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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Ability to navigate by FOLDER in the Video App. Seems like a no-brainer, yet it has never been included
- Full H264 compatibility. None of that baseline profile only. It should support Main Profile, Simple Profile and Spark versions of H264.
- Stereo Microphone for video recording. This was in N93 and N93i and needs to come back.
- Auto-Focus in video recording. None of that infinite focus (ok, N86 has this but this needs to come to more models)
- WMV at high resolutions (VGA and beyond) and higher bitrates. WMV only plays QVGA and low bitrates
- 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
- 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.
- 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...
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5 comments:
You are the support site Nokia should be when it comes to video, and we all love you for it. But...
Don't you think this is asking a lot? I know this is a wish list, but my wishes for Nokia are to concentrate on improving what they've already implememted, such as the Ovi ecosystem and Maemo/s60/s40. They've been getting dinged in the press already for too many handsets, lack of focus and generally ceding the market to RIM, Apple and Android-based handsets.
Having said that, your main list should be doable for the high-end devices. All I want is HVGA main profile AVC on something I can afford. If the PSP can do it...
Ian
P.S. FWIW Handbrake and RipBot264 both produce excellent results for my 5630 using constant quality. SUPER was a bit too advanced for me. Have you tried/covered constant quality before?
I had issues installing/running handbrake on Windows XP.
About Constant Quality, do you mean Variable Bitrate (same quality as source)?
If this is what you mean, my experience has been that when you use this constant quality sometimes the file gets really big but there's little quality gained.
Mostly I've done testing to see how LOW can you go in bitrate and still get decent quality video.
With H264 main profile (not supported in nokia) you can encode a VGA (640x480) video as low as 350 kbps and still get really good quality.
At high bitrates most codecs yield very similar results, but you end up with very large files that consume many resources when you play them. Better to have an H264 small file than a large MPEG-2 video.
Hi El loco,
I actually managed to enhance the WMV play in 5800XM in streaming mode. Now i can play WMV9 with higher than 352*288 resolution, although the playback is not so smooth, some frames are being dropped, probably due to the hardware and the big screen on the model. It works on N97 and 5530 as well and i am happy to reach more than 20 national TV streams.
In the Z: partition there is a file R1_Mobile_4_0_Platform.cfg, which documents the codecs and postprocessors for every video format, h263, H264, WMV, MP4.
The original states:
MDFCodecRule10={ VC1 Simple 176x144 0x10283346 0x10273417 0x10204C0A
and the mod:
MDFCodecRule10={ VC1 Simple 176x144 0x10283346 0x10273417 0x10283346
which rolls back to 0x10283346 decoder, that is capable of displaying WMV9 with higher res.
The same goes for MDFCodecRule11={ VC1 Main}. This .cfg file can be pasted in c:resource/ and used with a c2z patch, or the firm can be flashed with this mod and it will directly go in z: (like in my case).
The idea i'm telling you all that is because i wanted to ask you if you have any clue how is the MDFpluginarchive.txt in c:data/ generated? It documents decoders and postprocessors settings, but it is not a cfg file so changes there will not have any meaning. In this file the WMV9 decoder 0x10283346 is shown as not accelerated, but the 0x10204C0A is accelerated.
So, do you know i way i can accelerate the decoder 10283346?
Regards
P.S. mail: myhailoff@abv.bg
Hi, is it possible to make the Nokia N86 record in HD like the OMNIA? They both got 8MP!
I don't think it's possible.
El_loco
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