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ok somebody explain why its worth watching a 720p video on a 800x480 screen?

lets look at what is actually going on here.

first off one is larger than the other:

screen size: 800x480 (384,000 visible pixels)
video size : 1280x720 (921,600 visible pixels)

difference: your actually only seeing a little more then a third of the actual detail. you "lose" 537,600 pixels of detail.
hears a visual example of what you are losing.
http://img22.imageshack.us/i/resopoint.png/

the point i am trying to make is that there are allot of people on this forum that are complaining about their 720p videos playing really choppy. the underlying problem is actually the bitrates of most of these videos. someone said somewere that the bitrate cap is somewhere around 4000Kbits/s. allot of people think they are running 720p videos at "under" 4000K. there is an extremely good chance that this is not true.

you see most modern methods of encoding video (and even audio) employ variable bitrates. this means that during slow scenes the bitrates are kept low, and during high motion fast scenes the bitrate spikes way up to compensate. this means that the bitrate will go higher then the requested bitrate.

so its possible that the videos that mos people are running are either encoded at a bitrate that is too high, or their video is using variable bit rates.

the fix i am recommending is to either:

a) lower the resolution of the video during the encoding proccess to something that will fit on the screen normally and lower the bitrate to match. (this option makes the most sense to me)

or,

b) in the situation that you intend use the player to watch your 720 videos via the video out, lower the bit rate to less then 4000k. if your preferred codec does in fact use a variable bitrate then see if the encoding program will allow you to adjust the max bitrate to something lower than 4000k.

either option should fix the issue.

also, i would suggest that everyone use a variable bitrate codec if they can. it will reduce the size of you video files considerably without losing the quality. if any of you have questions about how to encode a video in either a) or b), post it here or email me at:
[email="johnrock2@gmail.com"]johnrock2@gmail.com[/email]

with a little research into video encoding, anybody should be able to enjoy good quality video on their mp4 players.

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KKKKHHHHHAAAAANNNNN!!!!! -James T (R) Kirk

Sigh....

Because a lot of people already have 720p videos, and want to play them on their device instantly, in the time it takes to transfer via USB, without wasting hours re-encoding. That is something people will pay for, a device powerful enough to play anything (within reason).

A good example is that I had about 50 videos that I had encoded personally, from my existing 720p sources. I encoded them down to 720x (pixel width) MP4 videos so that I could play them on my PMP at the time. Then I got an Archos PMP, shelled out for the MP4 plugin, and found out that none of my videos would bloody play! I was so mad, there was some small detail that the Archos couldnt handle (variable framerate), so I had to spend about 150 hours re-encoding all of them, over a period of several weeks.

So now do you still need someone to explain why many people want a PMP with multiple formats, multiple codecs, high birate, high resolution capabilities etc? It is not about playing a video that exactly matches the screen resolution, duh! Everybody knows that you can't see the full benefit of 1280x720 on a lower res screen. It is about being able to play anything you have on your hard-drive, without the hassle of worrying about resolutions, codecs, bitrate etc. Of course, that is a lot to ask, and thus far it has been impossible. But with the new TE chip I think it might be possible, and of course, in coming years there will be many more processors that can do it, and with less power consumption.

also there is TV out - meaning these player will play full HD content that will look good on the TV

i agree with you on the HD stuff and i think all of this is way too early yet as HD files are huge for a start and for me it defeats the point of a player, to me they are lkike a jukle box and i want on as much as possible so i cn choose what i want from a big list, at the moment we are still in 8GB, 16GB teritory meaning 1 or 2 full res movies at a time

i can see the need for people not wanting to have several different copies and to only drag and drop their files over, and that would be great, but tech and memory are limiting this at the moment, maybe when we can have 64, 128GB flash memory devices then this would all be viable

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people are lazy and encoding take time.

ok i might of gotten a bit carried away on the part about video not fitting the screen, it just seems strange to me, like a square peg round hole type thing. however, i do still believe that most of the problems we see are related to not knowing the specifics about the videos being played. i know it can be a pain to check each file before you put it on your player, but it would tell you real quick if there's going to be a problem.

yes it probably isn't very convenient to re encode your videos. it dosent seem so to me because I've had to re encode all my videos for my psp and for my ramos t8. i'm just really used to it now.

my offer still stands as far as helping with re encoding problem files to formats that are a little easier on players. i do video editing as a hobby and because of that i've become acquainted with several different programs and methods of encoding.

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KKKKHHHHHAAAAANNNNN!!!!! -James T (R) Kirk

I remember having to convert all my videos to 320 x 240 pixels mp4 format for my old ipod a long time ago...

That was a pain in the ass but still i like to convert videos to keep the file size low anyways but being restricted to a certain format is annoying

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SoundMagic PL'30s

I think it's better to output the video to a LCD TV if you watch a 720P vedio. if not, just watch the 480P in the player will be good

If you are thinking of watching it on a HD TV or monitor regularly, then you would want the 720p version because having both a 480p and 720p version of a video would take up too much space

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SoundMagic PL'30s