Phone based converter for 3gp videos?

[dvhttn]

Right. First time post in this section so here goes .... Finally brought my TV into the modern age about a week ago. Got a Panansonic Viera GT30, 42" up from 20" Great TV but wish I'd gone for a larger screen now .... Anyhow, one of its features is DLNA and, as I have an HTC Desire HD which also has DLNA, was looking forward to streaming "stuff" from phone to goggle box. Got a wireless dongle for the TV and set that up on my home network. Then about 30 seconds later had photos and music going from phone to TV.

Then the 'BUT' ..... But videos didn't work, 'format not supported' on the TV. Seems the TV doesn't support the 3gp files that my phone generates. OK I thought, I'm sure it's dead easy to convert them. Well, it is on the PC but it seems that an Android 'based' converter isn't available. At least I haven't been able to find one (so just point me at the thread 2 below this that mentions a free app for this .... ). It would seem that 3gp can be converted into mp4 very easily, just using a hex editor from a couple of threads I've seen, so I was wondering why something simple wasn't available on the phone?

Now, yes, I could convert them on the PC and stream them from there to the TV (Windows Media Player set up the media stream from my PC dead easily!) but it'd be nice to be able to just come home and turn the TV on to watch the latest vid rather than have to faff about with the PC first. If I can't find something then the 'convert first' is what I'll need to do but can anyone point me at an app that will do the conversion?

Ta in advance.

Dave

 

[sitlet]

There isn't any videos converters for the phone. Its a phone, not a computer, it just doesnt have the cpu power to convert videos. Just use Handbrake on a computer. It will literally take a few seconds per video.

 

[dvhttn]

There isn't any videos converters for the phone ....

That confirms what I was thinking anyway. One of the points of my question was just to prove to myself I hadn't missed something obvious. Thanks for that.

... Its a phone, not a computer, it just doesnt have the cpu power to convert videos. ...

I'll disagree with you here. I've programmed PC ATs to do complex graphics. My first deskside Unix box had a 25MHz CPU, 480MB hard drive and either 8 or 16MB (that's MEGAbytes!) of RAM. Did pretty well at the time. Our customers were doing all sorts of graphics and video stuff with them. So my HTC Desire HD with its 1GHz CPU, 32GB SD Card (hard drive!) and hundreds of MB of RAM can easily handle the task of converting a few home videos. I'm not after converting the extended version of Lord of the Rings, just a few minutes of 720i 3gp files. As the 3gp format (container?) uses most of the mp4 codec then the conversion should be fairly simple.

However, it's not as easy as just changing the file extension. Tried that! Oh well, seems I'll have to resort back to the PC ....

Dave

 

[Usta]

@dvhttn,
You should have bought a Samsung TV not Panasonic...
Mine supports whatever format I through at it. Sometimes I stream from the phone, sometimes from PC, and sometimes I just plug a USB stick or USB HDD to TV and play directly.

I'd suggest first to check exactly what are the audio/video specs of your TV.
Then you can decide what is the best way to convert and stream video. To make things simple, just copy here those features advertised for your TV.

 

[dvhttn]

@dvhttn,
You should have bought a Samsung TV not Panasonic... ...

Well if you're prepared to put up with the inferior picture quality who am I to argue ...

... Mine supports whatever format I through at it. Sometimes I stream from the phone, sometimes from PC, and sometimes I just plug a USB stick or USB HDD to TV and play directly.

I'd suggest first to check exactly what are the audio/video specs of your TV. Then you can decide what is the best way to convert and stream video. To make things simple, just copy here those features advertised for your TV.

It's OK. The problem is just as I described. It doesn't play 3gp video files, though most others!!. It's a Panasonic TX-42GT30B if you really want to delve into the manuals, which I'm sure are online somewhere.

I can convert the 3gp files to MP4s and the TV then plays them. I even copied them back to the phone (the MP4s) and played from there, no problem. As I said, I can convert and play no problem on the PC. I was just after an app that could convert on the phone which would save me some time/hassle (not much, agreed!). If there is no such app then I have to do things on the PC.

Cheers.

Dave

 

[Usta]

It's OK. The problem is just as I described. It doesn't play 3gp video files, though most others!!. It's a Panasonic TX-42GT30B if you really want to delve into the manuals, which I'm sure are online somewhere.

I can convert the 3gp files to MP4s and the TV then plays them. I even copied them back to the phone (the MP4s) and played from there, no problem. As I said, I can convert and play no problem on the PC. I was just after an app that could convert on the phone which would save me some time/hassle (not much, agreed!). If there is no such app then I have to do things on the PC.

Cheers.

Dave

There isn't anything on the phone that I'm aware of.
Regarding the conversion, I think you can get away with re-packaging 3gp to mp4, instead of converting the video and audio streams.

One way to do this is to use Avidemux on PC. Open the 3gp video, select copy for audio and video then save it as mp4. Takes a few seconds per video and it doesn't degrade the media quality.