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Mike Walker · 09-02-03, 10:01 AM

From my title line, you might think I hate PocketMVP. I don't. In some ways it's really great software. But in one critical (for me) way, on my Dell, it's intolerable. Often I can't watch a full two hour movie at one sitting. So I want to be able to return to the same spot, and resume my viewing at a later time. With PocketMVP this is practically impossible. Yes, you can (after crashing the machine a couple of times) finally get the scroll bar to the point in the movie where you left off, but then the sound is out of sync. In PocketMVP's favor, if I watch an entire movie beginning to end, there are never any sync issues. But I get sync issues EVERY time I try scrolling to a later time in the movie. Even Speedstep (overclocking software), which lets me run my 300mhz Axim at 398mhz (reliably), doesn't fix the problem, despite the fact that video is VERY smooth, with no dropped frames at a full 29.97 frames per second. ARRGH!

I have experimented with Divx (various versions), XVID, and the VP3 codec (which I REALLY want to use, because of decent picture quality at around a megabyte-per-minute). I get the same result with all codecs, so I suspect it's something within PocketMVP rather than codec related. I repeat, ARRGH!

So I'm returning to MPEG-1, and old reliable PocketTV. It works perfectly EVERY time. Frame rates are excellent (especially when overclocking), and it's much more versatile for tweaking the picture during playback. What I DON'T like is that, to get comparable picture quality, MPEG-1 must be run at a higher bitrate than MPEG-4 codecs (like Divx, XVID, and VP3). Higher bitrate means larger files, which means "only" one two hour movie on my 256MB Compact Flash card instead of two (YES, it is possible to get TWO feature films on a 256MB card with VP3 compression and mono sound. But if it won't play properly, what's the point?)

09-02-03, 10:01 AM	#1 (permalink)
Mike Walker Aximsite Rookie Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Wilkes County, NC, USA Posts: 89 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	To Hell with PocketMVP! From my title line, you might think I hate PocketMVP. I don't. In some ways it's really great software. But in one critical (for me) way, on my Dell, it's intolerable. Often I can't watch a full two hour movie at one sitting. So I want to be able to return to the same spot, and resume my viewing at a later time. With PocketMVP this is practically impossible. Yes, you can (after crashing the machine a couple of times) finally get the scroll bar to the point in the movie where you left off, but then the sound is out of sync. In PocketMVP's favor, if I watch an entire movie beginning to end, there are never any sync issues. But I get sync issues EVERY time I try scrolling to a later time in the movie. Even Speedstep (overclocking software), which lets me run my 300mhz Axim at 398mhz (reliably), doesn't fix the problem, despite the fact that video is VERY smooth, with no dropped frames at a full 29.97 frames per second. ARRGH! I have experimented with Divx (various versions), XVID, and the VP3 codec (which I REALLY want to use, because of decent picture quality at around a megabyte-per-minute). I get the same result with all codecs, so I suspect it's something within PocketMVP rather than codec related. I repeat, ARRGH! So I'm returning to MPEG-1, and old reliable PocketTV. It works perfectly EVERY time. Frame rates are excellent (especially when overclocking), and it's much more versatile for tweaking the picture during playback. What I DON'T like is that, to get comparable picture quality, MPEG-1 must be run at a higher bitrate than MPEG-4 codecs (like Divx, XVID, and VP3). Higher bitrate means larger files, which means "only" one two hour movie on my 256MB Compact Flash card instead of two (YES, it is possible to get TWO feature films on a 256MB card with VP3 compression and mono sound. But if it won't play properly, what's the point?)