Mine displays in full screen, no bars here. Same quality and display as the link someone above posted to download a sample mp4.
I think it depends on the media. If it's cinematic, Handbrake will preserve that aspect ratio. The Droid's display is 16:9, but lots of movies are 21:9, hence the bars on top and bottom.
By the way, your settings have a 320x176 output resolution. My sample video is 848x480. In other words, there is no comparison in quality.
This sample uses almost the full resolution of the Droid. It's definitely overkill for some video sources, but it's really nice if you have an HD source.
Trying the Motorola Media Link program now. Wow, I thought iTunes sucked. It's like a stripped down even clunkier version.
My only hope is that it produces an acceptable video conversion with no sound issues, but even if i does, Handbrake might still be easier to use if I can find optimum settings. Just discovered that the test file I had been using had sound sync issues BEFORE conversion, so no wonder the resulting file did!
It takes me ~45min to convert a full length movie with these settings. This is with a Ph. II X4 940 quad core at 3.7GHz. My guess is that if you have a quad core it will take roughly an hour, dual core, perhaps 2.
Let me know if these settings work for you!
I use VIO (piratebay.org), set my output file to the screen resolution (480x854), amd let her rip!
My 'file' plays great! You can also set quality, volume, and output filename...
This sample uses almost the full resolution of the Droid. It's definitely overkill for some video sources, but it's really nice if you have an HD source.
So there is no point in putting a larger number in the width than the original files value, right? My original is 640x272.
I am trying a run now with your values, except for the 640, which I left in.
BTW, A previous try with iPhone Legacy resulted in sound, no video.
edit: also, your sample is great!
Last edited by drumtrucker; November 11th, 2009 at 11:43 PM.
Reason: expand on brief comments
report on my video conversion using Moto Media Link:
resulted in a picture about half the Droid screen size with a frame around entire picture.
Not sure if it had something to do with the size of original or not. going back to play with Handbrake. Running one now with Fabolous setting except left width at originals value,640.
I use VIO (piratebay.org), set my output file to the screen resolution (480x854), amd let her rip!
My 'file' plays great! You can also set quality, volume, and output filename...
Give it a try, and let me know what you think.
So I downloaded VIO and got it all set up and ready to encode.
Once it started, I had a horrible realization. The program is not multi-threaded. What a joke. In this day and age, all programs, especially, especially encoding programs have to be multithreaded.
So I canceled the encoding. I'll stick to Handbrake as it is 4x faster
report on Handbrake run which took a 716Mb file and resulted in 1.2gb file, hmmm. Used Fabo's HB iPod Legacy settings except for width which I left at originals 640.
The good news is the quality and sound sync seems fine (checked in a few spots, made easy by act1 video player.
What is the smallest width setting that will fill the Droid screen?
I just discovered that in act1 player there is a preference for ZOOM/video display, that is ASPECT (uses full width or height without distortion) and it is the default (i think).
so just did half (cd1 of 2;hate that) of a movie with Handbrake using iPod Legacy presets which used 640 for width.
The GOOD news is the sound sync seems fine and the picture is nice. But if I turn the zoom OFF the picture is about HALF of the sreen. Not sure it is worth trying to find size that would fill screen (width) without zoom as it would probably just be upconverting and maybe a waste.
I guess Fabo's 848 (is that right?) value is more useful when starting with a larger file (1080/720p).
Last edited by drumtrucker; November 12th, 2009 at 04:31 AM.
Reason: expand on brief comments
will someone please tell me how to get sound for my videos or a program that i can use to get sound to get them to play on my DROID i have them on the sd card and they play just no sound... i would appreciate it if someone would tell me a program to use wether from the market place or from the net. thanks
@fabolous
This is interesting:
Just ran a test w/your 848 settings and the file fills the Droid screen with zoom OFF and the file is slightly smaller than the input file.
@fildo
did you try some of the stuff in this thread?
is your volume up? (wouldn't it be nice if that was it?)
Used these settings in Handbrake as suggested by Fabolous and it worked perfectly. I used 848 (w) and left blank (h) (anamorphic set to "none"), video bitrate was kept at 1500, which seems low to me, but looks great on screen. I am sure this helps to keep the file size down. I ripped a 16+G 1080p mkv file down to a 1.9 megs m4v/mp4 file. <-- that's awesome!
The audio was set to: AAC Stereo 48kHz @ 160 Kbps. This setting sync'd perfectly with the picture.
I will experiment with different screen settings based on input ratios (you can only do this is if the anamorphic setting is set to "loose") to cure slight ratio distortion. I have a feeling the native resolution of the Droid screen is not 848x480. Ever noticed the "Motorola" logo on bootup is not perfectly round? This explains some aspect ratio discrepencies.
I also want to try better sound compression (less compression).
Tip: For faster re-encoding, go into the preference menu of Handbrake and set the CLI to use all your cores (4 for me) and set CPU priority to "normal" if you want to multi task and higher if you let it run by itself. My 16G to 2G conversion took 1h10m on "normal"; much faster with smaller source.
Last edited by lemodular; November 12th, 2009 at 07:18 PM.
Gonna have to agree. I have also used Fabolous's settings and the picture on my Droid is fantastic. Deep rich colors. People I show the videos to are absolutely dumbfounded that a phone could look so good. Thanks for the settings.
Hi, you're actually upconverting that 700MB .avi file, and that's why it's taking so long. The settings I shared are for high quality video, so we're talking about .MKV or other HD files at 720/1080p anywhere from 4-10GB in size.
For 700MB .avi files, just take a look at the properties of your video, and convert using the same width as the actual file itself. This should cut down on the time it takes to convert considerably, and there will be no loss in quality vs. the higher settings (as the video didn't have the quality there to begin with).
This should scale down your conversion time by half (at least), I think.
Which brings me to a point:
There are no definitive settings for converting your videos. You should change them dynamically, dependent upon the quality of your original video, and how good you want it to look on your Droid.
There are quite a few good suggestions being made in this thread, and at different quality levels. But a good rule of thumb is to not encode your video at a higher resolution than the original, you're just wasting space.
Fabolous You are the Man! I truly appreciate your postings. You are well spoken and keep things to where even I can understand them. The instructions on converting were right on the mark. Thanks again
I can't get it to work. I followed the instructions to the letter with a .wmv video but it won't play on any video player on my PC, it seems to think it's a sound file.
I can't get it to work. I followed the instructions to the letter with a .wmv video but it won't play on any video player on my PC, it seems to think it's a sound file.
ok, getting there. Now with downloading that version I can do .wmv. Worked perfect. But converting avi files still gives me just the sound. Any other ideas?
tried both. The wmv converted and works on both, but the avi never encodes. You can tell cause the CMD window just hangs on encoding and never shows the percentage complete changing like it did when I converted the wmv. I used exact same settings for both, just changed the source and the output file name. I've tried several avis all to the same result. Maybe a different codec? When I downloaded the one you recommended, it took me to FFDShow, correct?
tried both. The wmv converted and works on both, but the avi never encodes. You can tell cause the CMD window just hangs on encoding and never shows the percentage complete changing like it did when I converted the wmv. I used exact same settings for both, just changed the source and the output file name. I've tried several avis all to the same result. Maybe a different codec? When I downloaded the one you recommended, it took me to FFDShow, correct?
The codecs I told you to get were for playback puropses. For converting you should still use the h.264
I just tried a free AVI to MP4 converter from Doremisoft and it worked perfect. Only bummer is I can't resize with that software, but that should rule out codec issues. I think Handbrake is probably just weak.
I just tried a free AVI to MP4 converter from Doremisoft and it worked perfect. Only bummer is I can't resize with that software, but that should rule out codec issues. I think Handbrake is probably just weak.
Hrm, I'm a bit perplexed at your problems. Let me try an avi though. I can't believe that Handbrake can handle HD quality H.264 and not a simple avi.
weird. Maybe it has something to do with the codec I used when making the avis. I tried a different AVI I downloaded and it worked. Seems like HandBrake is picky.
I don't understand the lack of some basic features on this platform. There should either be a synch app or better native support.
I love my Droid but I'm also a nerd. Until you can hand this phone to my mother and have her able to play a video THAT'S ALREADY ON THE PHONE don't expect her to figure out how to copy a movie to it. And my mom has Facebook and Twitter!
In some ways this is like an over-engineered German car. It's got a great engine but poor cupholders.
The nerd market is obviously very strong with the sales estimates, but corporate will be shy due to stuff like poor Exchange support and the basic consumer won't buy it or will return it in frustration.
I'm betting this phone will have a high return rate which is too bad.
Google needs to add some cup holders to make it easier for the average Joe.
one more... is there a way to access the video player on the droid without having to load the camera, than switch to vid, then hit the picture icon, then hit... then hit...
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