for the love of god will someone please post an in-depth look at movie playback??

[Mojo_LA]

So much talk, so many reviews, so many tests, yet I am still foaming at the mouth for someone to take a close look at the LD's movie playback!

What formats can you get it to play?

What framerates do you get in different formats?

Do fast motion scenes blur/pixelate? In all formats?

Can you playback the MPEG 4 files that are popular with PSP users?

True battery life with constant movie playback?

SOMEONE PLEASE TELL US!!!

[Lance]

I am not sure what the formats the default player can handle, but I do know that the latest version of TCPMP does not work on the LifeDrive. I am hoping they have an update soon, though. Overall, I have not been very impressed with the LifeDrive.

Take care,
Lance

[timepilot84]

Using Kinoma 2, the sound was out of sync after about 5 minutes at 30 fps. At the standard 15fps (with Kinoma 2 producer), there were no problems. About the same results as with my T5. More to come.

[ucfgrad93]

for the love of god will someone please post an in-depth look at movie playback??

SOMEONE PLEASE TELL US!!!

Jeez, might I suggest switching to decafe? :rolleyes:

[bulls96]

I'm interested in this too :)

[timepilot84]

The settings on Kinoma Producer for LifeDrive and for PSP are significantly different. The PSP is much more capable of playing MP4's, apparently. The standard FPS for LD is 15, whilst the PSP is 29.97. The lowest bit rate for PSP is higher than the highest bit rate for the LD.

I think, at least with Kinoma Player, they don't expect the LD to be able to do a whole lot with the video. I've never much messed around with that, though.

With the costs of portable DVD players down below $100, I haven't bothered using my Palm devices for Vid.

[poissonsouriant]

I am not sure what the formats the default player can handle, but I do know that the latest version of TCPMP does not work on the LifeDrive. I am hoping they have an update soon, though. Overall, I have not been very impressed with the LifeDrive.

Take care,
Lance

Odd. TCPMP seems to work fine on my LD. Very fluid playback, fairly low battery drain. The volume needs more levels, though.

[CliePet]

Talking about the built-in video playing features ("Media" player -- not a 3rd party player or converter software)
Based on my simple tests, I found it to be lacking

If you drag a movie to the LifeDrive manager it will convert it to .asf. This is relatively slow but does a reasonable job. However the built-in player appears to be limited. It will play the videos, but it won't scale smaller videos to full screen (button is ignored)

Dragging CLIE or PSP format MP4s to the LifeDrive manager will quickly copies the movie (it thinks the format is already compatible). However it is incorrect and the movie does not play on the LifeDrive (in some cases won't even let you see the file).

I don't know how much of this is brand-new technology, but in comparison to other movie players I've tested (built-in and 3rd party), the built-in LifeDrive support falls to the bottom of the barrel.

[trickypuss]

I've had the same results as Cliepet with the built in media player. I don't think I'll be using it really at all.

Using Pocket DivX and DVDDecrypter I've been able to put a few anime episodes on the Life Drive with good results. With double pass rendering I got smooth animation even what I would consider very good in motion sections. And anime usually shows defects much more readily than live motion. So I think this is pretty good so far. I've done my playback through TCPMP which seems to run fine on my LD. I've been much more satisfied with video at this point than I have with audio.

With the exception of the storage space, I'm still preferring my TH-55 over the LD at this point. *WAY* better browser, no skipping in pocket-tunes, faster startup etc. I hope that palmOne comes out with a few updates to improve speed and efficiency issues soon, or this thing may wind up on ebay.

[acraniotes]

For what it's worth, in my opinion the built-in video capabilities are utter pants. My NX80 is leaps and bounds better than my LD, at least out of the box. Mind you, video isn't really what I intend to do with this thing, but given the amount of space palmOne gives you to play with, it seems kind of half-arsed of them not to do more in this respect. If my 2 year old NX80, with a 200Mhz processor can stomp all over a 416Mhz LD in terms of video, something's rotten in the state of Denmark. I'll have to look into TCPMP.

- Adam

[5standingby.]

While I don't have a LD, (soon), I do quite a bit of video on my E2. The comments so far here and elsewhere have me puzzled. There are some great guides (by Junglemike and others) over at Brighthand that simply are excellent.

Using free software (Kinoma Producer is terrible no matter the version) you can get great movies in the Xvid/Divx format with AutoGK or similar (2 pass, B frames, framerate, etc). Great picture with smooth motion and perfect audio, all in a size for this screen of about 150-200MB per movie. Once you set it up the first time its easy, plus you can do batch. While I currently use mmplayer, I am going to try TCMP to see how it performs.

I have tried the other solutions but was surprised at just how much quality you could get out of such a small file.

Battery life will likely depend on a number of factors including app used, encoding and size of file too. There are many variables to consider but it would be nice to at least have a reference in real world tests.

[timepilot84]

Just got TCPMP because of what everyone here was saying about it and it rocks. If someone can show me how to report framerates back, I'll gladly comply.

It plays my Thundarr the Barbarian collection just fine. I'm going to see if it'll play back Anime with a quality that I can read the subs.

[trickypuss]

I so far haven't been able to figure out how to get subtitles working in the movies I've ripped myself from anime DVD's. However, on files I've obtained from friends where the subtitles are rendered into the frame I've had no problem being able to read them clearly on the Life Drive.

FYI - the players I've tried on my palms don't know how to render subs on the fly, so they have to be prepared in a way that they are rendered into the video image to work (correct me if I'm wrong and there's a player out there that will do this - but in my tests I've never gotten it to work).

[loki2486]

Dragging CLIE or PSP format MP4s to the LifeDrive manager will quickly copies the movie (it thinks the format is already compatible). However it is incorrect and the movie does not play on the LifeDrive (in some cases won't even let you see the file).


Don't have a LD, but I've tested my tungsten C test kinoma player 3.1.1 EX's playback with videos recorded with the Sony Vr100 and the playback was excellent and smooth. Kinoma was really choppy playing the same videos on my VZ-90. I'm hoping that Kinoma works with the LD like with the tungsten C.

[timepilot84]

the players I've tried on my palms don't know how to render subs on the fly, so they have to be prepared in a way that they are rendered into the video image to work

Yeah, all the anime vids, other than some movies, have the subs rendered right on the video. I was able to read the subs in Initial D just fine.

[Mojo_LA]

Are you guys playing videos in 480x320 format or a smaller res? That will affect framerate greatly.

Being able to play 480x320 divx at at least 24fps is probably the most important test. PSP format MPG4 is probaby next, since the resolution is very compatable with the LD and there is a LOT of PSP video content being made and offered for free around the web.

[jjesusfreak01]

For what it's worth, in my opinion the built-in video capabilities are utter pants. My NX80 is leaps and bounds better than my LD, at least out of the box. Mind you, video isn't really what I intend to do with this thing, but given the amount of space palmOne gives you to play with, it seems kind of half-arsed of them not to do more in this respect. If my 2 year old NX80, with a 200Mhz processor can stomp all over a 416Mhz LD in terms of video, something's rotten in the state of Denmark. I'll have to look into TCPMP.

- Adam
200mhz?

If you notice the TH users posting, they only have a 123mhz processor. The audio subsystem, which the LD should have included, makes playback alot faster.

[prayer4eev]

LD inside is T5 (same cpu, same ammount of heap memory) Hdd or SD card - it does not matter, they are fast enough to handle video.

so LD will play video files like T5 - that means, if u will use TCMP - u can watch movies without any problems (i think sum. bitrate can be about 1200kb/s, at least my T5 is able to run in with normal speed and without frame drops)

[acraniotes]

Okay... I downloaded TCPMP, and all I can say is "wow." It works brilliantly. So, in a nutshell, the included LD media application is crapola for video playback, while TCPMP rocks.

- Adam

[Mojo_LA]

Thanks, that's a useful bit of info!

Can anyone confirm they are playing 480x320 content at full speed and what codec?

[poissonsouriant]

Okay... I downloaded TCPMP, and all I can say is "wow." It works brilliantly. So, in a nutshell, the included LD media application is crapola for video playback, while TCPMP rocks.

- Adam

And the best part is, TCPMP is free!

[timepilot84]

Can anyone confirm they are playing 480x320 content at full speed and what codec?

Well, unfortuneately most of the stuff I have to watch is TV rips, so the size is only 384x288. Running the benchmark, I'm playing that back at 40+ fps. It's Divx encoded.

At this rate I don't have many doubts that it could play 480x320 back at full speed. I'll transcode the new episode of Doctor Who tonight and report back.

[timepilot84]

I got lazy. I didn't want to spend the time to transcode and resize the Doctor Who video, so I just dumped it on there full sized (640x352 XVid, 25fps). The benchmark speed for the video was 20.48fps.

Transcoding. Will update later.

[Mojo_LA]

Thanks Timepilot, you rock! 20fps at 640x352 is very good, I agree it will probably play back 480x320 at full speed.

The only other test I'd love to see is if someone can take a PSP formatted video and get that to play without transcoding. It's 368x208 MPEG4. If you need more info for the test (or any files to play with) I can help you out.

[Ezikial Anta]

I took files i used on my PSP and dumped them onto the LD hard drive and they work with TCPMP... They look pretty good... But i used a low setting for the movies on my PSP, so ... yeah...

[Mojo_LA]

Any of you guys do any more video tests yet?

True Divx framerate?

Porting hi-quality PSP format video?

[Paratus]

Well I benchmarked a video in TCPMP encoded at 520x238 mpeg4/divx/xvid. It ran at 37 fps.

The video was Star Wars Ep III A Lost Hope ( parody) and I didn't re-encode orchange it anyway.

So far what video I have put on it has looked great, in TCPMP.

The in built in video isn't bad but does show motion blut during fast scenes.

[SoS]

How much playback do you guys get on a single charge???

[lmame]

How much playback do you guys get on a single charge???
During my tests (http://www.lmame-bug.com/index.php?p=236&more=1&page=5) I was able to play videos for more than two hours, 2 hour 23 minute precisely ;)

[prayer4eev]

lmame
thanks a lot for your test!

2h23m - that's more than for T3 (of course) and a bit less than for T5 (10-15 minutes)

[Mojo_LA]

What screen brightness were you using to get the 2:23? Reducing brightness often has a big impact on battery life...

[lmame]

What screen brightness were you using to get the 2:23? Reducing brightness often has a big impact on battery life...
At the half :)
It was far enough to watch the movies.