AnimeSuki Forums

martino · 2006-08-01, 17:35

I was wondering whether there's someone else apart from me who uses TCPMP to play anime on their PDA.

Keitaro · 2006-08-02, 01:35

I tried it once on my old Jornada PDA, horrible video quality. The PSP is all I need now for watching anime when I'm traveling.

ryomakun · 2006-08-02, 02:45

so a psp is the choice? i don't have a psp, but does a psp battery last long? and how many gigabytes can a psp hold .(stupid question, but i really haven't looked into psp). i was thinking of using ipod but was hesitating since i think the screen is too small to view subtitles

Keitaro · 2006-08-02, 03:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryomakun

so a psp is the choice? i don't have a psp, but does a psp battery last long? and how many gigabytes can a psp hold .(stupid question, but i really haven't looked into psp). i was thinking of using ipod but was hesitating since i think the screen is too small to view subtitles

Well yeah. So far I think its the best handheld for watching movies, anime, games, etc. It does so much for so little. Only $199 for the core version now. The 16:9 lcd tft screen is beautiful. The anime fansubs I play on it looks really nice. You'll have to transcode though for playback on the PSP and theirs a really good program that will do that for you very easily. The PSP uses Sony's memory duo sticks for storage. The highest capacity so far is 4GB with a monstrous 8GB stick coming real soon. The standard battery holds up pretty well for normal use. Just keep another backup battery just in case. They do sell larger capacity battery packs too. Don't get a Ipod for anime fansubs. The screen isn't so great and it's just too small to read the subtitles, you'll find yourself pausing the thing all the time, just to read the subtitles.

Shinoto · 2006-08-02, 04:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by ryomakun

so a psp is the choice? i don't have a psp, but does a psp battery last long? and how many gigabytes can a psp hold .(stupid question, but i really haven't looked into psp). i was thinking of using ipod but was hesitating since i think the screen is too small to view subtitles

PSP isnt a great system for being portable. First off you have to buy the memory stick. A 4gig will cost average 150. 1 gig should be 40ish and 2gig around 75. So take that to the price of the system of 200.

Battery life on it hurts it badly. For video play...even with the strongest batteries(really expensive ones) your planning on pushing 4hours. If you take it to work or something might as well bring the cord.

The PSP isnt a bad system for veiwing anime, its just not that portable really. Ipod isnt good either. They both have bad battery life. But If I would chose between the two. Ipod. Even if you cant read the subs. Just because its more portable and a huge harddrive

I would say wait on it, If you just want to buy something to view anime on the go. Buy niether and wait to see what Microsoft comes out with soon. They have 3 devices comming out and one maybe good for video on the go.

ryomakun · 2006-08-02, 06:28

Thank you Keitaro, Shinoto, i'll probobly wait for microsoft, hope they will have a price war ^_^ making the new stuffs more affordable ^^

martino · 2006-08-02, 06:37

I usually watch it on my TV or PC, but when I'm in my bed or travelling I use my Eten M600. It's not bad watching it at 320x240, even the subs are readable(sometimes even the karaoke). I just wanted to know whether anyone has got any performance tips for playing video in TCPMP.

***GHDpro*** · 2006-08-02, 07:23

Sorry, but one more vote for the PSP. Yes, the battery life is pretty poor, but Lik Sang sells
2600 mAh batteries (3rd Party) for just $20.

And while the memory cards do have limitations, you should know that due to the re-encoding
necessary for PSP, the filesize of the fansubs goes down a lot when on the PSP: my average
encodes are around 90-120 Mb for "complex" series, and 50-70 Mb for "simple" series (using
VBR encoding). I've had 11 episodes of anime on my 1 Gb memorystick before...

The iPod's screen on the other hand looks a LOT smaller than the PSP screen. Especially
if you are going to watch widescreen anime, PSP is way better choice.

Then again... buying a PSP just to watch anime on it may be not the ideal choice...
(but of course don't forget the PSP does games, music and image viewing too)

SlugZilla · 2006-08-02, 08:29

Watching anime on a PDA is great, I can also watch tv on it through slingplayer. It's nice being able to just drag and drop files into the PDA to quickly play any file without need for conversion. The Dell Axim and HP HX4700 with VGA(640x480) screen plays almost any AVI file at blazing speeds with TCPMP which is a godsend. I use the PDA for a lot of different uses, but having TCPMP is really handy to watch videos whenever you feel like it.

martino · 2006-08-02, 11:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by SlugZilla

Watching anime on a PDA is great, I can also watch tv on it through slingplayer. It's nice being able to just drag and drop files into the PDA to quickly play any file without need for conversion. The Dell Axim and HP HX4700 with VGA(640x480) screen plays almost any AVI file at blazing speeds with TCPMP which is a godsend. I use the PDA for a lot of different uses, but having TCPMP is really handy to watch videos whenever you feel like it.

Lucky you watching at VGA resolution. What CPU or possibly GPU has your HX4700 got and what type of encoding are you able to play smoothly?

SlugZilla · 2006-08-02, 15:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by martino

Lucky you watching at VGA resolution. What CPU or possibly GPU has your HX4700 got and what type of encoding are you able to play smoothly?

Every single video file that I loaded ran at full speed. Because of the 624mhz processor and the ATI Imageon graphics acceleration support of TCPMP ensures smooth playback. Maximum resolution supported for video is an astounding 1008x1008 and as such it doesn't support 1280x720 which is a bummer. It has support for everything from OGM and MKV file support, but only lacks h264 playback at the moment.

martino · 2006-08-02, 17:23

There's the catch! Your device has got the ATI chip. I just have to rely on my 400MHz Samsung CPU, which is roughly equivalent to a 600MHz XScale CPU. I haven't been able to play H264 as well...well it does play, but at around 2fps.

Have you got any performance tips???

Keitaro · 2006-08-02, 19:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by martino

There's the catch! Your device has got the ATI chip. I just have to rely on my 400MHz Samsung CPU, which is roughly equivalent to a 600MHz XScale CPU. I haven't been able to play H264 as well...well it does play, but at around 2fps.

Have you got any performance tips???

For smooth playback of h.264 video files you need at least a 1Ghz cpu. I found this out the hard way with my 700Mhz Celery laptop.

martino · 2006-08-03, 08:28

I know that it's pretty much impossible to play H264 video on mobile devices such as PDAs, but I just need to push out 5 more fps out of my settings just to be able to play video at normal quality instead of low.
When I use the normal quality setting I get around 19-20fps and when I use the low setting I get around 29-40fps. So I just need a little more tweaking in my TCPMP settings to achive those damn 24/25fps.

SlugZilla · 2006-08-03, 22:22

I'm afraid there isn't much you can do about the problem, it lacks the graphics rendering muscle to push those heavy bitrate files. It's like running your pc without hardware acceleration - all your videos will looks fuzzy and run at half the speed which cannot be alleviated under any circumstances. I get the same issues when I turn off the graphic decoder in TCPMP, the video is not as smooth in image quality and it skips noticeably.

martino · 2006-09-01, 11:06

I was wondering whether anyone using TCPMP is able to play AAC audio when playing H264 encoded files.

Kimura-sensei · 2006-09-03, 11:15

Bah, it's horrible... not worth the wasted time to re-encode the video either. Get a dedicated portable video player like the Archos. You don't need to re-encode at all, just think of it like an iPod. Transfer the videos onto the Archos and it plays xvid, divx, h264, etc.

http://www.archos.com/products/video...global&lang=en

checkers · 2006-09-04, 06:01

I use my Axim V50 to watch anime on the go - I re-encode everything so that it's smaller and because full res stuff doesn't play so well (and the h264 stuff barely gets a frame/5secs).
Here are my x264 enc options for the video:
x264 --crf 26 --level 1.3 --ref 3 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --no-cabac --subme 6 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,p4x4 --qpmin 16 --vbv-maxrate 512 --me umh --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --output "" ""
And for the audio I use Nero's AAC encoder for abr@64kbits (he-aac)

martino · 2006-09-04, 10:00

Nice! What software do you use to encode them to x264, as I'm currently encoding my files with xVid? Or do you have a good guide how to do it?

UPDATE: I just tried X264 on my PDA and the most it can push is 15fps...so no luck with this one and I managed to get AAC working on TCPMP as well

Thanks!

checkers · 2006-09-05, 05:22

What speed is your CPU? Don't forget you can just use lower options for better playback, try adding --nf in particular and removing some partition types.
I use megui - there's a wiki with stuff in it here: http://mewiki.project357.com . The iPod guide could be a good starting point but it's a bit messy atm and I'm not sure if I can be bothered to clean it up or not.

2006-08-01, 17:35	Link #1
martino makes no files now Join Date: May 2006	Does anyone else play anime on their PDA? I was wondering whether there's someone else apart from me who uses TCPMP to play anime on their PDA. __________________ "Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin"

2006-08-02, 06:37	Link #7
martino makes no files now Join Date: May 2006	I usually watch it on my TV or PC, but when I'm in my bed or travelling I use my Eten M600. It's not bad watching it at 320x240, even the subs are readable(sometimes even the karaoke). I just wanted to know whether anyone has got any performance tips for playing video in TCPMP. __________________ "Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin"

2006-08-02, 17:23	Link #12
martino makes no files now Join Date: May 2006	There's the catch! Your device has got the ATI chip. I just have to rely on my 400MHz Samsung CPU, which is roughly equivalent to a 600MHz XScale CPU. I haven't been able to play H264 as well...well it does play, but at around 2fps. Have you got any performance tips??? __________________ "Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin"

2006-08-03, 08:28	Link #14
martino makes no files now Join Date: May 2006	I know that it's pretty much impossible to play H264 video on mobile devices such as PDAs, but I just need to push out 5 more fps out of my settings just to be able to play video at normal quality instead of low. When I use the normal quality setting I get around 19-20fps and when I use the low setting I get around 29-40fps. So I just need a little more tweaking in my TCPMP settings to achive those damn 24/25fps. __________________ "Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin"

2006-09-01, 11:06	Link #16
martino makes no files now Join Date: May 2006	I was wondering whether anyone using TCPMP is able to play AAC audio when playing H264 encoded files. __________________ "Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin"

2006-08-02, 01:35	Link #2
Keitaro Kyuuketsuki Otaku Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Somewhere in Hawaii	I tried it once on my old Jornada PDA, horrible video quality. The PSP is all I need now for watching anime when I'm traveling.

2006-08-02, 02:45	Link #3
ryomakun Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006	so a psp is the choice? i don't have a psp, but does a psp battery last long? and how many gigabytes can a psp hold .(stupid question, but i really haven't looked into psp). i was thinking of using ipod but was hesitating since i think the screen is too small to view subtitles

2006-08-02, 06:28	Link #6
ryomakun Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006	Thank you Keitaro, Shinoto, i'll probobly wait for microsoft, hope they will have a price war ^_^ making the new stuffs more affordable ^^

2006-08-02, 07:23	Link #8
*GHDpro* Administrator Administrator Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Netherlands Age: 45	Sorry, but one more vote for the PSP. Yes, the battery life is pretty poor, but Lik Sang sells 2600 mAh batteries (3rd Party) for just $20. And while the memory cards do have limitations, you should know that due to the re-encoding necessary for PSP, the filesize of the fansubs goes down a lot when on the PSP: my average encodes are around 90-120 Mb for "complex" series, and 50-70 Mb for "simple" series (using VBR encoding). I've had 11 episodes of anime on my 1 Gb memorystick before... The iPod's screen on the other hand looks a LOT smaller than the PSP screen. Especially if you are going to watch widescreen anime, PSP is way better choice. Then again... buying a PSP just to watch anime on it may be not the ideal choice... (but of course don't forget the PSP does games, music and image viewing too)

2006-08-02, 08:29	Link #9
SlugZilla woofles Join Date: Jan 2004 Age: 38	Watching anime on a PDA is great, I can also watch tv on it through slingplayer. It's nice being able to just drag and drop files into the PDA to quickly play any file without need for conversion. The Dell Axim and HP HX4700 with VGA(640x480) screen plays almost any AVI file at blazing speeds with TCPMP which is a godsend. I use the PDA for a lot of different uses, but having TCPMP is really handy to watch videos whenever you feel like it.

2006-08-03, 22:22	Link #15
SlugZilla woofles Join Date: Jan 2004 Age: 38	I'm afraid there isn't much you can do about the problem, it lacks the graphics rendering muscle to push those heavy bitrate files. It's like running your pc without hardware acceleration - all your videos will looks fuzzy and run at half the speed which cannot be alleviated under any circumstances. I get the same issues when I turn off the graphic decoder in TCPMP, the video is not as smooth in image quality and it skips noticeably.

2006-09-03, 11:15	Link #17
Kimura-sensei Retired AOne Staff Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: NYC	Bah, it's horrible... not worth the wasted time to re-encode the video either. Get a dedicated portable video player like the Archos. You don't need to re-encode at all, just think of it like an iPod. Transfer the videos onto the Archos and it plays xvid, divx, h264, etc. http://www.archos.com/products/video...global&lang=en

2006-09-04, 06:01	Link #18
checkers Part 8 IT Support Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Western Australia Age: 36	I use my Axim V50 to watch anime on the go - I re-encode everything so that it's smaller and because full res stuff doesn't play so well (and the h264 stuff barely gets a frame/5secs). Here are my x264 enc options for the video: x264 --crf 26 --level 1.3 --ref 3 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --no-cabac --subme 6 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,p4x4 --qpmin 16 --vbv-maxrate 512 --me umh --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --output "" "" And for the audio I use Nero's AAC encoder for abr@64kbits (he-aac)

2006-09-04, 10:00	Link #19
martino makes no files now Join Date: May 2006	Nice! What software do you use to encode them to x264, as I'm currently encoding my files with xVid? Or do you have a good guide how to do it? UPDATE: I just tried X264 on my PDA and the most it can push is 15fps...so no luck with this one and I managed to get AAC working on TCPMP as well Thanks! __________________ "Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin" Last edited by martino; 2006-09-04 at 14:19.

2006-09-05, 05:22	Link #20
checkers Part 8 IT Support Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Western Australia Age: 36	What speed is your CPU? Don't forget you can just use lower options for better playback, try adding --nf in particular and removing some partition types. I use megui - there's a wiki with stuff in it here: http://mewiki.project357.com . The iPod guide could be a good starting point but it's a bit messy atm and I'm not sure if I can be bothered to clean it up or not.