• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

What's the best movie format to play on Android?

I

ItalianHunk

Well-Known Member
I'm using Rockplayer Lite cause it plays a lot of different formats. But I'm wondering...

Which format will take up less space on my memory card?

Which format will play the smoothest?

I have a HTC Inspire. Soon to get the HTC One X. (if that matters)
 
mkv uses less space, but it can't be played with hardware decoding (only software), so the playback may not be as smooth if your phone/tablet isn't powerful enough. When using avi, it is decoded using the graphics chip, but if you use mkv, everything will be done by the CPU.
 
I use Mobo player and it plays 720p MKV files perfectly. I don't know what the best format to use is but Mobo plays a lot of them.
 
I use .mp4 also. The size is greatly dependent on the encoding bit rate, resolution and other factors. IMHO the best format is one which uses the hardware decoding.
 
I have a huawei android m860 n im having trouble playn video ive tried mobo, daroon and all the apps n the video takes 4ever 2 buffer n wen it does it wont play without stoppn n playn 4 only a few seconds wats wrong??
 
hello guys
I prefer Mobo player, because it can be played smoothly using hardware decoding on all phones.

_________________________
 
chanchan05 said:
I prefer AVI, because its a format which can be played smoothly using hardware decoding on all phones.
Click to expand...

Not really. Because first off, AVI is just a container type. The actual video could be an MP4, DivX, MPEG, whatever. And I have never seen a phone that can play AVI through hardware (not to say they don't exist). Usually its just MP4.
 
I'm hoping someone will be able to help me out on this one. I just picked up a new ViewSonic G tablet and love it. I have a couple of DVD's I want to place on the SD card for mobile viewing.

Here is the question, what format should I use to get the best HD or close with out the size getting to big (I'm hoping to keep the size around 2gm per movie). I know the higher Def I go for the bigger the file. But would love to find a nice balance. I'm open to ideas. Again screen size is 1024 X 800 10.1"
 
You can see the below table shows what files Android devices support, with both codec and filename extension information provided.

android-support-video-format.jpg


Learn More Android Support Media Formats at http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

However, an Android application can use media codecs either provided by any Android-powered device, or additional media codecs developed by third-party companies. Therefore, if you want to play videos on Android, find a multi-format video player or convert videos to Android compatible formats.

PS: Personally, I have a HTC One phone, I like to convert my MKV, AVI, FLV video to MP4 and put them to my phone for watching at any time
19.gif
 
My phone is not the greatest, but was affordable with good enough features to satisfy me 'till the near future and I can play 3/4GB .mkv w/o a problem, which REALLY surprised me, I use MX Player Pro. So ofc way smaller files like .avi and .mp4 play fine and come out pretty sharp as well.
 
I have all my movies (200+) in mkv format stored on a 2TB shared drive. I access them on Android using Plex which will direct play the file if the device supports the format or automatically transcode the file if the device does not support the format which means the file will always play. If you sign up for their new subscription model or one-time lifetime fee, you also have the ability to download movies or shows to your device in a compatible format.

To me, this is the easiest way to store and watch my movie collection from all my devices without loading individual movies on the microSD card. You could also use HandBrake to convert your movie files to different formats.

The only issue I have with the mkv format is movies with DTS soundtracks. Android does not support DTS and will not down-convert to stereo automatically as it does with Dolby Digital. For these files, I use HandBrake and re-encode the audio with AC3 6 Channel Discrete.
 
Interesting shocky. My Samsung Ace 2 refused to play the files I tried from mythtv (.ogg and .mpeg) when I tried it. I put VLC Player beta on it as an app I think should play just about anything.

As for formats, my main concern is compatibility between the Linux computers here and the android devices. This may be sort of historical (I've not looked in more recent times) now but because of its MS ties and support not always being that good for it on Linux, AVI has been a format I prefer to avoid.
 
jonbanjo said:
Interesting shocky. My Samsung Ace 2 refused to play the files I tried from mythtv (.ogg and .mpeg) when I tried it. I put VLC Player beta on it as an app I think should play just about anything.

As for formats, my main concern is compatibility between the Linux computers here and the android devices. This may be sort of historical (I've not looked in more recent times) now but because of its MS ties and support not always being that good for it on Linux, AVI has been a format I prefer to avoid.
Click to expand...

ogg and mpeg work fine here, I don't think you can really compare the Ace 2 to the Galaxy S/Note series

Use whatever format your comfortable with, most of my video files are mkv
 
jonbanjo said:
As for formats, my main concern is compatibility between the Linux computers here and the android devices. This may be sort of historical (I've not looked in more recent times) now but because of its MS ties and support not always being that good for it on Linux, AVI has been a format I prefer to avoid.
Click to expand...

AVI plays very well on my Linux System (Fedora 17x64) as do a lot of other formats. In the early days there was a few issue but those have been long gone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom