Unable to play certain HD content - FIXED

[DarkKlown]

Hi,

Excuse me but i'm rather new to this whole HD thing.

I recently purchased a HD200 and have found it to be a fantastic unit. But I recently tried to play some Blueray content and found the player sometimes outputs a rather blockey picture, as if certain parts of the video it's unable to render smoothly.

I'm unsure if it's a limitation of the unit or a bug with the codec's.

For example, i have a few 1080p video files that play perfectly. MediaInfo shows the following information for the video stream of one of these files:

9 818 Kbps (10.4Mbps), 1920*808 (2.35), at 23.976 fps, AVC (Container profile=Unknown@4.1) (High@L4.1) (CABAC / 5 Ref Frames)

However for a file that doesn't play correctly on the HD200 (but plays with my desktop computer) it shows:

5 270 Kbps (5 507Kbps), 1920*784 (2.449), at 25.000 fps, AVC (Container profile=Unknown@5.1) (High@L5.1) (CABAC / 16 Ref Frames)

The parts that confuse me is that the file that doesn't play is of a higher bandwidth than the one that does play, but the bit i don't know is what 4.1 vs 5.1 is.

Both files are mkv's and both have been made with mkvmerge (however the one that does work is with version 2.4.2 and the one that doesn't is with 1.7.0 - bug with an old version of mkvmerge?)

At the moment i'm passing one of these video files thru RipBot to see if that will convert it into a format that the HD200 will play, however it's been running for around 2 days and is only upto 60% of Pass1 (AMD 1.81Ghz ftl) so i really don't want to have to do this every time.

[DarkKlown]

So upon reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264 i think i now know what the 4.1 vs 5.1 stuff is. So i think i should reframe my questions to 2 simple questions:

Does the HD200 not support H.264 5.1?

How can i change the levels of the files to 4.1 as the video sizes are within the range that would fit into that level quickly (but was badly encoded in the first place)? or do i indeed need to pass them thru something like ripbot and wait a week for 2 hours to convert?

[Taddeusz]

The problem with that second video is that it has too many reference frames. Based on the information on this page (http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings) the maximum number of reference frames is calculated based on this formula:

maximum ref = 12288 * 1024 / ( width * height * 1.5)

A full 1920x1080 video should have a maximum of 4 reference frames. Using that formula that video should only have 5 reference frames. 16 is WAY too many and is probably the reason it won't play properly.

Unfortunately you'll probably need to trancode the video for it to play properly since it is out of spec.

[DarkKlown]

Thanks for your help Taddeusz, however i've found another video that has the same play problems and the info listed is as follows:

Video
ID/String : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format_Profile : High@L5.1
Format_Settings_CABAC/String : Yes
Format_Settings_RefFrames/String : 5 frames
MuxingMode : Container profile=Unknown@5.1
CodecID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration/String : 51mn 13s
BitRate/String : 7 159 Kbps
BitRate_Nominal/String : 7 497 Kbps
Width/String : 1 920 pixels
Height/String : 1 080 pixels
DisplayAspectRatio/String : 16/9
FrameRate/String : 23.976 fps
Resolution/String : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
ScanType/String : Progressive
Bits-(Pixel*Frame) : 0.144
Encoded_Library/String : x264 core 59 r851M e11ef38
Encoded_Library_Settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=6 / me-prepass=0 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=3 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / fgo=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=7497 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00
Language/String : English


As you can see the ref frames are only 5 and the recommendation as the page you posted clearly says 'Around 4-6.'

Could something else be causing a issue?

The only link between the files i can find is the MuxingMode version being 5.0 or 5.1 not being able to be played. Are other people able to play mkv files with a 5.0 or 5.1 MuxingMode?

[Taddeusz]

That's still too many reference frames for the resolution. As I said, a full 1080p frame should only have 4 reference frames. Not sure how hard and fast a rule that is but would be my first guess.

[Taddeusz]

Just to give you an idea, all the professionally done stuff I've seen uses 2 reference frames. That's 1080p trailers from Apple and Blu-ray media.

[DarkKlown]

Just to note. The newest beta firmware plays all the videos i was unable to play perfectly.

[Taddeusz]

Just to note. The newest beta firmware plays all the videos i was unable to play perfectly.

Yea, this is because they increased H.264 profile compatibility to 5.1 where you can have up to 16 reference frames at 1920x1080.