Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Either the processing capabilities are severely limited or the software / OS / software have a LONG way to go. I don’t think the hardware is the issue; it should be more than capable.

With the initial version of the OS 2007, streaming any video (Wifi or BT) was completely unacceptable. It would play (choppy) for 10 – 15 seconds then buffer. After upgrading to v. 2.2006.51-6 things improved. However, it still struggles to play even a low quality stream and most video resolutions produce “video resolution not supported” error.

I have very high hopes for the N800, but so far it seems far less functional in all aspects (including web browsing and media) to my Axim x51v. And that’s not even considering PIM function (I knew the N800 was not a PDA and do not expect it to be.) I love open source and am a big Linux fan but I wonder if enough momentum (especially considering the lack of 100% compatibility between releases) can be generated to produce a superior offering.

Thanks for letting me vent a little.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

I agree, video on the N800 is NOT in a working state right now. The built in app is next to useless and MPlayer (latest N800 build) is completely useless; As is media streamer. 192k mp3s won't even stream reliably for me, let alone video.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

The media player was streaming very well for me when I tried it yesterday on a link generated by that web page which converts youtube links.. and it also works fine on that demo video which came pre-installed. (As we all know, watching youtube directly works, but is very choppy).

However: The nice thing about the N800 is that I can keep an SD card permanently in the inside slot (as a hard-disk equivalent), and use the external slot for all the other SDs, in particular media SDs from my digital recorder and my cameras - in fact that's what I liked so much that I went and bought it. And that's a bummer at this stage: The media player can't play _anything_. "Missing codec". I've only been able to play the demo file, but none of my other files in various formats. My Tungsten T3 can play all of it without problems, in 320x480 resolution without flicker, and I don't think it's more powerful than the N800 (for sure the DSP is much older, I'm not sure about a 400MHz PXA 263 vs. the 330MHz TI OMAP CPU, but it can't be that different). Nokia: More codecs please? Pretty please?

(But at least the sound files from my recorder plays fine.. .mp3 and .wav)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

You should say that you're talking about streaming here, not video capabilities as such. In fact, I enjoy the 770s superb video playback quality very much and use it a lot to watch whole movies on the train.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

I get acceptable results with Konttori's Media Converter, about on par with my 770 in its latter days.

However, it appears the latest version of Media Converter has become a lot more picky about the input files: Quite a lot of Divxfiles end up with a "fail" (irritatingly always right at the end, after half an hour of furious converting going on) and won't play anywhere.

Unfortunately, the only other decoder I've got, PocketDivXEncoder, refuses to produce a file that the N800 will play.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Benny, you are correct. It is mostly streaming that I care about. The fact that I could create a media file using very specific attributes (resolution, compression, data rate, sound, ...) is not very interesting. I like the N800 but it will never be my only device, so my media needs to be accessible from any device. My cell phones, laptops, and PDA's have no problem streaming media, I would expect that as an "Internet Tablet" this would be second nature. The internet is no longer just text (bbs). What is the point of the increasing connectivity speeds if all we need the internet for is text.

Thanks everyone for the comments

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Somehow a former co-worker of mine managed to get excellent results converting DVD movies to the N800... but I recall him saying there was a lot of trial-and-error and general effort required. I watched Ice Age on his N800 and the quality was very nice.

However, I've experienced the same frustrations as everyone else in accessing internet video. Formats, codecs, bit rates... they're all conspiring against us. The situation can only improve.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

What OS do you use? I can have a look at the divx conversions.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Windows XP Home, for now.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

:D Sure we're talking about different use cases here (streaming doesn't help me when I want to watch a recently purchased movie on the train, and when I'm at home I wouln't dream of watching it on anything else than on my large TV).

I only wanted to point out that the topic "Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities" could scare off those who want to use the N800/770 as a multimedia device (as I do) and don't care about streaming. It's the marketing person in me speaking. :)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Back! Get thee back, spawn of the devil!!! :eek:






Just kidding. Sort of.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

:) believe me, I was surprised myself that one of my multiple personalities is a marketing guy. never met him until now. i hate marketing people. (that's probably why i don't have an ipod.)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

As it should. My advice: Do NOT purchase the N800 for video playback. You will be disappointed. For web browsing (for witch it was designed) it is fine.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

In theory, the n800 should offer a very good video experience. The processor has a hardware video decoder capable of vga @ 30 fps. This may be eventually supported since the users manual claims vga resolution. I sure hope this will be supported soon. At present, video playback on the n800 is very poor. IMHO the latest mplayer on the 770 is better either the nokia media player or mplayer on the n800.

Don't buy the n800 now for features it MIGHT have in the future. You could be stuck with a device for browsing the web :)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

OK, now seriously: You're not saying that that N800s video playback capabilities are worse than the 770s? (And I'm talking about the standard video player that comes with the devices, not mplayer)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

The N800s standard media player will play 400x240 video which is something that could not be achieved using the standard player on the 770 (mplayer could do it though). The N800 media player obviously has updated codecs and is an improvement over that in the 770.

mplayer on the N800 isn't so good at the moment - it needs more optimisation which I'm sure Serge will work on in future, assuming he gets a developer device (he deserves one!) :)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Well, because the 770 is already excellent at video playback, the N800 must be fantastic then. I don't know what people expect. Of course you have to re-code for a mobile device. That's what I've done ever since I put star wars on my Nokia 6230.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Not sure I'd describe the 770 as excellent at video playback - the tearing in video really annoys me, and this is worse on the N800. At least the N800 plays more videos formats than the 770, and can play them better (less dropped frames), but unfortunately the tearing and other issues (loss of audio sync) makes it a generally unpleasant experience. :(

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Mhm... Never had audio sync problems. - What exactly do you mean when you say "tearing"? I don't know the word in this context... We should all talk german here :D

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Video tearing - where the video breaks up while displaying the next frame. The video output needs to be synced with the LCD display, there is support for this in the N800 (and hopefully will be backported to the 770). The N800 standard media player tears much less than that in the 770, mplayer will hopefully support vsync in future.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Ah ... thank you for explaining. Of course, as you might have guessed, I don't experience this tearing either. Audio in sync, no tearing ... I'm beginning to wonder if I have a real 770 at all. :D

As for tearing, maybe it depends on the framerate. I always use the lowest framerate I can possibly bear (everything above 15fps is fine for me, sometimes I even go down to 12fps) simply to reduce size - it's an old habit from the days when I used my mobile phone for watching videos. I could imagine that with low frame rates, tearing doesn't become apparent even if it might happen between frames.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

I am somewhat confused by this discussion because of the absence of some numbers and specs. For the persons claiming "good" video performance, what exactly are the specs of the video files you are playing? I find that even the included sample video supplied on the device is below-par - it skips frames (jerky movements) and at full screen is soft. Is there some video that plays better than that?

My overall experience with video on the N800 is that it is a disaster relative to the other capabilities (audio, including streaming, and internet). My Mobile 5 phone does a better job at playing videos, including the sample video! I would love the N800 to be my all-purpose connected device, but it fails (my standards) at video even when one converts to the supported codecs. I like the PSP videos, those on Mobile phones, on the Archos and Zune. The N800 is inferior to all of these at video.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Well of course video quality is a somewhat subjective experience. What is a disaster for you could be better than expected for me. Also, you talk about the N800, while my experiences refer to the 770 (of course I would assume that the N800 is even better, but this could be wrong.)

Most of the the time I encode full DVDs with transcode. I set it to 320x192 at a framerate of 15fps and a video bitrate of ~300kbps. Video codec is xvid4 (fourcc changed to DIVX later), audio codec mp3 (44100 Hz, 2 ch, 64.0 kbit). A full movie is about 250MB with these settings (2-pass encoding).

I'm very pleased with the results.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Thanks. That's helpful. I am bothered by 15 fps (I see the jerkiness) and can hear the difference between 128 and 64 bps on sound. To make this a pleasant experience for me would double, more or less, the demands, and choke the darn thing. Not to mention the waste of the N800's screen resolution.

Seems really primitive when pocket PC's do much better, as of course do PSPs and Zunes and Ipods.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Yes, if 640x384@30fps and 600kbps is what you need, then I'm not sure if this device is for you.

I've heard 352x288@25fps/400kbps (with 128kbit for audio) was the upper limit on the 770 (never tested it myself - too much wasted space on the RS-MMC); it's probably a bit higher on the N800, but not anywhere near your requirements.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Video in general, or certain applications?

As I posted earlier, I watched Ice Age on a co-worker's N800, and it was near flawless. Better than I've seen on any small device.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

I've never ever got even close to that quality on my 770. The best I could get at full frame rate was 288x208 with some really low kbps and 64kbps for sound. I can't even get that on the N800 without stuttering. Mplayer on the N800 (the first build) is actually worse than the built-in media player.

Don't get me wrong: I have an Archos, which has dedicated hardware video accelerators and I expect that to be better than the N800 (although the PMA430 is also a Linux PDA, but based on Opie). It's just that I think that, especially in the N800, Nokia "decided" to ignore 90% of the processor's video capabilities. Why? Who knows, maybe Nokia wants us all to buy N95s to play videos?

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

The figures given for the "best" preset on 770-encode are the best acceptable quality (judged by me, admittedly) on the built-in player of the 770.

mplayer has yet to be optimised for the N800, but Serge has said here that he's almost to the point of 640x480 resolutions on the 770.

I've yet to determine the best quality for the N800, but 352x288 scaled looks damn good to me on the N800's screen. 400x240 in mplayer on the 770 looked ace (and *almost* plays back on the built-in N800 player).

These are damned good devices for video.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

This is more true than most of you realize.
I'm curious why you think this is true.

[EDIT]
Some posts here claim results that are far below what is achievable. If you're transcoding - go to xyz * 240 res and you get nice small files with good quality.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Hmm with respect to needing to transcode, iliaden found that you can use mplayer's built in options to playback un-optomized files very nicely:

I bundled this into a shell script that attempts to auto-determine the best settings and calls mplayer with those settings for optomized or unoptomized content.

Mopt.tar

download, then untar and chmod with
tar -xzvPf Mopt.tar
cd /usr/bin/
chmod +x mplayer-opt

you can then invoke it on any movie file that mplayer supports by typing
mplayer-opt <filename>

Hope this helps someone, for me it's enabled to me to play full DVD rips (AVI with mpeg2 and mp3) with no lag, playback is smooth and even fast action scenes (as noted by iliaden) render nicely :)

I'm actually very satisfied with my N810 as a portable movie player :)
Also, with respect to the streaming thing I've been able to play video streams of The Office on my N810 with no stuttering or lag with a decent internet connection. Also, for me at least, youtube videos play with no lag or hangs. (I'm aware that this might be a processor speed issue, 330mhz vs 400 mhz but upgrading the N800 to OS2008 would improve this)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

"MHz", you mean. ;)

It's partly the processor bump and partly Flash improvements. For whatever it's worth, Diablo's Flash seems a little bit better than Chinook's.

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Wow I cannot believe I just did that. I've been working with computers since I was like ten. Running on five hours of sleep is definitely not good for me :P

hmmm I kinda wanna upgrade to Diablo but every time I approach it I decide to wait for the official release

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

I am having great luck utilizing PocketDivXEncoder on my n800 with MPlayer - settings I used are 320x240 with audio and video turned up to max (Produces a 320x240 @ ~24fps DX50 and 96kb/s Audio). It plays perfectly, and scales quite pleasantly up. In general, I am more pleased with the video playback on the n800 than I am on my PSP, although that could be that I didn't want to spend the time recoding everything to MP4, which took nearly real time versus about 10x real time in PocketDivXEncoder...

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

I don't understand Arnim-- I stated that the video codec/format situation could only get better (I don't expect it to get worse). Why wouldn't that be true?

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

Come on, you can save face; just say your shift key missed; you meant mGHz. (yep, milligigaHertz!)

Re: Very disappointed in N800 video capabilities
 

That's magnificent, you guys. I think you should work with Serge and the mplayer team to get that built-in to the next release of the tablet's mplayer, whether it is through the gui or made into a commandline option (something like "--tabletrecode"). This should be available to the masses, transparently.

By the way, I can convert DVD resolution widescreen movies to play beautifully (people usually gasp and stare transfixed) on the N800. The N800's screen is really a joy to behold. The secret is using all of the screen's real-estate.

You have to resize the video to 240 pixels vertically, and then crop horizontally to 400 pixels. Yes, this involves cropping some video from the sides, but the results are far more impressive than leaving it letterboxed. I found bitrate is very important, too. I found that a high-action TV episode plays beautifully at 550 kbps, but at 650 it stutters at the exciting bits.

Transcode some cool high-action video to 2-pass XviD 400x240 at 550 kbps, and then show it to your friends. Lots of "ooohs" and "ahhhs" will follow.

EDIT: I also recommend breaking up long movies into 30-minute or 1 hour chunks. Searching is a real pain if you lose your spot in a 2 hour movie.

EDIT2: I just checked my copy of Ratatouille, and it plays back very nicely at ~700 kbps. So YMMV. Maybe there's some interaction with the audio encoding, which can vary dramatically from video to video.