Choppy AVI playback

[obi18t]

Hi all,

I'm kinda new here, just got my X50V today. I've downloaded the latest ROM update off Dell and installed Beta player (tried both the .5 stable and .0096 unstable along with the plugins) with 2700G decoder checked. AVI video (640x480 at 30fps) off my Canon SD200 plays really choppy, it'll play for 2 secs, pause, play for another 2 secs etc. This happens to both the video and audio. The video is coming from a 60x SD card. Is there something I'm missing here? Thanks in advance.

Kris

[Don't Panic!]

Try PQV from bitbank software for your camera video files.

I'm moving this to multimedia.

[obi18t]

Try PQV from bitbank software for your camera video files.

I'm moving this to multimedia.

PQV won't let me access my Micro drive and the video is larger than the X50's built in storage. Betaplayer supports AVI it just plays back choppy.

[Barney Calhoun]

Here's what I did.
In Beta Player;
Options, Settings, Select Page, Advanced.
Check the box next to "Prefer less buffering over smooth video."
The quality doesn't degrade that much.
Hope this helps!

[obi18t]

Here's what I did.
In Beta Player;
Options, Settings, Select Page, Advanced.
Check the box next to "Prefer less buffering over smooth video."
The quality doesn't degrade that much.
Hope this helps!

Thanks for the response but I don't see that option. I have the latest Intel 2700G optimized version of Betaplayer. There's check boxes for backlight keepalive, mmx usage, slow vid mem, less rotate tearing, lookup tables, hot key, input thread, system volume, benchmark and override AVI frame rate.

[victorypoint]

Thanks for the response but I don't see that option. I have the latest Intel 2700G optimized version of Betaplayer. There's check boxes for backlight keepalive, mmx usage, slow vid mem, less rotate tearing, lookup tables, hot key, input thread, system volume, benchmark and override AVI frame rate.

What version of Betaplayer do you have installed? Can you provide more info on the AVI files (e.g. what codecs are used such as MJPEG, MPEG-4)?

-AJ

[dyn0]

Did you try the sample videos on the betaplayer site. The RL_XQ 29.1mb 640x480 sample plays fine on my X50v.
Download this and try running it from memory, and then from your SD card.
If its OK on both, you may need to convert your avi's. (Try PocketDIVXEncoder)
If its OK from memory but not from SD card, your SD card is unusually slow and the fault.
If its a problem from both memory and SD card, its your axim. Either a setting needs changing in betaplayer, or theirs a conflict with other software.

[obi18t]

It's MJPEG...it records 640x480 at 30fps. It's a pretty beefy file, 118MB and I've tried viewing it off both a 4GB hitachi microdrive and a 60x SD card w/ the same results. I'll try that video clip mentioned by dyno and report back...thanks.

[Adrian Knack]

What data rate is it? Maybe it is too high and the PDA can't read the data from the card fast enough?

[Villain]

If it's MJPEG, I wonder if it's actually MPEG-2 with an AVI wrapper. If that's the case, this might be part of the issue, as MPEG-2 has a huge bandwidth requirement.

Can you convert the file to .wmv, .avi, .divx, or any other format and try it again? If so, this might make a difference.

I use PocketDivXEncoder and I always encode at 15 frames per second. This does not affect the file size, but it does reduce the reading speed from the storage card.

At 15 fps I have never had a trace of jerkiness, choppiness or broken playback. Also, perhaps surprisingly at such a low frame rate, there is no trace of flicker. Playback is perfect.

If you use PocketDivXEncoder, or another encoding program which allows you to set the frame rate, this might be worth a try.

[Tala]

If it's MJPEG, I wonder if it's actually MPEG-2 with an AVI wrapper

MJPEG has nothing to do with MPEG2. Completely different codecs. Compression with MPEG2 usually is much higher compared to MJPEG.

It's MJPEG...it records 640x480 at 30fps. It's a pretty beefy file, 118MB and I've tried viewing it off both a 4GB hitachi microdrive and a 60x SD card w/ the same results. I'll try that video clip mentioned by dyno and report back...thanks.

MJPEG has the lowest compression ratio of any codec safe uncompressed. The bitrate of a movie recorded with the 200SD is about 16MBit/s (A movie on a DVD is about 7MBit/s), which most likely surpass the reading speed of the X50v.

Tala

[obi18t]

MJPEG has nothing to do with MPEG2. Completely different codecs. Compression with MPEG2 usually is much higher compared to MJPEG.



MJPEG has the lowest compression ratio of any codec safe uncompressed. The bitrate of a movie recorded with the 200SD is about 16MBit/s (A movie on a DVD is about 7MBit/s), which most likely surpass the reading speed of the X50v.

Tala

Data rate is 1843Kbps. I tried playing w/ the buffer sizes and percentages but it doesn't help much. I was hoping that the X50v would be able to play these videos straight from my camera w/out any kind of tweaking needed from a PC. Any programs similar to PQV that fit the bill? For whatever reason PQV runs real slow and won't access my SD or CF cards.

[Adrian Knack]

Yeah this is what I was talking about,

Here is the results of my Hi-Speed 1GB SD card

Card Type: SD
Card Manufacturer: Silicon Power Ultima
Card Size: 1GB
Device: Axim X50v A02
Average Read Speed: 1.15 MB/sec, 7.8X
Average Write Speed: 0.08 MB/sec, 0.5X

Hence the read speeds are not high enough to read a 1.8MB/Sec file.

Cheers

[Tala]

Data rate is 1843Kbps

You mean kByte/s, not kbit/s right? I did download a sample movie recorded with the 200sd and it was close to 16MBit/s, which is close to 2MByte/s.
Thats too much for the SD card interface of your X50v.

Tala