for all of the combos.

I did try MX Video Player, mVideoPlayer, MoboPlayer and BS Player Lite, with a 720p h264 encoded video track at about 3000 kbps. For all players, I found the SW decoding modes to insufferably slow and jerky - I assume a lower bitrate in the video track might fix that. Per hardware acceleration, the video always played fine (when it played at all, see format details below).

These combos did NOT work:

• mkv/mp4 container, h264 encoded video, mp3 audio
• mkv container, h264 encoded video, ac3 audio (plays the video hw accelerated, but doesn't play the sound at all)
• mkv container, h264 encoded video, aac audio

The only combo that did work flawlessly was this:

• mp4 container, h264 encoded video, aac audio

I now had the problem that my standard video encoding tool, handbrake, cannot transcode files without also recoding the video file - and why would I want to recode the video when usually it's a h264 encoded video that will play with the right container & audio? The easiest way to transcode such a file is to use ffmpeg - I did this under linux, but it should work the same for Windows:

ffmpeg -i INPUTFILE.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec libfaac -ab 160k -ar 48000 -async 48000 OUTPUTFILE.mp4

I couldn't figure out a way to easily transcode mkv files where the video track has a variable bitrate (VFR) - I had to recode those with handbrake. If anyone has a simpler method that doesn't involve avisynth / is available for linux, I'd be happy to hear it.

 

[zenithz]

DicePlayer rocks. I tried various apps but only did DicePlayer works. Tested with a 1080 h.264 movie and the quality was STUNNING! Definitely worth the money

By the way, Honey does not support H.264 natively so most of the players out there won't work

 

[unclespoon]

DicePlayer rocks. I tried various apps but only did DicePlayer works. Tested with a 1080 h.264 movie and the quality was STUNNING! Definitely worth the money

By the way, Honey does not support H.264 natively so most of the players out there won't work

Thanks for the heads up and for the good news! Downloading now!