Video/Audio skipping on certain files
Hello all, please help me resolve my problem so that I don't go crazy.
I have an AT&T Tilt/Kaiser running WinMo 6.1 and a custom ROM.
It has a 400mhx processor, 128MB RAM and a 2GB flash card.
No other apps are running when the problem occurs and I generally have 50-60% memory free when the player is running.
I have the latest Divx mobile player and most of the time it works fine, lately however it isn't working at all. I can only watch about 30 seconds of video before it begins stuttering and eventually stops.
I can fix this by advancing the vid a little and it re-syncs and then works fine for another 30 seconds then dies.
I've played entire movies without a hitch so I know that it can handle big files at monitor resolution just fine which is why I think there's an issue with the player not the files.
I'm currently watching season 4 of a TV show that I downloaded, Seasons 1-3 worked fine as did the first 4 episodes of season 4. All of the sudden I can't get any of these newer files to play even tho I've converted them to the "mobile" profile using the DivX converter recently.
I was really starting to enjoy passing the time watching 4-5 videos a day and now I can't. Please help me solve this!
Has something else changed on your phone recently? Windows Mobile is a multi-tasking OS so it is possible that some other software running in the background is hurting the performance of DivX Mobile Player. There's no reason for it to suddenly start performing badly.
There are some useful tips at http://labs.divx.com/node/7774
Using "Mobile" on DivX Converter should work well with minimal stuttering. Do all your Mobile videos play poorly or can you still make SOME that play well?
The stuttering typically indicates that you are playing a video with a very high bitrate that your phone can't keep up with. Bitrate is a combination of resolution and quality. It is possible to make a low-quality, high-resolution file that can play smoothly on your Kaiser. You mentioned that you've played large files at monitor resolution. These are probably low-qual, high-res.
Conversely, it is possible to make a high-quality, low-resolution video that cannot play smoothly on your Kaiser. Even if the picture is just 320x240 pixels, it might still have such a high bitrate that the Kaiser cannot keep up. Non-DivX software like FFMPEG often create files like this.
If you use DivX software (like Converter) and you select the Mobile profile then the resulting video should be a good balance between resolution and quality. The Kaiser may not be able to play the video perfectly, but it will probably be good enough to watch.
Unfortunately, controlling bitrate is difficult to do. Videos have variable bitrate (much like VBR MP3) so some points of the video will be easy for the Kaiser to play while other (high action scenes) may be impossible. Many tools (including Converter) will allow you to adjust the AVERAGE bitrate but this still doesn't fix the MAX bitrate scenes that cause your Kaiser to stutter.
If you are using Converter, try adjusting the average bitrate down to about 300kbps (by default it is 600kbps). That might help. Try using the qMobile setting that caps the max bitrate to 200kbps. Finally, try using a different tool like VirtualDub that gives you low-level command line access to the DivX encoder and allows you to cap the max bitrate at what ever you want. I can provide more help with that if you decide to try it.
Previously my phone had no trouble playing 2 hour movies at 640x480 resolution, it was the same with the other files in this series. I'm not sure of the audio settings but I believe they were all at 48k stereo.
The files I'm having trouble with now had the same settings as the ones that worked fine and the problem persists even after downsampling to the mobile settings. That's what's confusing to me.
So basically even after converting to "mobile" I'm having the same issues. BTW just to be clear I always experienced light occasional stuttering but this basicaly stutters then grinds to a halt. They play fine on my computer in case I didn't mention that.