N8 Video prowess, AVI and all rejoice

Hello again,

I got to play for a while with the N8, and it's really impressive if you're looking for a capable video/imaging device.

I really love the USB OTG functions that allows you to hook up the N8 to all sorts of external storage devices like my WesternDigital drives or USB sticks. This way I can quickly transfer files back and forth without having to put a laptop or other device in the middle.

Since it was announced there were some cryptic messages that mentioned that AVI (Divx, xVid) was going to be supported in box. Along with the fact that 720p playback and AC3 (Dolby 5.1) decoding was possible.

I can confirm that it's all TRUE!


Well mostly true at least. 720p playback is possible but not 720p AVI files or WMV files, only 720p MPEG-4 are supported it seems. I haven't tried MKV at HD quality to see if that works but at least MKV does work.
FLV files are also supported, but only half way. FLV files will not be found by the videos app. You need to browse to them using File Manager and launch them from there. They also seem to play on a different player than the normal video player. And have less options to them. But at least now they play much smoother.

Speaking of smooth. WMV support seems to have been expanded quite a bit from the N97 or N96 days. But still I found a lot of files that just will not play or play partially. You don't get the annoying message (unable to play trying to play partially) but the end result is the same :(

The screen is good, though a bit dark for my taste. You need to have a dark room in order to really appreciate it. Also because you smudge the screen all the time it's a fingerprint magnet and is not so easy to clean or keep clean (at least in my short experience with it).

There's the video editor thing in there. I played around with it. It's not super respnsive or maybe my fingers are too fat. I had a lot of problems trying to enter transitions and animations. I just did a simple 6 picture slideshow with transitions and it was fairly easy to do. I need to play more with that to see if this would be a viable option to create movies. At least it didn't crash like Muvee used to do all the time.

HDMI out is a nice touch but unless your TV can output the decoded AC3 audio or your home theater or audio equipment is at hand to decode and reproduce 5.1 sound, I found this feature to be a bit of a head scratcher. To be able to enjoy the benefits of 5.1 surround 720p video you will need all of the following:

- A video that's 720p and includes AC3 sound
- Your N8
- The HDMI adapter cable
- An HDMI cable
- An AC3 decoder (like a home theater or similar)
- A 5.1 sound system and speakers
- An HD TV
- Cables to hook up the TV to the home theater or similar. Most TVs don't output the AC3 audio out of the HDMI.


So, unless you have all those things handy, and it's not a chore to connect (your home theater has HDMI ports in the front) it seems very difficult to enjoy this feature. An optical or coax audio jack may have helped. I wonder if it's there somewhere and I just haven't figured it out.

DivX Mobile Player 1.0 for N97, 5800, Symbian now available

DivX Mobile Player 1.0 for Symbian now available

Divx has just release a version that should finally work out of the box for the N97 and other Symbian 5 products.

Review of iMovie for iPhone4

Hello fellow video enthusiasts,

A few years ago Nokia introduced very quietly an application called Muvee. This very nice application allowed the users of an N93 or N95 to create movies wholly within their phones.

The application allowed to put Music, transitions, texts, captions, credits, pictures, etc. It was really great except for two small problems:

1. It was really slow due mostly to slow CPUs. A movie of more than 15 minutes long will bring the phone literally to its knees.
2. It was very easy to crash the application, which really annoyed me because you would lose all the work you've done :(

Still, for very short clips (less than say 5 minutes) it was "doable" specially if the source videos were all shot at low resolution QVGA or less. And it showed that a full blown Video Editor was possible in a mobile computer (er, phone).

Nokia decided to drop the Video Editing functions even from the N95 as newer versions of Firmware did away with the Muvee application. So now most users don't even know that this marvel was possible in Nokia.

The N8 is rumored to include the Video Editing function. Until I can get my hands on one I'll hold judgement.

For now if you want to try Video Editing your best option seem to be to get an iPhone 4 and purchase (yes purchase as it's not included) the iMovie from the App Store.

Our friends from The Register have reviewed this little app. So head over there and read up.

Minor changes and polls re-opened

I've been thinking what could be the next big thing to do with this blog, but still not so sure.

I want to get some ideas from the readers. I know most people go tot he DIVX N97 post and then bail out but hopefully some will see this post and comment.

I also re-opened some of the previous polls so feel free to cast your vote. It's always interesting to see how people from all over the world think.


Cheerio!

N8, iPhone 4 and 720p

Hello all,

Time does fly!, it's been quite a while since I've posted anything to the blog.

Still there are quite a few visitors so it's all good!. Really, it's nice to see that a lot of people have found something useful in my posts. Cheers!

Today I want to write about something that has been on my mind since TV-out became a feature in the N95. Can/will a phone replace some of the video equipment at home?

With the N92 this became even more of a question as the N92 has DBV-h and TV-out. Once I was in Finland using the N92 and watching TV on an N92 connected to a TV monitor. The experience wasn't "great", but it showed the potential (the images were QVGA at 15 fps). 

When the N96 came out, I re-did the N92 experiment, using a TV an N96 and watching DVB-h at 25 fps. On a  26" screen this wasn't bad at all. When using VGA videos at 29.97 fps with the TV out it started to get really close to watching a DVD*

I also tried several ways of using uPNP with the Playstation 3 or a PC and the N96. It worked Ok for pictures and music but was really poor for  videos.  At the end what I settled in doing is using the USB cable and hooking up the N96 (now N97) to the PS3 and then use the PS3 to playback the videos/music/pictures stored in my phone.


All other Nokia products haven't improved on this since the N96. And there aren't any newer DVB-h products that I've tested.


But now the new jump in video features is at hand.
Enter the N8 and the iPhone 4.

Why do I say there's a big jump?, well because both of these phones will allow you to both take and reproduce 720p video. The N8 will even allow you to hook up using HDMI so that you can enjoy the 720p videos on your tv, AND most crucially, supports AC3 (dolby 5.1 for you).


Now either of these phones could, in theory, start replacing some of my video gear without having to give up on video quality! YEAH!

PVR (or TiVO if you live on the other side of the pond)
SLINGBOX
DVD player (for sure)
Bluray (ok, maybe not yet but it's close enough quality)


The N8 is also rumored (or is it fact already) to support 801 /N speed for WiFi which would enable it to stream at least 480p video with little buffering.


The iPhone may get some TV out or HDMI out using the iPod port.


So what do you think?, will the phone start replacing your other video sources?, has it replaced then already?, or am I really not getting it?
 


* Using Composite video and not upscaling the DVD

N900 does DIVX and XVID (AVI)

Hi,

It's been a while since I got down to write something.

I've taken a break from doing video since now most of the stuff I watch can be viewed using a web browser. No need to down.load, transcode, upload, etc. I just need a hotspot and my laptop or device and I can watch movies, tv shows, you name it. Also the quality of some of the videos posted has increased greatly. I was watching an old TV series, I have all 170 (or so) episodes in a hard drive but I found a place where I can watch them all streaming, so now I don't copy them or carry them, I just connect and watch.

Now if only the battery life would be 10-15 hours of video streaming or something like that, I would be really happy indeed.

Anyways, I got a chance to play around with an N900, many good things about the device, but after using S60 and the iPhone, the N900 was a bit weird to use, specially the phone. But there are some good news.

The N900 comes with very good AVI support right out of the box!

AVI streaming (like from Megavideo) doesn't work well with the N900 (it's painfully slow), but local playback is superb. I managed to play very good quality (over VGA) videos with no apparent slowdown.

The video controls are extremely limited and touchy, and the screen aspect ratio is not the best to watch video but overall a step in the right direction.

I didn't get to play enough with the N900 to really put it through it's paces regarding video, I did find some problems playing H264 videos converted for the N96 format, and I didn't check if it supported Main Profile, if I have another go I'll try to verify this.

One good thing is that people are developing new stuff for the N900 all the time so you don't have to rely on official releases to fix or expand functionality, just keep checking the Maemo repository or other Maemo sources.

The Ovi Store gets 'tabs'...

The Ovi Store gets 'tabs'...

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Request to Nokia for next video device, AVI and DIVX

Hello all.

It's been a while since I posted anything. I can tell you what's been happening.

First of all, new Nokia devices provide better support for Flash videos, which in turn has meant that you can watch videos from a variety of sources in the internet. This means for me that I spend less time converting and uploading, as all I have to do is point to the Flash video site that I want and watch the videos. There are some downsides of course. I need a good WLAN connection. I need to have access to charging (as WLAN streaming of Flash videos eats out your power in a very short time), and I need to be willing to put up with low quality videos.

So here's what I would like to request that we get in the next Nokia video powerhouse (i.e. N96 replacement for this).

1.  Built-in support for AVI and DIVX containers and DIVX and XVID codecs. This is already built into the N900 so getting it to a phone shouldn't be an issue. This is LONG DUE. The baseline should be to support 720x576 (DVD quality) resolution and 3 Mbps, at least.
   
2. Smart support for non standard resolutions. Many videos you find are not in "standard" resolutions like qcif or qvga or nHD. The device should be smart and play the file anyways and scale or crop as necessary.
   
3. Capability to do Video Playlists. Again this is long overdue as this has been requested for a long time. And third party apps like CorePlayer have been able to do this for years
4. Ability to navigate by FOLDER in the Video App. Seems like a no-brainer, yet it has never been included
   
5. Full H264 compatibility. None of that baseline profile only. It should support Main Profile, Simple Profile and Spark versions of H264. 
6. Stereo Microphone for video recording. This was in N93 and N93i and needs to come back. 
   
7.  Auto-Focus in video recording. None of that infinite focus (ok, N86 has this but this needs to come to more models)
   
8. WMV at high resolutions (VGA and beyond) and higher bitrates. WMV only plays QVGA and low bitrates
9. YouTube HD support. Only regular version YouTube are currently supported and the YouTube application available only converts video to QVGA resolution even though I have the N97 or N900
10. Improved audio support. AC3, simulated 5.1 through headphones, SPDIF audio out, this could be done in the 3.5mm connector. A good tie-in accessory like a BOSE or Logitech 5.1 small speaker system would be nice.

 Other things that I would like to see but that are not so critical IMHO are:
-  Get ROXIO or NERO or FFMPEG to do the conversion software, AND include a DVD ripper tool (blueray recommeded). At least get the portable video version to work with these devices. I have many gripes with the Nokia conversion tools, maybe I'll do a post about the new OVI suite conversion.

- HDMI out. The VGA TV-out cable is showing its age already and is bad that it has lower resolution than the screen of the N900.

- Better/return uPNP support. It was very annoying that the N97 and N900 doesn't include uPNP. At least I can connect the USB cable to my PS3 and watch the videos that way...

- Video Store. Why doesn't Nokia sell/rent videos?, seems like a no-brainer. Videos in the OVI store are really underwhelming

- Better picture and video controls (contrast, hue, brightness, sharpness, zoom, frame by frame)

- Better integration with video podcasts and videos taken by the camera. Right now they get all mixed up and they're difficult to navigate.

What do you guys think?, do you agree?, disagree?, did I miss something?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Until next time, see you out there...