DVD Catalyst 3 and DroidX

[garath]

I've had some difficulties with video on my droidX.

I used DVD Catalyst 3 to rip a DVD "From Paris with Love" using the default Droid HQ2 settings. Worked great on the DroidX with the standard movie player.

After that, I ripped a TV show DVD (Leverage s1 disc 1 if it matters) in the same way. I did all 3 tracks queued up. Then I grabbed 3 tivo shows that I copied to my computer using Tivo Desktop also using Droid HQ2 settings.

The end result was all 3 leverage shows would play in the default movie player with no sound. I tried rockplayer (ARM7) and I had sound but the sound was ahead of the video by a few seconds. It got worse the longer I watched.

Of the 3 tivo shows I converted, 2 out of the 3 had the same problem as the leverage shows. One was fine, but only in rockplayer. None of them I did this way worked in the standard movie player.

To further confuse the issue, I tried every other video player I could find on the marketplace. Most did the exact same thing as the default movie player (no sound) but ACT 1 was able to play them with the lagged video. Except for one leverage episode. It was able to play it just fine.

Since I'm on the road I don't have access to the original files but I used handbrake to take the Droid HQ2 mp4 files and encoded them using iPhone default settings. The ones I converted work in rockplayer and ACT 1 just fine (default movie player won't see the m4v files).

I tried to use DVD Catalyst to convert the same files do Droid HQ or Droid format and those had the same sound issues.

Any thoughts?

 

[dvdcatalyst]

I've had some difficulties with video on my droidX.

I used DVD Catalyst 3 to rip a DVD "From Paris with Love" using the default Droid HQ2 settings. Worked great on the DroidX with the standard movie player.

After that, I ripped a TV show DVD (Leverage s1 disc 1 if it matters) in the same way. I did all 3 tracks queued up. Then I grabbed 3 tivo shows that I copied to my computer using Tivo Desktop also using Droid HQ2 settings.

The end result was all 3 leverage shows would play in the default movie player with no sound. I tried rockplayer (ARM7) and I had sound but the sound was ahead of the video by a few seconds. It got worse the longer I watched.

Of the 3 tivo shows I converted, 2 out of the 3 had the same problem as the leverage shows. One was fine, but only in rockplayer. None of them I did this way worked in the standard movie player.

To further confuse the issue, I tried every other video player I could find on the marketplace. Most did the exact same thing as the default movie player (no sound) but ACT 1 was able to play them with the lagged video. Except for one leverage episode. It was able to play it just fine.

Since I'm on the road I don't have access to the original files but I used handbrake to take the Droid HQ2 mp4 files and encoded them using iPhone default settings. The ones I converted work in rockplayer and ACT 1 just fine (default movie player won't see the m4v files).

I tried to use DVD Catalyst to convert the same files do Droid HQ or Droid format and those had the same sound issues.

Any thoughts?

Let me sum this up a little (makes it easier for me to figure things out)

Movie > Droid HQ2, no problems

TV show DVD > Droid HQ2, 1 works, 2 no sound / sync issues > handbrake iPhone > no issues

TiVo > Droid HQ2 > 1 works in rockplayer, 2 audio sync issues.

And when you reconvert these files with DVD Catalyst to a different Droid format, they have the same issues.

I'm not sure what could be causing the complication with the TV show DVD. It could be the HQ2 profile because it uses the maximum settings that are supported by the device, but reconversion should fix that issue.

When you play the files on your computer, with either Quicktime or VLC (don't use Windows Media Player, because that has sync issues with h264 mp4 files) do they play properly then? (based on that the re-conversion doesn't have sync issues, I would guess it would be fine)

For the TiVo files, what TiVo model do you have, and what settings were used to record?

 

[garath]

I've had some difficulties with video on my droidX.

I used DVD Catalyst 3 to rip a DVD "From Paris with Love" using the default Droid HQ2 settings. Worked great on the DroidX with the standard movie player.

After that, I ripped a TV show DVD (Leverage s1 disc 1 if it matters) in the same way. I did all 3 tracks queued up. Then I grabbed 3 tivo shows that I copied to my computer using Tivo Desktop also using Droid HQ2 settings.

The end result was all 3 leverage shows would play in the default movie player with no sound. I tried rockplayer (ARM7) and I had sound but the sound was ahead of the video by a few seconds. It got worse the longer I watched.

Of the 3 tivo shows I converted, 2 out of the 3 had the same problem as the leverage shows. One was fine, but only in rockplayer. None of them I did this way worked in the standard movie player.

To further confuse the issue, I tried every other video player I could find on the marketplace. Most did the exact same thing as the default movie player (no sound) but ACT 1 was able to play them with the lagged video. Except for one leverage episode. It was able to play it just fine.

Since I'm on the road I don't have access to the original files but I used handbrake to take the Droid HQ2 mp4 files and encoded them using iPhone default settings. The ones I converted work in rockplayer and ACT 1 just fine (default movie player won't see the m4v files).

I tried to use DVD Catalyst to convert the same files do Droid HQ or Droid format and those had the same sound issues.

Any thoughts?

Let me sum this up a little (makes it easier for me to figure things out)

Movie > Droid HQ2, no problems

TV show DVD > Droid HQ2, 1 works, 2 no sound / sync issues > handbrake iPhone > no issues

TiVo > Droid HQ2 > 1 works in rockplayer, 2 audio sync issues.

And when you reconvert these files with DVD Catalyst to a different Droid format, they have the same issues.

I'm not sure what could be causing the complication with the TV show DVD. It could be the HQ2 profile because it uses the maximum settings that are supported by the device, but reconversion should fix that issue.

When you play the files on your computer, with either Quicktime or VLC (don't use Windows Media Player, because that has sync issues with h264 mp4 files) do they play properly then? (based on that the re-conversion doesn't have sync issues, I would guess it would be fine)

For the TiVo files, what TiVo model do you have, and what settings were used to record?

That was a pretty good summation of my messy post. Only correction is of the 3 TV shows, none worked on the DroidX. All of them exhibited the sound ahead of video in rockplayer. Of the 3 tivo recordings, 1 was ok in rockplayer, 2 not.

All of the videos had no sound in the default media player except the movie.

They do work fine on my laptop in windows media player - Windows 7. The laptop is an i7 w/ 4gigs of ram.

Tivo is TivoHD. It was a high def recording so no settings for high/medium/low quality.

I wish I could use the original source and try again with a different profile and DVD catalyst 3, but I won't have that opportunity until I head home Saturday. Until then I only have the HQ2 converted video files to play with.

edit: Maybe try 2 pass?

 

[dvdcatalyst]

That was a pretty good summation of my messy post. Only correction is of the 3 TV shows, none worked on the DroidX. All of them exhibited the sound ahead of video in rockplayer. Of the 3 tivo recordings, 1 was ok in rockplayer, 2 not.

All of the videos had no sound in the default media player except the movie.

They do work fine on my laptop in windows media player - Windows 7. The laptop is an i7 w/ 4gigs of ram.

Tivo is TivoHD. It was a high def recording so no settings for high/medium/low quality.

I wish I could use the original source and try again with a different profile and DVD catalyst 3, but I won't have that opportunity until I head home Saturday. Until then I only have the HQ2 converted video files to play with.

edit: Maybe try 2 pass?

I'll probably get flamed for this, but while it might work, I would not recommend RockPlayer for testing. The reason for this is that most Android devices have build-in hardware support for H264 video (which is what the files are), and RockPlayer uses a software-engine for its codecs (an ffmpeg port) which works great for low-processor demanding codecs such as XVID and DIVX, but for H264 (which is a lot more demanding), it needs to use the hardware to playback properly. This is why the video and audio lag when you play the files in RockPlayer.

Without access to the source files its near impossible to troubleshoot or to figure out what happened with the conversion process itself, but to get your TV shows to play, I'd suggest as a temporary solution to convert them to DIVX so they will play properly in RockPlayer.

In DVD Catalyst, just click on "Modify" and change the conversion format to "divx5_mp3". Conversion should be pretty quick.

2 Pass H264 wouldn't help, it would only cause more complications due to the fluctuating bitrate. Similar as "Constant Quality" encoding, faster-moving scenes will get a higher bitrate (slower scenes receive less, making the average bitrate to what you have selected) which can exceed the limitations of the hardware.

When you do get access to your source-files again, please send me an email, and I'll do what I can to figure out what is causing your issue.

 

[garath]

That was a pretty good summation of my messy post. Only correction is of the 3 TV shows, none worked on the DroidX. All of them exhibited the sound ahead of video in rockplayer. Of the 3 tivo recordings, 1 was ok in rockplayer, 2 not.

All of the videos had no sound in the default media player except the movie.

They do work fine on my laptop in windows media player - Windows 7. The laptop is an i7 w/ 4gigs of ram.

Tivo is TivoHD. It was a high def recording so no settings for high/medium/low quality.

I wish I could use the original source and try again with a different profile and DVD catalyst 3, but I won't have that opportunity until I head home Saturday. Until then I only have the HQ2 converted video files to play with.

edit: Maybe try 2 pass?

I'll probably get flamed for this, but while it might work, I would not recommend RockPlayer for testing. The reason for this is that most Android devices have build-in hardware support for H264 video (which is what the files are), and RockPlayer uses a software-engine for its codecs (an ffmpeg port) which works great for low-processor demanding codecs such as XVID and DIVX, but for H264 (which is a lot more demanding), it needs to use the hardware to playback properly. This is why the video and audio lag when you play the files in RockPlayer.

Without access to the source files its near impossible to troubleshoot or to figure out what happened with the conversion process itself, but to get your TV shows to play, I'd suggest as a temporary solution to convert them to DIVX so they will play properly in RockPlayer.

In DVD Catalyst, just click on "Modify" and change the conversion format to "divx5_mp3". Conversion should be pretty quick.

2 Pass H264 wouldn't help, it would only cause more complications due to the fluctuating bitrate. Similar as "Constant Quality" encoding, faster-moving scenes will get a higher bitrate (slower scenes receive less, making the average bitrate to what you have selected) which can exceed the limitations of the hardware.

When you do get access to your source-files again, please send me an email, and I'll do what I can to figure out what is causing your issue.

Ah thanks. That was a good explanation of the issue. It sounds like everything I encoded that day didn't end up as H264 for some reason. Perhaps user error. I don't recall modifying the base Droid HQ2 settings but that's not to say it didn't happen.

Explains why Rockplayer is playing it and the other players are not. I wonder if Act 1 uses it's own software decoder as well. I'm not a big fan of Rockplayer anyways. Act 1 has a nicer interface. mVideoPlayer is the nicest but it doesn't see the m4v extension.

I will definitely email you if I reproduce the error. Thanks for your help

 

[dvdcatalyst]

I'm not sure how Act 1 does it. It does use hardware for decoding the video, but I think for the actual output to screen (rendering) it uses some custom code (hence the different scaling/zooming functions).

It is possible the profile accidentally got changed. Sometimes when you are typing something and DVD Catalyst gets focus after scanning files, one or more settings can get changed. I am actually working on a proper solution for that at this very moment. However, the reconversion to a different profile should have fixed that. Switching profiles resets the settings to the profile defaults.

Please let me know when you get back to it, and I'm sure we can figure out what happened.

Sorry for the complications.

 

[garath]

I'm not sure how Act 1 does it. It does use hardware for decoding the video, but I think for the actual output to screen (rendering) it uses some custom code (hence the different scaling/zooming functions).

It is possible the profile accidentally got changed. Sometimes when you are typing something and DVD Catalyst gets focus after scanning files, one or more settings can get changed. I am actually working on a proper solution for that at this very moment. However, the reconversion to a different profile should have fixed that. Switching profiles resets the settings to the profile defaults.

Please let me know when you get back to it, and I'm sure we can figure out what happened.

Sorry for the complications.

No need to apologize. Great program. I don't regret buying it for a second.