Which video format does android support NATIVELY??

[junglemike]

Hi @all
I am trying to find out which video formats Android (2.1 if it matters) operating system supports NATIVELY (not soft-mode).
in the wiki it says:
Quote:
Android supports the following audio/video/still media formats: WebM, H.263, H.264 (in 3GP or MP4 container), MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB (in 3GP container), AAC, HE-AAC (in MP4 or 3GP container), MP3, MIDI, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP.[60]
I have encoded x264 video (high profile) + aac audio and put it in .mp4 container (with Yamb) - and it won't play it
H264 includes x.264, or did I miss something?
Maybe I need to choose some specific profile?

 

[barqers]

I'd say Mp4 is the best if you resize it to a smaller size.

 

[junglemike]

barqers, thanks for your answer.
but Mp4 is just a container, it doesn't say what video or audio codecs are used
I can put divx, xvid, x264, and almost anything inside .mp4 file.
I noticed that my motorola defy can play some of the files, but performance is very slow (on many players). That's why I'm trying to find out what video codecs/resolutions Android 2.1 support NATIVELY, meaning it would play it flawlessly, and use minimum cpu power, thus prolonging battery life.

 

[barqers]

barqers, thanks for your answer.
but Mp4 is just a container, it doesn't say what video or audio codecs are used
I can put divx, xvid, x264, and almost anything inside .mp4 file.
I noticed that my motorola defy can play some of the files, but performance is very slow (on many players). That's why I'm trying to find out what video codecs/resolutions Android 2.1 support NATIVELY, meaning it would play it flawlessly, and use minimum cpu power, thus prolonging battery life.

Ah I understand what you mean. For me I know converting it using DVDVIDEOSOFT video converter, i'd convert my .avi files to 3GP, and set the screen resolution to 480x400 (my phones display size), and then set the fps to 30, and medium quality. It'd compact the videos to about 50-100mb in size, and I could probably leave them playing on my phone for 6 hours straight before the battery would die. Pretty decent if you ask me!

 

[junglemike]

Thanks. I'll look into it.
I haven't tried 3gp format yet. Maybe this will work.

Thanks

 

[Usta]

@junglemike,
Use the Baseline Profile (BP) instead of the High Profile (HiP), and put it in MP4 container.
Use also the max resolution that your phone's display allows and you should have a hardware decoding for that video.

 

[junglemike]

@Usta,
Baseline profile works perfectly.
I also tried main profile, but it didn't work. Just as high profile didn't work.
Baseline profile of x.264 still gives very good result , probably better than divx/xvid

 

[Usta]

Yes it should. The x264 codec is still considered one of the most efficient one (although Google is trying to move away from it). Compared to the old divx/xivid (typically used in MPEG4 Part2 standard), x264 can achieve better video quality with the same video bitrate.
The High Profile uses complex features like CABAC and Quantization scaling matrices, which are left out of the Baseline Profile.

 

[MyNamesTooLong]

Just download torrents that are meant for ipod/iphones. They are always mp4 or m4v and already the right resolution for the screen

 

[Usta]

Just download torrents that are meant for ipod/iphones. They are always mp4 or m4v and already the right resolution for the screen

Avoiding another discussion about copyright and so on, torrents are simply another person's videos converted for a particular purpose.
The good news is that such videos indeed may have already been encoded with the correct codecs (especially, if they are for ipod/iphone). However, such videos hardly have the correct resolution for the popular modern Android phones (800x480), and you don't have a quality control over the videos.

 

[junglemike]

@MyNamesTooLong
I prefer to make the videos myself - so that I can get best possible quality for smallest size
@Usta
Looks like you understand a thing or two about x264 ))
I use this script to encode the videos:

c:\x264.exe --profile baseline --crf 22 --preset slow --output "outfile.mp4" "infile.avi"

Do you think I can tweak it somehow? or does it look good as is?

 

[Usta]

@junglemike,

There are certainly more parameters to be specified, especially if you are using ffmpeg code lines. One simple thing would be to reduce crf value to 21 or 20. There are many sources on internet that would suggest you various choices.
However, you could also simply use a good conversion tool like Handbrake that will take most of these settings from your hand. You can then fine tune it as you like and save it as a separate preset.