Transfer and play videos on the evo?

[motoman740]

Hi, I purchased an HTC evo today and I succesfully transfered some music to the evo. But I cant manage to play h264, mp4 or mov videos on the phone... where should I place the video files? root, media, create a video folder, or some where else?

 

[RickJ]

Videos are in same folders as pics DCIM/100MEDIA/

I couldnt find it initially so the folder may be created after you take your first pictures/videos. Not sure about that, however it is there now.

Use the video shortcut (on whatever screen its placed) and it will bring up the folder in the same format as viewing pictures. I have successfully loaded/played an mp4 with excellent quality.

I'll be trying a m4v shortly

 

[choij2000]

i'm having the same problem moving movies to my card. i throw them in the /media/ folder, and the phone can find them, but it won't play (these are under 2gb files).

these were .m4v files that didn't work. i tried changing the extension to .mp4 (still works on the pc) but it doesn't work on the phone.

i tried using handbrake (got some cryptic errors) on 2 different pc's. and, i even tried using encodehd (got some other wierd error). the only strange thing is the fact that i have these movies stored on an external hdd. i don't understand why else i can't put get these movies to play on the evo.

any help is appreciated.

 

[criccio]

Pretty simple.

How to convert videos and transfer them to the HTC EVO 4G - Know Your Cell

Google is your friend

Been transcoding a few 1080p and 720p BD rips in H264 format in MKV containers down to lower bitrate H264 in .m4v containers and they all play flawlessly on the Evo, even over HDMI to a TV.

Of course, transcoding from one lossy codec to another is going to lower the PQ... but its a phone. Can't expect any more.

Seems to be some confusion over what is a codec, and what is a container, and the difference between the two. This should clear some things up:

Thanks Valerio!

Containers
A container is a file format that stores video and audio. The actual video/audio/etc contained within it remains the same, you can take it out and put it in another container with reasonable ease.
To get to the contents of a container you need a splitter. A splitter takes the container and splits it into its various components (ie the video and the audio). The codecs can then use this to play the video/audio for you.

TS (Transport Stream)
TV is transmitted in a transport stream container(.ts extension), it helps reduce problems from errors in the stream by splitting the video into little chunks.
A consequence of this is that it takes up more room than other containers.

MKV (Matroska)
A lovely little container that lets you put anything inside it: Video, Audio, Subtitles, random files...

AVI (Audio Video Interleave)
Not so nice as MKV, wasn't originally even supposed to allow divx/xvid ... but that's what you'll see it used for. Doesn't support subtitles.

MP4
The 'official' container for h264. In this you can put:
Video: h264, mpeg2, xvid/divx
Audio: AAC, mp3 (and some random other audio codecs).
Subs: MPEG-4 Timed Text (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_17), .srt
DOES NOT support DTS or AC3 which are the main audio codecs you'll see here.

WMV
Microsoft container..you pretty much just get WMV video and audio in this.

Codecs
A codec (stands for COmpressor-DECompressor or Coder-DECoder) is a method of encoding video or audio to a smaller size so it can be transmitted/stored.

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC aka x264,h264,AVC
H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC, for Advanced Video Coding, is a digital video codec standard which is noted for achieving very high data compression.

I've split this into 2 parts because they're split into different categories on the site.
x264 is a program that encodes videos into h264. The x264 category on the site are all encodes created by this program.

The h264 category contains streams from TV. These are generally alot higher bitrate than videos encoded using x264 (and so higher quality).
h264 is widely used in europe (by SKY HD, BBC HD, Premiere...) as a replacement for mpeg2. At most bitrates this outperforms mpeg2.
This is also transmitted in a TS container (same as mpeg2).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264

XviD/DivX
Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a free and open source MPEG-4 video codec.
Xvid is a primary competitor of DivX (Xvid being DivX spelled backwards). While DivX is closed source and may only run on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, Xvid is open source and can potentially run on any platform.

xvid/divx is similar in quality to that of h264, however they do work in slightly different ways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XviD

MPEG2
All the MPEG2 content you will see on this site is straight from tv. TV in america (primary source for HD content) uses the MPEG2 codec. HD from TV will come in a TS container (see the TS section above).
MPEG2 is also the codec used for DVD Video. It isn't as highly compressed as divx/h264 which makes it easier to play back (uses less cpu), but has larger filesizes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-2

WMV aka WMV9, VC-1
Created by microsoft this codec is commonly found on WMV HD DVDs and HD DVDs. Note the first is a regular dvd, and the second is the new HD DVD. The VC-1 codec is also a possibility for Blu-Ray disks.

DTS aka Digital Theater System
DTS (also known as Digital Theater Systems), owned by DTS, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTSI), is a multi-channel digital surround sound format used for both commercial/theatrical and consumer grade applications (with significant technical differences between home and commercial/theatrical variants.
(Didn't read all of the stuff wiak put) DTS is a high quality audio codec. It is, however, larger than Dolby Digital (AC3) so is not used as often here.
DTS cannot be transmitted in a TS container, so you won't see that around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Theater_System

Dolby Digital aka AC3
Dolby Digital is the most used multi channel audio format on HDTV content, nearly all movies has atleast a Dolby Digital 5.1 384kbps audiotrack.
Dolby Digital is the audio type you'll see in all transport streams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby

Doing one right now actually

 

[choij2000]

wow, that was a lot of good info....but like i said, my handbrake keeps giving me errors for some reason. i wish i could cut and paste it here, but i think it stems from the fact that after i choose a source, on the picture tab, the size of the source shows up as 0x0 (aspect ratio 0)....which leads to a lot of other 0's and possibly some errors.

i just don't get why the .mp4 format doesnt' work.

 

[RickJ]

Good info, being new to this wasnt aware that m4v and mp4 were the same container( not that i even knew the difference between a container and a codec) by a different name. In any case I reduced the fr down to 23.97 and videos play very nicely.