Kinoma 3EX: is it just me?

[olo]

Am I wrong or am I wrong???

I was reading the long thread
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75095 but I did not come to a conclusion: using a Clie NZ90 I tried all kinds of unconverted movies and they all did either NOT appear in the playlist and if so Kinoma3EX was not capable of playing them (error code: the code used is not longer supported by Kinoma). Even the QT trailers at the apple site could not be played...

Is it just me, or what is the rave all about, or is it the NZ, or what???

Why is it not possible to create a movieplayer software capable of playing all mov/avi/mpeg files natively? I see no use (besides reducing the size and ripping DVDs) in converting movie files...
I would love to watch movieclips while surfing with WIFI! I did read the manual for Kinoma 3EX but non of the promissed moviefiles could be played... :(

Please enlighten me!

cheers Nicolas

[olo]

this is what Kinoma replied:

Kinoma Player 3 EX can play QuickTime files with AAC audio and MPEG-4 video. The QuickTime files on Apple's site most likely have the Sorenson video format, which is not directly supported by Kinoma Player 3 EX. You can run those QuickTime files through Kinoma Producer 3 to create files that are compatible with Kinoma Player 3 EX. For a list of file types supported by Kinoma Player 3 EX, see the chart on page 4 of the Kinoma Player 3 EX User Guide
(http://downloads.kinoma.com/3.0/docs/KinomaPlayer3.pdf).

...well in that case it is not fully usable as a "native" player!
I wish there was one :(

cheers Nicolas

[Zork]

Olo, there is no all format player and there never will be any (simply cause of economical reasons (means ever cost of licensing or exclusion of competition)). The advantage of the Kinoma Player is that you dont need any custom tool anymore to play files just on one platform. You could use any Quicktime compatible application, which supports Quicktimes MPEG 4 codec (means the only MPEG 4 codec out there)). The second advantage of using industry standard codecs is, that you could encode it on one and play it (almost) anywhere (that fact cant be mentioned too often). Means your file could be played on your Palm, on your Mac or Windows PC, on your Sony PSP and even on your Nintendo GBA or Nintendo DS. There is no other non industry standard codec which offers you that variety of supported platforms, simply cause only industry standards get such a widespread support.

And BTW : You have to reencode your movie for your Palm or PPC anyway, cause beside the MPEG 1 movies, there arent any movies out there anymore which uses only 320 * 240 as standard resolution. Means you have to reencode them anyway, and be it only for the reason that it fits your PDAs screen resolution (you could indeed decrease the movie size with professional tools like the Kinoma Player in realtime, but why wasting SD card space for movies which are way larger then useful ?). And Kinoma Producer or HandBrake (BTW HandBrake is as a limited version not only available for the MacOS, but also for Windows) is the most easy and powerful way out there to reencode movies for PDAs.

[Gromit37]

Zork:

'Industry Standard' is something of a misnomer, especially when it comes to computing. It's an overused and over-rated term. If you actually look at how organisations like the ISO come up with these 'standards', you'll find that they are usually a consolidation of existing third party technologies. Somebody develops a compression format, they 'standardise' it, and then somebody else comes along with a better version, and this becomes the *NEW* standard. They simply define a minimum set of requirements, and these change on a regular basis. The MP4 standard you see today, will not be the smae MP4 standard you see in a years time. But 'Industry Standard' doesn't actually mean that it is used by everybody in the industry (whatever that may mean), and in fact, as the above post proves, your (and Kinoma's) MP4 'standard' is not used as used as much as you think. Apple don't seem to use it, Microsoft don't use it, neither do a lot of other companies/individuals. Bearing in mind Microsoft and Apple are big names in the 'Industry', does that tell you something? There are lots of '.MOV' files on the internet, lots of Mpeg1, lots of '.AVI' files, and Kinoma won't play many of them. I'm willing to bet that DivX and Xvid are used more, and they will no doubt be incorportated in to some standard or other before long.

Take a look at technology such as TCP/IP, HTML and notice the way they change over time, and watch how third party extras get absorbed. But by the time they are... it's already out of date.

[jjesusfreak01]

Gromit, for your protection, its better to not get into any verbal fights with Zork over Kinoma or encoding issues. Look at the other threads, very dangerous.

[Gromit37]

Thanks jjesusfreak... he does seem a bit overzealous on the subject :-) I'll start wearing a flak jacket just in case! :-)

[olo]

I do understand that there is no application out there which can replay all formats...
But like Apples Quicktime player which plays most mpegs, mov and avi files and maybe a player which plays wmv files (isn't there one for PPC?) it would be nice to have two players on my PalmOS device which could replay 99% of all unconverted files from the internet...
What makes it so complicated to write such a piece of software?
Is it only the resizing factor?

Please enlighten me! :confused:

cheers Nicolas

[Zork]

Gromit, industry standard means that it wont (!!!) change anymore. So when you get a MPEG 1 movie from the 80s you still could play them on any MPEG 1 complaint player out there. Same is true for MPEG 2 and indeed for MPEG 4. Thats one of the many advantages of industry standards. Try the same with one of the many third party codecs or containers out there. Simply impossible.

And MPEG is supported anywhere. You got a DVD player at home. Welcome to MPEG 2. You got a a Quicktime Player on your PC ? Welcome to MPEG 1, 2 and 4. And Apple indeed supports MPEG 4, cause Apple offers the MPEG 4 decoder with every Quicktime package for free. And with Quicktime Pro you could even encode MPEG 4 movies (thats what Kinoma Producer is based on).

And finally industry standards means widespread support : You play your MPEG 4 movies on every PC (be it a Mac or Windows PC), on every Palm (PPCs still left out) and on every handheld console out there. So think again bout widespread support ;) .

Its strange that there is even a thread bout this. MPEG 4 already got support anywhere. Not even the now everywhere supported MPEG 2 got such a widespread support that fast. So MPEG 4 is already here, its already supported everywhere (only Microsofts doesnt support it. But Microsoft never ever supported industry standards when it comes to multimedia, cause they want to control it. Microsoft not even supports MPEG 2 out of the box (beside that there is a MPEG 2 compalint DVD player in every home now)) and there is no solution which could compare to industry standards (or do you know any MPEG 2 DVD alternative anyone uses ?).

So DivX, XviD, etc. is some great thing (as DAT and MiniDisc was) and will surely improve, but it isnt the solution everyone uses or will use.

[Zork]

olo, all this products are competing. So even on Windows or Mac PCs you cant play all files with 2 players. You need to get Windows Media Player for all the WMV and WMA files out there (and the Windows Media Player 9 for Mac wont even support the DRM wmv and wma !), you need the Quicktime Player to play all the .mov files, you need Real Player to play all the .rm files out there. And then you need to install MPEG 2 codecs for Quicktime to play at least your DVD Video (or install WinDVD for example), So there is no single player. And lets hope that this wont change
cause this would mean a monopoly for multimedia content, which means the end of our consumer rights (just think for a second that MSs idea of music DRM will become widespread !!! The company which destroyed the PC industry in control of your music. And you will have to give them your money every month for your whole lifetime or you wont hear your songs never ever again.)

[Fishie_Flop]

olo, all this products are competing. So even on Windows or Mac PCs you cant play all files with 2 players. You need to get Windows Media Player for all the WMV and WMA files out there (and the Windows Media Player 9 for Mac wont even support the DRM wmv and wma !), you need the Quicktime Player to play all the .mov files, you need Real Player to play all the .rm files out there. And then you need to install MPEG 2 codecs for Quicktime to play at least your DVD Video (or install WinDVD for example), So there is no single player. And lets hope that this wont change
cause this would mean a monopoly for multimedia content, which means the end of our consumer rights (just think for a second that MSs idea of music DRM will become widespread !!! The company which destroyed the PC industry in control of your music. And you will have to give them your money every month for your whole lifetime or you wont hear your songs never ever again.)

And Apple isnt doing exactly the same with the IPod and ITunes?

[junglemike]

In fact - there IS such universal cross-platform player that plays *almost* any video/audio formats/coneiners on mac/pc/linux/unix/arm. This player is free and it's called MPLAYER, here is full list of formats supported by it:
Supported Input Formats

* (S)VCD (Super Video CD)
* CDRwin's .bin image file
* DVD, including encrypted DVD
* MPEG-1/2 (ES/PS/PES/VOB)
* RIFF AVI file format
* ASF/WMV/WMA format
* QT/MOV/MP4 format
* RealAudio/RealVideo format
* Ogg/OGM files
* VIVO format
* FLI format
* NuppelVideo format
* yuv4mpeg format
* FILM (.cpk) format
* RoQ format
* PVA format
* Matroska
* NSV - Nullsoft Streaming Video
* streaming via http, RTP, RTSP, mms, mmst, mpst, sdp
* TV

Supported Video and Audio Codecs
most important video codecs:

* MPEG-1 (VCD) and MPEG-2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video
* MPEG-4 in all variants including DivX ;-), OpenDivX (DivX4), DivX 5 (Pro), XviD
* Windows Media Video 7/8 (WMV1/2)
* Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3) (using x86 DLL)
* RealVideo 1.0, 2.0 (G2)
* RealVideo 3.0 (RP8), 4.0 (RP9) (using Real libraries)
* Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3), Cinepak, RPZA and other QuickTime codecs
* DV video
* 3ivx
* Intel Indeo3 (3.1, 3.2)
* Intel Indeo 4.1 and 5.0 (using x86 DLL or XAnim codecs)
* VIVO 1.0, 2.0, I263 and other H.263(+) variants (using x86 DLL)
* MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2 and other hardware formats
* FLI/FLC
* HuffYUV
* various old simple RLE-like formats

most important audio codecs:

* MPEG layer 1, 2, and 3 (MP3) audio
* AC3/A52 (Dolby Digital) audio (software or SP/DIF)
* AAC (MPEG-4 audio)
* WMA (DivX Audio) v1, v2
* WMA 9 (WMAv3), Voxware audio, ACELP.net etc (using x86 DLLs)
* RealAudio: COOK, SIPRO, ATRAC3 (using Real libraries)
* RealAudio: DNET and older codecs
* QuickTime: Qclp, Q-Design QDMC/QDM2, MACE 3/6 (using QT libraries)
* Ogg Vorbis audio
* VIVO audio (g723, Vivo Siren) (using x86 DLL)
* alaw/ulaw, (ms)gsm, pcm, *adpcm and other simple old audio formats

This is only most popular formats, here is the full list:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/codecs-status.htmlMPLAYER

[olo]

that MPlayer sounds exciting but again it is not for PalmOS :(

I guess I must be patient and wait...


cheers Nicolas

[junglemike]

That's right. But the main problem of watching video on palm computer is not lack of universal player, the main problem is that palms, at current state simply are not fast enough to be able to play most regular video. If we are talking about a full movies which are stored on 1-2 cd's - unfortunately the only pda's that really can play such video as is, w/o conversions - are Latest pocket Pc's, for example Ipaq4700. In fact, there is pretty good players for palm that supports 2 most popular formats, it's MMplayer and SmartMovie, they both support .Avi (divx/xvid) and .mpeg formats. But you will not be able to play your video "as is" in most cases, unless it is already made with small resolution (and smaller bitrate/framerate) The best movie quality that i can play on my Tunsten T3 is 480x272@24fps@400kbit video @48kbit audio.
By the way, there is a first FREE video player is being developed right now. I'm participating in it. This player will support large variety of codecs/containers (.avi/.ogm/.mpg). Player is called "TheMagicLantern".