3 posts tagged “video”

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The dutch NOS (national broadcast service) has now started streaming their news videos as well as live streams of the olympics for the mobile phone platform. At the same time they upgraded their mobile site and added a dedicated new application as a download option. It features an enhanced news experience including live video media streaming of the Olympics.

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Their all new refurbished mobile website now presents the topics news, sports, weather and traffic information. In addition the latest newsvideo broadcast can be streamed from the site directly onto your mobile device. On the Nokia N95 it is done using realplayer. The mobile site also features a download section offering a dedicated news application to be downloaded. For my N95 this was a properly signed *.sisx application.

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The dedicated news application the information of their mobile website and extra articles and videos. The interface is a bit more slick that their mobile website and features a 'news ticker' with the latest info. Additonally they are offering several video streams: the news in the last 24 hours,  the latest news, separate news items (about China, Birma etc..) as were already possible to view with the flash-enhanced webbrowser of the N95, live political streaming of discussions from the Hague (yuck) and upto 6 live streams from the Olympics and Roland Garros. The Olympic channel selection for the mobile consumer is now wider than that of the tv-consumer. The application installation went flawless though it did gave a message that it was, at the least, free until end of 2008. Let's hope it stays like that.

Upto now I was annoyed that the Brittish and the Germans could watch their national news broadcasts on the Nokia n-series but we as the dutch could not. In one step we are on par or perhaps even slightly better off ;-)

In the last few months I have seen an increase of dedicated mobile websites delivering to the point efficient information with only minor ads. Anything from cinema guides, TV-guides, weather, news to traffic information. Many of them I prefer over using RSS and the larger PC oriented sites. RSS often has randomly abbreviated information) bits luring you into going to PC-oriented sites with obnoxious popups, flashmovies or mindless jabber to get to the real bits. Mobile sites lets people reinvent the art of using limited screenspace useful.

I will regret the day my phone gains 1024x758 pixels of resolution.

My N95 was upgraded yesterday with firmware v21. Today I reinstalled Share Online 3.0 on it. Of course I visited their mobile site to see if everything worked and if my content was still there. Behold, their mobile site now served my MP4 video's as 3GP (176x144 pixel). The video's can't be viewed from within Share Online. You have to use the webbrowser. However it is another step for mobile web penetration. Formerly MP4-video's could only be viewed with flash on their desktop oriented website.

With the new V21 firmware on the N95 you can visit their desktop website too and play the fullsized flash videos on your N95 from the browser. I recommend you have sufficient bandwidth to stream that. Now we  truly have the best of both worlds. View a OVI desktop movie here:

And the mobile version  here (best to switch to your mobile browser ;-) ). I hope the  other nseries models get their firmware upgrade with integrated flashplayer soon. It is far more useful than expected.

I have a nice collection of DVD's. In fact its too large, too large to fit inside the microSD slot of my N95, too large to fit in the SD-slot of my N800. So obvious some compression is required to change the DVD-discs into a more compact shape that is accepted by the N95 and N800. 

Of course having state of the art devices, we want the best viewing quality on all the devices with a single convenient file. Guess what... I ran into the imperfections of life, the universe and everything.

Video format compatibility issues

Now on first sight the N95 and the N800 both have two compatible video formats. The default videoplayers of the N95 and the N800 take in mp4. The N95 can run the stage6 DivX player, the N800 supports mplayer which can handle DivX too and hapily my Philips DVD-player takes DivX, but sadly no mp4. Obvious one would choose to encode the video in a single format on a diskdrive. Here it is where thing go pearshaped and the term 'can play mp4/DivX' means, can play sometimes mp4/DivX. The universe of videofiles has two quircky dimensions. There are file formats, actually called containers, that store compressed video in a certain container format. However the compressed video can be different types of compression formats. And to blur the distinctions there are containers that are called MP4 and compression that is called MP4. The MP4 container format can contain i.e. H.264 compressed or MP4 compressed video.

• The N95's default media player can play a MP4, with H.264 compression with a resolution of 320x240. A maximum bitrate of 1400 kbps is recommended in the forums. It can also handle MP4, with MP4 compression with a resolution 640x480 at 1.4 Mbps (confirmed) or even 3Mbps as is created by the built-in camera application (untested). Wether the N95 actually uses all the 3Mpbs data during playback is doubtful. Playback on the PC tends to give a sharper image. I suspect that the image-quality is hardware decoder limited and more bitrate does not improve the playback on the device above a certain level. Playback on the N95 screen is done at 320x240, playback through the tv-out at 640x480, giving a much better quality than 320x240 encoded video on a tv.
  
• The N800 is a pretty difficult device. The native screen resolution of the N800 is 800x480 pixels but there seems to be a bus bandwidth limit obstructing video playback at full screen resolution. Typical a resolution of 400x240 works well.The default Nokia video converter converts videos to a MP4 container file, with MP4 compression at bitrates upto 800 kbps. Resolution changes from 400x160 pixels to 320x240 pixels depending on the width and height of the original video, resp. 2.35:1 to 4:3. Using other software to generate MP4 at higher resolutions in general leads to interrupted playback, particular at heavy action scenes. Framerate might be lowered from 25 fps to 15, but that would make the action also more choppy.
  
• The DVD-player does not play MP4, but it seems to have little problems with any DivX type of file.

As you have noted I only talked about MP4 here. DivX can be played on the N95 and the N800 but the required resolutions are low enough that it is not of interest for the DVD-player and on the N95 tv-out in 640x480 is not supported. MP4 seems the best choice and should run also on the iPod Video, the iPhone and the iTouch.

From the figures above clearly the N95 has the better video hardware for MP4 playback. Despite the facts that the N800 has the better and bigger screen (800x480 pixels versus 320x240) and the faster processor (400 MHz versus 333 MHz). Also H.264 compression is supported on the N95 and even in OS2008 I could not get a 320x240 MP4 with H.264 compression to playback on the N800. The N810 is specified to cope with the the format,but I have not yet seen a confirmation or denial of this.

So it seems it is not a question of picking the right format but more about picking the right resolution and bitrate. For playback on the screens of the N95 and the N800 their best format is clearly MP4 at 320x240 pixels, and a bit rate of 800 kbps gives more than sufficient quality on both of them. For top-notch tv-out quality the N95 can handle 640x480 pixels resolution, perfect for vacations in accomodations where there are tv's with composite video-in connectors for top-notch playback. 1400 kbps seems sufficient high to get the most out of the video playback, though 3000 should be possible. With Dolby Surround preserved in the stereo sound it makes a jaw dropping playback quality if the tv-setup can do surround! Also 640x480 in MP4 is also supported by the iPhone and iTouch as well as several iPod Video's. Making MP4 a lasting choice.

Conclusion

If I want to compress for playback on the device screens of the Nokia N800 and N95 the best pick is MP4 at 400x240 or 320x240 pixels, 25-30 Hz, 800 kbps. The video can be converted with the Nokia internet tablet video converter which works well and runs on both the N800 and the N95.

Playback of is smooth and fluid on the N800, and video scaling to full screen is well implemented resulting in the minimum amount of blocky pixels during playback. Still for the N800 one feels a bit cheated. Video playback when using the full 640x400 resolution on my Dell Axim X51v clearly looks much sharper and crisper than the 320x240 with pixel doubling on the N800. Especially when being used to the sharp 800x480 screen resolution of the N800 for the dekstop applications, a panning scene from Lord of the Rings looks definitly a bit fuzzy. However the fluent playback at the 400x160 or 320x240 does make the action scenes look great.

On the N95 playback looks also crisp and clear and even more fluid. the 320x240 matches the N95's screen resolution perfectly and downscaling 400x240 suffers no problems what so ever and even gains some extra resolution for playback via tv-out. If you want to go topnotch with the N95, a MP4 at 640x480 and 1400 kbps with surround encoded stereo sound is most impressive. Hook it up to a widescreen tv with surround capabilities and play 'The Matrix'. The mp4 at 640x480 is also suitable for the iPhone and iTouch as well as several iPod Video's. Making the resolution and file format a flexible choice.

Last remains to note that James Burland at NokiaCreative posted getting good results at 480x240 resolution on the N800 using XViD through Handbreak. Clearly there is room left for some tweaking.

Regrettable

The only video's recorded by the N95 that will playback seem to be the MP4 video's of 320x240 or smaller. The  640x480 resolution is too much for the N800. Eventhough at 400x160 and 320x240 pixels there is 25-50% cpu power to spare on the N800 during playback. MP4 video's with resolutions to high for the display to handle could be decoded at lower resolutions before using pixel doubling for playback. It is a bit clumsy but with cpu power to spare, it could at least play a high quality video recording made with my N95 or another recent N-series phone.