# Hardware Decoding



## Brawlking (Aug 28, 2011)

So I have a huge collection of movies that I've ripped and encoded into what I thought would be a compatible format with the TouchPad hardware. I ripped my movies with h.264 video, and AAC audio, which I'm pretty sure is hardware supported.

http://www.aneesoft.com/tutorials/touchpad/hp-touchpad-video-format-supported.html

However, when I try to play most of my videos with MX Video Player it constantly switches to Software decoding. I'm wondering if maybe I'm doing something wrong, or if I was wrong about HW decoding being fixed.

I am currently running the latest nightly 04042012, and I have installed the "New Adreno 2XX" drivers to see if that would fix the issue, but it is still the same.

Any suggestions?


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## dijon (Dec 14, 2011)

Are you trying to play from files located on the tablet, or from a networked device? I've found that over the network I can't get files to play using H/W, but they will locally on the device.


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## Brawlking (Aug 28, 2011)

dijon said:


> Are you trying to play from files located on the tablet, or from a networked device? I've found that over the network I can't get files to play using H/W, but they will locally on the device.


I guess I should've specified that as well, I am playing them from a network device. MX Video Player has an option for whether or not to use HW while playing network streamed media, I told it to use HW, but still switches back to SW.

So is it just not possible to use HW decoding over a network? Must be local? Anyone know that answer with some reasonable degree of certainty?


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## Snow02 (Jun 14, 2011)

You can absolutely use hardware decoding for steamed files. Obviously either the audio or video codec is the issue, so try switching them up.

What container are you using?Your other option is to use a media server. I've been using playon for some time now and haven't had to encode a video since. It'll even transcode multi-gig mkv files.


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## Brawlking (Aug 28, 2011)

Snow02 said:


> You can absolutely use hardware decoding for steamed files. Obviously either the audio or video codec is the issue, so try switching them up.
> 
> What container are you using?Your other option is to use a media server. I've been using playon for some time now and haven't had to encode a video since. It'll even transcode multi-gig mkv files.


Container is .mp4, but that shouldn't matter. And I dont see why the codecs wouldn't work, they are supposed to be supported.

I have a Media Server, I use Twonky, I'm a broke student most of the time so anything that costs money is hard for me, I only have Twonky because my dad bought it. The issue with that is that I cant find a Media Player that works well with the server. Any recommendations for a media player that works well with media servers?

I wonder if it's because the audio is in 5.1, and not stereo. If that's the case, that's too bad I'm not re-encoding every movie I have to stereo.


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## noseph (Feb 19, 2012)

Brawlking said:


> Container is .mp4, but that shouldn't matter. And I dont see why the codecs wouldn't work, they are supposed to be supported.
> 
> I have a Media Server, I use Twonky, I'm a broke student most of the time so anything that costs money is hard for me, I only have Twonky because my dad bought it. The issue with that is that I cant find a Media Player that works well with the server. Any recommendations for a media player that works well with media servers?
> 
> I wonder if it's because the audio is in 5.1, and not stereo. If that's the case, that's too bad I'm not re-encoding every movie I have to stereo.


I have a DLink DNS320 NAS running Twonky and connect to it using BubbleUPnP in conjunction with Dice Player.


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## Brawlking (Aug 28, 2011)

It seems the issue is the audio stream being 5.1, when I play movies with just plain stereo audio they work fine. However, playing a movie that I've ripped with 5.1 Surround on my tablet bumps it right to SW decoding. But now my audio seems to be behind the video, it may be because I'm in the process of ripping a Bluray to the drive that its playing the movie off of though, I'll check again when I'm done ripping. But the problem seems to be the audio being in surround.


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## Executor (Jan 15, 2012)

I'm not so sure about that. The MKV rips of iTunes MLP: FiM episodes have 5.1 audio streams (Dolby Digital 5.1 AC3, to be exact), but MX Player plays them just fine with the H/W decoder.


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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

The type of container does matter as well as the encoding. h264 has to be in mp4, ts or 3gp containers.

http://developer.and...ia-formats.html

h264 is also not supported on android 2.x if you are still using cm7.

EDIT: if you're using surround sound from a bluray, is the audio encoded in DTS? That might be an issue.


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## Brawlking (Aug 28, 2011)

yarly said:


> The type of container does matter as well as the encoding. h264 has to be in mp4, ts or 3gp containers.
> 
> http://developer.and...ia-formats.html
> 
> ...


Thanks yarly, Some of my movies are ripped from DTS 5.1, and some were just AC3 5.1, I guess that could also be part of the problem. After they are ripped Windows doesnt really tell you what type of audio it is, just tells you how many channels, I'd have to download something to tell me which are DTS and which are not.

Yarg this is too specific, stuff should just work. Wish I could find a free media server that will transcode, and a UPnP player for Android that doesn't suck.

EDIT: Also, my TouchPad wont play 1080p over the network, it just skips and stops. Anyone else have that issue as well?


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## yarly (Jun 22, 2011)

Media player classic home cinema will tell you under properties while the video is playing (in the details tab). Right click on the video and go to properties.

should say something like:

Video: CCV1 1280x688 (320:173) 23.976fps [Video]
Audio: DTS 48000Hz 6ch [Audio]


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## Darthwickett (Feb 27, 2012)

I've personally found MX Player to do that quite a bit. Try using another player, like Dice player. I've messed with a couple players since HW acceleration was implemented, and MX has been buggy for me since go.


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## mozster (Nov 24, 2011)

I've been using Diceplayer without any problems for ages, a combination of mediatomb on my server and skifta/diceplayer played pretty much everything I have until the latest Diceplayer update (2.0.7) which has removed SW decoding for DTS...

does anyone have any alternate suggestions for a video player that can handle hardware video decode and sw audio decode?


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## vilator (Sep 6, 2011)

ive tried most of the video players and bsplayer seems to handle mkv and 720p the best in my opinion. the hw plkugin works too.


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## DreamScar (Oct 13, 2011)

For the last couple nightlies Ive been having intermittent issues with hardware decoding. Using MX Player in hardware mode and watching Youtube in HD, every once in a while the audio and video will start slowing down and stuttering. I have to pause the video and wait a while before playing again to get the video to play normally. Software mode seems to be fine. Any ideas?


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