Has anyone been able to play a 640x480 WMV9 video with an X50v?
I searched and I didn’t find a definitive answer as to whether the X50v can play a 640x480 WMV9 video without dropping any frames. I tried some of my home movies on the HP PPCs and they were hopeless. Will an X50v keep up with these files? I really don’t want to take the time to re-encode them to a lower resolution or a different format.

An X50v shouldn't have any problems. 480X640 is the native resolution. I'm not being definite because I've never found a 640X480 .wmv file to test. Most of my stuff in .wmv is 240X320 everthing that big I have is in .avi format.

Don't Panic!
Bobby
42
Soft-reset is our Friend :

    

If you wouldn’t mind testing it that would be great. I can give you a link to some test files or you can easily generate one with the free Windows Media 9 Encoder. Just because the screen resolution is 480x640 doesn’t mean that it will have the horsepower to decode a 640x480 WMV9 file. WMV9 requires a lot of processing power so I am skeptical.

What WME options and bitrates are you using for your test files? I'll be testing some WMV9 movies as soon as my X50v arrives this week. I've prepared some WMV9 files encoded with WME but I can only get CBR single-pass encoding to work. I get an audio conversion error when attempting to encode dual-pass CBR and unconstrained VBR. Apparently this is a known problem with AC3 and WME.

-AJ

Sure I'll test some for you. I won't be able to do it until after 2:00 PM today. I'll post back to this thread when I'm at a machine I can download from at hi-speed. Send the links as a PM to avoid having your server crash. Lots of content hungry people out here.

Don't Panic!
Bobby
42
Soft-reset is our Friend :

    

I have never had any problem with the quality VBR setting. That is my personal favorite. I have encoded several DVDs to VBR WMV9 and they look great. I also have some HD material that I have converted to VBR WMV9. VBR looks great but it is a CPU HOG! I really doubt that the X50v can even handle the 640x480 files. My PIII laptop struggles to play them. I guess we will find out though.

If anyone can answer this threads question I would really appreciate it. I would like to buy the X50v but one of my requirements is that it play 640x480 wmv videos. I have an extensive library of 640x480 and above(540p, 720p) wmv files. I would like to be able to play them without converting them to other formats or lowering the resolution. I have a lot of experience converting all types of video(Including MPG, .MPG2, MJPEG, DV, and DVD) to wmv. If anyone is having trouble creating a .wmv file I can help. It really is a great codec for compression and quality but I am just worried about the cpu resources that it requires.

If you can get me a sample file I will let you know. Got any place to post a clip?

Sure, I'll help out. Do you have some samples available for download I can test with?

Also, do you have a quick guide on how you convert DVDs to WMV9 or perhaps PM some instructions?

-AJ

I PM’d some links to sample files to a few people. I will try to put together some instructions on converting DVD to wmv but it will take awhile to do a full write up. There isn’t any need for surround sound on the PPC right? That requires a lot more effort than just decoding the DD to 2.0 stereo WMA9.1.

I've watched plenty of wmv9 movies with betaplayer on my x50v. Even 120fps wmv clips work perfectly.

Wow 120 fps is definitely hard core. Are you sure about that? Where exactly did you get 120 FPS video? 720p is only 60FPS. Besides those super slow-mo cameras, I am not aware of anything over 60fps. What resolution were the files? As soon as I definitely confirm the X50v will play 640x480 wmv I will buy one.

I tried the 640x480 WMV sample clips. They were stored on my standard speed Lexar 256MB SD card. They seemed to play OK at first but began to skip. The system seemed to be able to decode & display them OK, because when they played they were smooth, but then there was a skip like it was buffering.

I did not try the higher resolution samples, I don't have that much storage on my x50v.

I read somewhere Betaplayer can't play WMV files on the X50v. True/false?

-AJ

They're not really 120fps. The files are actually hybrid 24fps/30fps with added null frames. 24 and 30 go into 120 evenly. But even playing pseudo-120fps files take more processing power than regular 30fps files.