Playing h.264 videos

[dvdcatalyst]

Originally Posted by stanwelks I tried viewing h.264 videos through the browser on a site and it didn't work. How can I do this? Thanks.

.mp4 works.

Just visit one of the links in this thread using the browser on your Droid.

Droid-Optimized Movie Trailers

854x480, h264 video @ 1500kbps, 160kbps audio

embedded video probably will not work, since this requires a video plugin for the browser, but direct links do work (if the file is properly formatted) and will open up the video player app on the Droid.

[Sarreq Teryx]

try getting mp4box and re-muxing the movs to mp4

beside that, I'd really like to see mkv support in android, it's open source, I don't see why not

[LrdElderon]

Originally Posted by Sarreq Teryx try getting mp4box and re-muxing the movs to mp4 beside that, I'd really like to see mkv support in android, it's open source, I don't see why not

There are a lot of things that are open source and should be part of or at least installable into android for instance .flac support or heck not even open source, we should be able to add pretty much any codec we want, but we can't because google has it all locked down so all we can play is what it says on the outside of the box.

Apps like VLC which can play almost everything will not be feasible as far as I know until google opens up the media portion of android more. I hear this may be a possibility in the future.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I was reading a forum for a high end codec company and they were saying the hold up for codec support for other formats is google.

[peaceoutside.org]

I'm looking for this answer in many places. Hopefully you guys can help.

I want a droid user to navigate to a web page.

On this web page, there will be a video or list of videos.

When the user clicks one of the videos it will start streaming in the droid media player.

So far I've tried the HTML5 video tag which is supposed to work but doesn't and just a standard anchor tag that works, but does not stream the video.

[dvdcatalyst]

Originally Posted by peaceoutside.org I'm looking for this answer in many places. Hopefully you guys can help. I want a droid user to navigate to a web page. On this web page, there will be a video or list of videos. When the user clicks one of the videos it will start streaming in the droid media player. So far I've tried the HTML5 video tag which is supposed to work but doesn't and just a standard anchor tag that works, but does not stream the video.

like in my "trailer" thread?
Droid-Optimized Movie Trailers

it's the file itself that enables this functionality. It's called fast-start

QuickTime 7: Preparing movies for Internet delivery

[peaceoutside.org]

Originally Posted by dvdcatalyst it's the file itself that enables this functionality. It's called fast-start QuickTime 7: Preparing movies for Internet delivery

Awesome, that is exactly what I needed.

If I am fortunate, maybe I can get the right settings and configuration to make this work the way I want on all H.264-enabled mobile devices.

[dvdcatalyst]

Originally Posted by peaceoutside.org If I am fortunate, maybe I can get the right settings and configuration to make this work the way I want on all H.264-enabled mobile devices.

The streaming server app I am working on is based on the same principle. Initially I started it for the iPhone, but then found out it worked on other devices as well.
Unfortunately, with the latest iPhone update, it no longer works this way on the iPhone/iPod Touch. Now if you access a properly created MP4 through the web, it just loads it as a txt file, filling the browser with an ascii representation of the video

if you want it to work on Droid, BB and Windows Mobile 6+ devices, make sure you use the lowest resolution of the bunch. Blackberry Curve uses 320x240 as a max for video, which plays fine on all others, however, using something higher than that will result in some devices not capable of playback.
If you are running your own server for hosting the files, you could look into "darwin streaming server" which can stream the files at different resolutions, however, it has a limitation on how many it can serve at once.

[Stacman]

Obviously, no one has done any research (not really everyone), so stop at VideoHelp.com - Forum, Guides, Tools and hardware lists and read all about any kind of video you want.

You don't play an H.264 file. That is the codec used for encoding it. You have to convert the file to a format supported by the phone. The .mp4 extension is the most common for phones, and there are dozens of small utilities that'll convert the files from/to whatever format you want. Try MediaCoder. It's free and does a very nice job. Then just load it on your SD card and play it. The .avi extensions won't work because they use the H.263 codec.

[Stacman]

Here's another link with instructions Encoding Videos for Your Motorola Droid | Adubvideo

[peaceoutside.org]

I attached my settings I'm using to export video from QuickTime Pro.

Using these settings, it still doesn't work for me. Am I missing something?

I noticed your files in the trailer thread were all .mp4, but I didn't see any option to export as .mp4.

Renaming the exported .mov did not fix the issue.