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

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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.

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Timepilot84

Apple Newton Messagepad 130 -> Palm Pilot 5000 -> Palm III -> Palm M105 -> Sony Clie 610c -> Palm Tungsten T -> Sony Clie TH55 -> P1 Tungsten T3 -> Sharp SL-6000L -> P1 Zire 31 -> P1 Tungsten T5 -> P1 LifeDrive & Dell Axim X50v-> Palm TX -> Dell Axim X51v -> Cingular 3125 -> Nokia N800

ucfgrad93

Jeez, might I suggest switching to decafe?

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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.

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Timepilot84

Apple Newton Messagepad 130 -> Palm Pilot 5000 -> Palm III -> Palm M105 -> Sony Clie 610c -> Palm Tungsten T -> Sony Clie TH55 -> P1 Tungsten T3 -> Sharp SL-6000L -> P1 Zire 31 -> P1 Tungsten T5 -> P1 LifeDrive & Dell Axim X50v-> Palm TX -> Dell Axim X51v -> Cingular 3125 -> Nokia N800

poissonsouriant

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

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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

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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.

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Timepilot84

Apple Newton Messagepad 130 -> Palm Pilot 5000 -> Palm III -> Palm M105 -> Sony Clie 610c -> Palm Tungsten T -> Sony Clie TH55 -> P1 Tungsten T3 -> Sharp SL-6000L -> P1 Zire 31 -> P1 Tungsten T5 -> P1 LifeDrive & Dell Axim X50v-> Palm TX -> Dell Axim X51v -> Cingular 3125 -> Nokia N800

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

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.

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Loki:
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