x264/mp4 problem

[Vonhonk]

I have a Samsung LCD TV, which has a USB-port I can use to watch movies. Using just an USB-stick has been very convenient for several reasons. I have used Avidemux to encode the files to AVI. Unfortunately, I had a lot of A/V-sync problems, so I moved to mp4, which I was told to be a better container for my purposes. It worked like a charm, I got rid of all the problems I had. For a few years everything went OK, I used h264 for video and AAC for audio. I had noticed my TV is sometimes very picky about the right codecs, because even when the mp4 file info says the codecs are right, the TV wouldn't play the file. It either does not recognize the codec (ââ,¬Å"unsupportedââ,¬Â) or just crashes, creating a coredump. This was the case for the mp4s I recorded with my Nokia phone. Even so, encoding them again with Avidemux worked fine. Last year something changed. My TV was not able to show any of the mp4s I created  just the way I did it previously. I had now some time to play around the codecs and containers, so I noticed something works.

This is what their manual says:



What works or does not work:
AVI
xvid: did not find this one (yes, I know that MPEG-4 ASP is xvid).
MPEG2 & AC3: works
H264 & AC3: works
MPEG-4 ASP & AC3: does not work
MP4
H264 & AAC: does not work
MPEG-4 ASP & AAC: does not work
PS
N/A
TS
MPEG2 & AC3: works

I'm mainly interested in the HD (1920x1088) formats. As you can see, right now I seem to have just two options, AVI or TS. The problem with TS is the size: a two-hour movie is easily a 7 GB in size. 4 GB is the upper limit, since my TV does not support NTFS format. I did a two pass encoding to reduce the size to 2 GB for one movie, but there were a lot of pixelation artifacts. I am using AVI right now, but I'm anticipating those A/V-sync problems to show up at some point.

My questions are:
- How come the h264 codec works for AVI but not for mp4?
- What happened to the mp4 encoding or h264 last year? Did you change something?
- Is there any way to compress the TS file without getting pixelation?

Cheers!

[Jan Gruuthuse]

You did not state your Samsung model. Check if this one runs on your flatscreen:
NHK 1920x1080 sample 2.2 MB download runs on ue40b8000.
Obtained with these attached settings (could be needed some more tweaking):
On ubuntu you could copy this to ~/.avidemux6/custom/ and then use these settings when video is loaded from main menu: Custom.
Windows 2000 and XP: \Documents and Settings\$USER$\Local Settings\Application Data\avidemux\custom
Windows Vista: \Users\$USER$\AppData\Roaming\avidemux\custom

[styrol]

Which version of Avidemux do you use? MP4 format version?

[Vonhonk]

You did not state your Samsung model

This one: LE-52A866
http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/model/LE52A866S1WXXE-downloads?isManualDownload=true

Check if this one runs on your flatscreen:
NHK 1920x1080 sample 2.2 MB download runs on ue40b8000.

Nope. It's Matroska, only AVI/MP4/TS/PS works. Firmware update is not an option.

Which version of Avidemux do you use?

[Vonhonk@Host-001 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep avidemux
avidemux-cli-2.6.1-1.fc18.x86_64
avidemux-2.6.1-1.fc18.x86_64
avidemux-devel-2.6.1-1.fc18.x86_64
avidemux-help-2.6.1-1.fc18.noarch
avidemux-qt-2.6.1-1.fc18.x86_64
avidemux-debuginfo-2.6.1-1.fc18.x86_64
avidemux-libs-2.6.1-1.fc18.x86_64

MP4 format version?

How can you determine it?

[styrol]

MP4 format version? How can you determine it?

Well, there are two versions under the Output Format selection drop down menu: MP4 muxer, MP4v2 muxer.
Have you tried MP4v2?
And update to a more recent version of Avidemux.

[Vonhonk]

None of these work. And 2.6.1.1. seems to be the most recent version I can update to.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Samsung does some weird stuff in their mediaplayer. As for now I don't find away to create mp4 that play on my Samsungs here.
You need to find 1920x1080 mp4 that play on your LE-52A866. Once you have these then figure away to obtain the same result with avidemux?
MediaInfo can give you some details on the video playing. I know resolution could be an issue for accepting video to play on samsung or not in combination with used video codec and audio codec. As differences are to big between le-52A and ue40b8000/LE40B650 most likely I won't find a solution for playing 1920x1080 on your model.
The 4GB restriction is due to FAT32 format. Try with NTFS formated usb media perhaps LE-52A866 supports this format. That said, you never know with samsung.

[Vonhonk]

You need to find 1920x1080 mp4 that play on your LE-52A866. Once you have these then figure away to obtain the same result with avidemux?

Will do. Might try with a lower resolution, just to see what happens.

Try with NTFS formated usb media perhaps LE-52A866 supports this format.

Tried, does not work.

Anyway, I'll look up an HD mp4, that it will play and get back.

Thanks for your comments.

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Samsung LED black Contrast Full HD 1080p h.264.mp4

[Vonhonk]

Samsung LED black Contrast Full HD 1080p h.264.mp4

Now this is weird. This file shows up OK. But when I do a conversion with Avidemux with just a mp4-version2 copy of the audio and videostream, Samsung won't show it. I compared these two files, the original and reproduced, the only difference is that the overall bitrate for original is 3492 kbps and the copy is 3494 kbps. The original is 30,433,758 bytes and the copy 30,434,754 bytes. Can it be true that the Avidemux is cutting 4 bytes from somewhere and therefore my TV won't show it?

[styrol]

Can it be true that the Avidemux is cutting 4 bytes from somewhere and therefore my TV won't show it?

You did the comparison using MediaInfo in expert view? I assume Avidemux has changed some header info.

[Vonhonk]

Which expert view? I just compared the sizes. And which headers? This is pissing me off!!!

[styrol]

http://pastebin.com/32VhShdr

[Vonhonk]

http://pastebin.com/32VhShdr

In other words, you would like to see similar kind of output from mediainfo for both of these files?

[styrol]

MediaInfo can give you some details on the video playing. I know resolution could be an issue for accepting video to play on samsung or not in combination with used video codec and audio codec.

In other words, you would like to see similar kind of output from mediainfo for both of these files?

It's the only way to goââ,¬Â¦ (we may see if variable frame rate is the problem)