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+--- Thread: Playing video files (/showthread.php?tid=12430)
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Playing video files - Zebulon Walton - 12-06-2020
I mentioned this in a post on the Mobian board but there were no responses. I don't know if this issue is only with that distribution or if it's more general to the Pinephone's video capabilities.
What I've found is that when playing local video files on the Pinephone it cannot keep up with 1080p, or even 480p playback (though the latter is better). To make videos play smoothly I've had to transcode them down to 240p. (Admittedly I have not tried 360, that might work as well, but 240 looks surprisingly good on the phone's small screen.) This is the case whether using Mobian's default video player or the VLC video player.
Is this something that is likely to improve as development continues, or is it just a limitation of the video hardware?
For anyone else running into this issue, I put together a quick-and-dirty shell script that uses ffmpeg to transcode the video to 240p H.264, preserving the aspect ratio, and copies the audio, from the source mp4 and mkv files in the current directory. The resulting reduced resolution files are placed in a "240" subdirectory.
Code:
#!/bin/sh
mkdir 240
for file in *.m??
do
echo '----------------------------------------'
echo Processing $file...
ffmpeg -i "$file" -c:v libx264 -c:a copy -vf scale=-2:240 "240/$file"
echo '----------------------------------------'
doneRE: Playing video files - p1trson - 12-06-2020
It's not the HW limitation, it's drivers + software, check this demo for instance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyRm8kccyG4
RE: Playing video files - nas - 12-06-2020
(12-06-2020, 01:58 PM)Zebulon Walton Wrote: What I've found is that when playing local video files on the Pinephone it cannot keep up with 1080p, or even 480p playback
It's a while since I tested it but hd videos played fine using mpv.
RE: Playing video files - Zebulon Walton - 12-06-2020
OK, being a software issue it will likely improve with updates over time. I'll give mpv a try as suggested and see how that does. Though encoding in 240p saves lots of space and looks OK on the Pinephone screen. (Of course it would look pretty crappy on a large external monitor.)
RE: Playing video files - hiimtye - 12-07-2020
i was playing 720p video using youtube-dl and mpv just fine, though i havent tested in a while
RE: Playing video files - NormandC - 12-07-2020
I was surprised to see a recent update to youtube-dl on my phone, it seems it is installed by default on Mobian?
Considering the recent controversy with the project and Github, I found that surprising.
RE: Playing video files - Zebulon Walton - 12-07-2020
I installed mpv and tested with 720 and 1080 video files. It plays 1080 fairly well, slightly jerky but not bad. Playback of 720 appears flawless. Looks like that's going to be the default video player. One drawback I see is the controls for pause, etc. are tiny and difficult to operate on the phone. Also if you fire up mpv directly it wants files dragged and dropped to it, there's no menu to directly open up files. I don't see a way to drag and drop with the phone's GUI. Minor nits for better video playback.
RE: Playing video files - displacefish - 12-07-2020
I'm not sure if there's a mobile-focused OSC preset, but I don't believe it should be too hard to make one. I might give it a try once my pinephone arrives, assuming nobody else has yet.
https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/User-Scripts is a good listing of existing scripts that I know of, though I don't see an OSC tailored for mobile there.
RE: Playing video files - 3x5co - 01-15-2021
@Zebulon Walton, I couldn't even get VLC to work. It installed fine, but the GUI was totally non-responsive. Do you know a workaround for this?
RE: Playing video files - evilbunny - 01-15-2021
(01-15-2021, 03:10 PM)3x5co Wrote: @Zebulon Walton, I couldn't even get VLC to work. It installed fine, but the GUI was totally non-responsive. Do you know a workaround for this?
you need to use mpv, vlc is cpu only