What's next?

N96 video specs seem to continue to come out.

This is great news, as I expect the Video Optimized N96 to be a powerhouse for video playback.

So far what has been released is that it will support everything the N95 8GB supports (including FLV flash videos), but then it will also add:

• WMV 9 Windows Media Video 9
• H264 @ VGA resolution and 30 fps
• MPEG-4 VGA at 30 fps

No word yet if it will also support DIVX or what are the specs for WMV format.

Hopefully more information will become available in the near future.

Leave a comment if there's a topic you would like me to cover in more detail.

Until next time:

Keep on watching...

PS: Recently I started watching Heroes tv series and I'm totally hooked, if you like mutants and comic books, check it out!

Easter Eggs

Just in time, have a good Easter (if you celebrate it).

Also, I would like to talk about a topic that matches this time of year very good.
Easter Eggs in DVDs.

Easter Eggs are some "hidden" things in the DVD discs. Some funny outtakes, additional scenes, interviews, or other things.

In cases where these features are video you can also encode them for use in your Nseries.

Some things you may need:

• Have a DVD that has these hidden contents (there are some websites that keep track of these easter eggs or hidden features)
  
• Identify the Track number and Chapter number where these video clips are hidden
• Have a DVD software that allows you to read the Track and Chapter numbers like Imtoo DVD to 3GP.
• Encode using working settings

Using this method I extracted the clips from the Extended editions of the LOTR trilogy, Outtakes from the Star Wars DVDs, etc.

If this information is not enough to allow you to do this. Leave a comment and I'll update the post with more details.

Until next time,

May the force be with you!

How to check your video properties?

Many of us have problems converting videos. It's not straightforward. And when you ask for my help I always ask about your video. You should always be able to read what type of video you are dealing with before you start questioning why it doesn't work.

In many cases once you read your video properties it will become quite obvious why it doesn't play. As long as you know that compatible resolutions are:

sub-QCIF
QCIF
CIF
QVGA
VGA

So take these tips as an important step into figuring out what you need to convert in order to be able to use the video in your phone.

These are some useful ways to see the video file information in different players or applications.

Quicktime

RealPlayer


ImToo 3GP encoder


SUPER

DIVX player


Windows Media Player 11



Let me know if this post was useful. Since I use these tools all the time...

Until next time. Keep on watching...

Widescreen or Fullscreen and why?

Hello again.

This time I want to touch on the question of the aspect ratio of your videos and put forth some pros and cons.

These comments, as many others I've made and will continue to make here, are my opinion. And opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has one! (ok someone may not have either).

So why do we have this widescreen and why is it so difficult to make a screen fit another screen.

Well let's start from the beginning...

Umm, where to start. Ok let's start with the good old television. Television systems (since the B&W) days have been an aspect ratio of 4:3. Then we had 3 different color systems, PAL, SECAM and NTSC. Each system with a different number of lines (resolution) and frame rate. In particular there's the difference between PAL and NTSC where one is interlaced and the other has full frames.

Anyways, I don't want to get into more details than what we need. Suffice to say that the programming created for each system (tv. shows, made for tv movies, etc.) can be of different resolutions, framerates, and be interlaced or not depending on what they were shown originally.

Then we had the tape era, and again the basic differences were following the TV standards. In the DVD era things started changing. As the underlying video source could be shown in multiple tv standards by Software manipulation. This is both good and bad.

Some years ago HDTV started gaining some traction. And then we started getting some TV content made in "widescreen" format to fit these new TV sets. For the most part these new programs are displayed in a 16:9 aspect ratio but the resolution and framerate depends on the HDTV standard used. Then we also have progressive and interlaced but this is mostly handled by the TV decoder.

But let's leave the TV originated content and switch to the movies. Movies in the really old days were shot in a square aspect ratio. Then they started moving to some other aspect ratios until the cinemascope aspect ratio came about. As things progessed we started having some other aspect ratios for Panavision and also for IMAX theaters. Along with the aspect ratios different technologies in the film have changed, including how many frames are shown, the size of the film frame and recently the digital projection method that does away with film altogether.

What this means for the Widescreen discussion is that there are different sources of Aspect Ratios depending on when the movie was shot, and what type of projection method it uses.

Now I'm going to ignore all the different things you can find on the internet, since these aspect ratios you find have nothing to do with the original content from the TV, DVD, VHS, Laserdisc, UMD, DAT, BRD, HD-DVD, etc.

If you are a film buff, then you may agree that the widescreen original format is the way to go. But what about the aspect ratio?, well even if you use all the pixels the aspect ratio may be wrong due to non-square pixel usage.

So what can you do?, I don't have a good answer.

If you don't want to see the full picture and want to see a cropped version of the original content then this is what you can do.

I'll use the NTSC DVD from a recent movie as example. PAL DVDs are usually 720x576 5:4.
See more here

If you open a DVD stream it's size is usually 720x480 (720x576 PAL) which is an aspect ratio of 1.5 (1.25 PAL) but the actual video is aspect ratio of 2.35 so what they do is they put the black bars already in the DVD video to fill the extra pixels to make 480.

So when you try to convert it using some Pan&Scan or Zoom it calculates these black bars as being part of the picture frame, so it converts from 1.5 (1.25 PAL) to 1.3333 aspect ratio (320x240), but in reality it should convert from 2.35 to 1.3333. That is to say the converter thinks the movie is 720x480 and converts it to 320x240 but the actual video part is only 720x306, but since 306 is not divisible by 16 then they pad the video with black pixels.

This is further complicated because some movies use also other aspect ratios like 1.778 (16x9) or 1.85 (cinemascope) but then they put those also into 720x480 NTSC DVD (720x576 PAL).

So what can you do. First is figure out what the actual video screen aspect is. Most DVDs will have this information in the back of the box.

Then get a calculator and figure out how many pixels are there in the vertical and how many pixels are there in the video feed. So if its a 2.35 anamorphic movie and the video size is 720x480 the actual video size is only 720x306 so there are 87 extra black pixels in the top and bottom. (There's more in the PAL DVD)

So in order to get full screen you would have to first copy the movie into WMV or AVI (but you must have DIVX codec installed in your machine to use AVI or FFMPEG). And don't change the resolution leave it in auto.

Now you will have a DIRECTSHOW file that has the black bars. Now you will use SUPER encoder (www.erightsoft.com) to re-encode this video. Encode into WMV or AVI if you want to further encode it or directly into MPEG-4 if you want. Use the DIRECT SHOW BUTTON and then you will have to use the CROP/PAD and you will crop the picture.

156 pixels on each side and 86 on the top and 88 on the bottom. This will create a video that's 408x306 (or 1.333333). Now use Super again and encode into the right size. (320x240).

Complicated, no?

Well in the end I think this is a waste of time. I just use the medium zoom option in ImToo DVD to 3GP Converter and this is a good compromise. I don't loose a big part of the frame and I can see it better in the small screen.

Will this video play on my Nxx?

Sometimes the question is: why doesn't this video play?

Well to learn more see my old post HERE

_________________

I know some of you will not so here are some more generic tips.

These are the generic baselines for most Nseries devices. Some models support more, but as a general guide.
Basic compatibility

• RealVideo 8,9 and 10 (note that there is no support for Realvideo 7! or 11). Video size of QCIF, QVGA , CIF. Bitrate of 128 Kbps.
• h263 video in 3GP or 3G2 or MP4 container at 128 kbps (narrow band audio AMR or AAC)
• MPEG-4 in a 3GP, 3G2, MP4 or M4V container at 256 kbps (aac audio mono or stereo)

And that's it!. Then you start getting into the category that some will play and some will not.
Newer Nseries:

• Support VGA MPEG-4
  
• (N95, N81, N82, etc) support H264 in an MP4 or M4V container. BUT, and this is key, only the Baseline profile of H264 is supported.

iPod, iPhone and PSP also support H264 but they support different versions of the codec. Including Main Profile, Sorenson H264, Spark or other levels of the BaseLine profile not supported by Nseries phones.

This is why many of the H264 videos don't play on Nseries devices even if they are in a supported resolution and bitrate.

As of today N95, N95 8GB, N93 and others support H264 at QVGA resolution. At VGA it will stutter or not play regardless of the bitrate or frame rate.

A note on quality, different codecs and framerate.

In general, the quality of a video is dictated by the resolution, bitrate and the frame rate. But these parameters also control the size of the video.

Plus if you use MPEG-4 and AVC (H264) the resolution has to be divisible by 16, otherwise you waste a lot of space (resulting file is needlessly large). So if you use a resolution of 640x480 this is better than 640x396 since 396 is not a factor of 16. 320x160 is better than say 320x150. 320x144 is OK though.

OK, this is basic good information but I want better quality than the general compatible quality!

In this case it starts to get more complicated as videos you encode may ONLY work on your device and may not work on other devices. For the best settings IMHO see my post about using SUPER.

What if I want to play AVI files or XVID?

This is also a common question. First thing is you need to get a player for your device that can play this codec.
I recommend you get DIVX mobile Player (see links at the bottom of my blog)

If you want a better experience and don't mind spending some money get CorePlayer or Smartmovie.

Anyway. What ever the player you get there will be some limitations due to the smaller CPU in the phone than your PC. So as a rule of thumb in my experience videos that are smaller than VGA tend to play almost correctly. Videos that are VGA or greater will drop many frames. Again QVGA, CIF videos play correctly almost 100% of the time. Also VCD resolution plays ok (480x480) for the most part. But once you get higher than this you start running into problems.

TIP: Using TV out is great because TV-out resolution is VGA instead of the internal display 's QVGA. So you see more pixels with TV-out.

TIP: When you use TV-out the CPU has more to do, so a video that plays marginally good in the phone may not play or play worse when using TV-out.

I welcome your comments. Tell your buddies about the blog, email the posts. Let's get more people into enjoying Video in their Nseries devices!