PocketTV - video jumps forward

[rperego]

Using PocketTV my video clips jump frames at consistent intervals. I experienced this on my desktop when playing directly from an SD card that was slow as opposed to playing directly off my hard drive.

In my IPAQ I've tried the same slow PNY SD card and an older Sandisk Ultra CF card - the video jumps frames from both of them. I thought the Sandisk CF might be faster but it actually took longer to load the file into so I suspect it may not have been faster than the PNY SD. These cards are so old I can't find transfer rates for them.

My question is, does this behavior sound like a slow transfer rater from the card? I have a 2 Gig 60x PQI card I just got for my camera but I'm hesitant to format it in the IPAQ for fear I'll screw it up because I doubt the H3900 will handle a 2 Gig card.

Bottom line is I'll get a faster card for my PDA if anyone thinks my symptom is because of a slow transfer rate with the cards I've tried.

Thanks, Bob

[AnswerDude]

I don't think the issue is the speed of the card. What is the size and bit rate of your video. Perhaps they are too large for the iPAQ to process. The video size should not be larger than 320X240 and bitrate should be less than 420Kbit/sec.

Mpeg video is also not very efficient. Consider convert it to divx or xvid format, TCPMP can play those formats.

[badgerdid]

Try tcpmp, its proberbly the best program for movies on a pda

Get it from here, best of all its free. Dont forget the plugins too.

http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/

[rperego]

I'm way over 420kb/sec. Display while playing shows in the range of 2600 to 2800 kb/sec. This is a 320x240 at 30fps clip so not counting bitdepth and sound this comes out to 2304 kb/sec.

I'll try TCPMP. To convert from my camera format I've been using Prism Video Converter. Is there a better freebee you would recommend?

Thanks, Bob

[AnswerDude]

2600 to 2800 kb/sec is too high for any Windows Mobile devices. The memory card speed is not a factor in this case.
For free converter try
SUPER
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

[rperego]

The PICARD site says the TCPMP media player project has been discontinued. If the last support for this can be downloaded, I'm not sure what to choose anyway - and what plugins that were mentioned. If you hadn't guessed, I'm a newbie to PDAs.

[AnswerDude]

Try this by itself first and see if it will play your video.
http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/tcpmp.pocketpc.0.72RC1.exe
It's discontinued because they developed a commercial version. But most users still believe that the free one is still the best media player for WM platform.

[rperego]

I downloaded what you suggested and it works, sort of. For the MPEG-1 file I was experimenting with, it complains the buffer isn't large enough. I bumped it a number of times with no luck. It appears this product stops if it can't keep up whereas PocketTV simply loses frames.

I'll try some other formats - E.g. it supposedly supports the format coming from my camera without any conversion. I'll also try a 15fps clip instead of 30.

Thanks again for the help,

Bob

[rperego]

I just tried the same clip in AVI as it comes from my camera. Different results. Instead of stopping, it pauses with a clock and then continues. By bumping the buffer size to the max (99000) it runs longer but obviously also pauses longer.

Wouldn't this mean it can't get the data from the SD fast enough?

If so, what's your opinion of trying my 2G fast SD I have in my camera. If the H3900 doesn't support an SD this big, will it format what it can and if so is there any chance I'll screw it up so I can't reformat it again for my camera? Probably a dumb question but I don't know much about all this - like why both the camera and the PDA even need to format the card.

Bob

[AnswerDude]

Again, what is the size and the bit rates of the video? You will have problem with anything above 500 no matter how fast or slow the card is. You need to convert it.

[rperego]

I'm showing 88 Kbps from two places - hovering the mouse on the desktop file name where it came from, and on the PDA from the media info tab of TCPMP.

The file size is 89,735 KB - recording length 140 seconds at 320x240x30fps.

When you say I may need to convert it, to what? and with what? The format I'm currently trying is AVI - non converted, just the way it came from the camera.

[rperego]

The bitrate I'm looking at can't be right. I recorded another video at the same resolution but at 15 fps instead of 30. Bitrate shows the same.

Meanwhile, I found the 15fps clip will play on the PDA with no pauses. I also put the same 30fps clip I had trouble with on both an SD and a CF. I don't know the speeds of these but one can assume they're not the same. Interestingly, the time for the initial buffer fill, and the time to refill, was different depending on the source. Unless the internal max transfer rate is different for the SD slot versus the CF slot in the expansion pack, one would assume the memory card speed is a factor.

The PDA would not format my high speed 2 Gig SD. So, for now I'm satisfied that a 15fps clip will work, and will pickup a faster but smaller SD to see if this is indeed the problem with 30fps clips.

Thanks for the help,

Bob

[badgerdid]

Dont get hung up too much on high speed cards, the pda's only actually read at really low speeds, nowhere near the cards max speeds. you wont notice any difference between a normal card and say a 150x card, the pdas only read and write at about 2x. did a test once but cannot remember the exact speeds.

Have you tried downloading a video off the web somewhere, utube for examle and playing that, if these play ok then its definetly something to do with your converting. I have converted dvd's to the pda and have never had any problems