explain me video codec's

adolf hamster · 23 May 2015 at 00:49

Sadly the font of knowledge that is Google seems to either supply me with "it supports nearly every codec known to man..." or "download our free converter, totally hax free" so I figured i'd ask here.

Notion took me over the past week, after noting vlc player had a conversion ability, to digitalise my dvd library so I might actually stand a chance of watching them once in a while on my tablet (Samsung galaxy tab pro).

Thing is, i've been having some fun getting codecs to work, ive tried nearly every combo that seems logical, mkv, mp4 and even. Ogg and the other random ones for container, h264 (which is listed as being supported) with mp3 audio track.

Thing is, everything i've tried has either yeilded no sound, or no video (weirdly ive been sticking to mp3 sound and changing the video encoding stops that from working?). My one successful version that had both was really poor quality (ive no idea about such things but bitrate ive set to 2048kbps video and 256kbps audio).

On top of all this, i'm using vlc on both pc and tablet, yet the tablet version doesnt work (despite the video looking fine on pc)

So im at a loss, are we still in those dark ages when you just couldnt get an mp4 to play or am I missing something here? Its just sd dvd's no blu ray so i'm not expecting miracles but obviously i'm after the best I can get given the source material.

Any help in explaining would be very much appreciated.

Tl;dr- either i'm bad at converting video, or Android be glitchy, please help

stopper · 23 May 2015 at 00:59

adolf hamster said:
Thing is, i've been having some fun getting codecs to work, ive tried nearly every combo that seems logical, mkv, mp4 and even. Ogg and the other random ones for container, h264 (which is listed as being supported) with mp3 audio track.

Use AAC audio with a h264 mp4, those together work just fine with my tab and should with yours.

yashiro · 23 May 2015 at 02:58

Use Handbrake. Don't bother installing codecs.

adolf hamster · 23 May 2015 at 03:00

stopper said:
Use AAC audio with a h264 mp4, those together work just fine with my tab and should with yours.

Right, i'll give that a go next run. H264 only seems to work in mkv not mp4 for me though

bledd · 23 May 2015 at 08:03

Use makemkv to get from DVD or BR to uncompressed mkv.

Then use handbrake if you want to shrink it and compress the video and sound.

Orcvader · 23 May 2015 at 17:58

Dump VLC on Android and use MX Player, it has a much better codec support. It can also play MKV files.

+1 to Handbrake, by default it uses the h264 codec for both MKV and MP4 which is completely fine. AAC is the best to use for audio, do not use MP3

.

Which Android device do you have and what Android version is it running? As each device will have a different SoC with different hardware decoders.

adolf hamster · 23 May 2015 at 21:38

Its a Samsung tabpro 10.1 running whatver android was before the latest one (kitkat or something)

Blackjack Davy · 23 May 2015 at 22:49

Get a proper tool for trancoding AV Handbrake or RipBot264. MP4 uses H264 and AAC as standard, MKV is more flexible but tends to be H264 and AC3. MP3 is only standard for AVI and thats pretty much it.

Orcvader · 23 May 2015 at 22:56

adolf hamster said:
Its a Samsung tabpro 10.1 running whatver android was before the latest one (kitkat or something)

Then use MX Player instead of VLC player, and in the settings enable the HW+ decoder. In the core limit option set it to 4. This should be able to play any video file encoded with h264.

adolf hamster · 23 May 2015 at 23:29

Blackjack Davy said:
Get a proper tool for trancoding AV Handbrake or RipBot264. MP4 uses H264 and AAC as standard, MKV is more flexible but tends to be H264 and AC3. MP3 is only standard for AVI and thats pretty much it.

So its not liking the audio? Typical the one thing i thought wouldnt cause problems.

Orcvader said:
Then use MX Player instead of VLC player, and in the settings enable the HW+ decoder. In the core limit option set it to 4. This should be able to play any video file encoded with h264.

I'll take a look at this, not au fey with the android apps so i assumed familiar vlc would do the job.

Orcvader · 24 May 2015 at 00:04

adolf hamster said:
So its not liking the audio? Typical the one thing i thought wouldnt cause problems.

VLC player for Android is relatively new so could still be filled with bugs. MX Player on the other hand has been on Android for a very long time with strong developer support, it's perhaps the current best video player for Android at this time.

adolf hamster · 25 May 2015 at 15:56

Orcvader said:
VLC player for Android is relatively new so could still be filled with bugs. MX Player on the other hand has been on Android for a very long time with strong developer support, it's perhaps the current best video player for Android at this time.

Fair enough, i'm too busy this week to take a proper look but when i get the chance i'll try h264 with aac and run it on mxplayer see how that works.