Video on devices is a mess
Lots of folks are making the reasonable demand that they should escape transcoding and get perfect video device simplicity. In the past, devices have delivered this in several ways:
- People have gotten used to effortless audio support - a promise devices deliver these days. mp3 and wma files all play on all devices that claim they will.
- DVD players do it by tightly scripting video format - DVDs must user mpeg-2 within a proscribed bitrate.
- The PC makes video look relatively easy - it can be made to play nearly any file, thanks to its open video codec architecture. The OS sniffs the file, looks for the right audio and video codec, and then plays the file. If you look hard enough, you can find any codec, install it, and it'll work. Modern PCs have insane amounts of horsepower, so I can routinely decode HD res/bitrate video files on my PC.
Codecs are one issue. This morning I loaded a device that nominally supports divx up with some "divx" files. The experience reminded me why folks asking for divx support natively on the device might not get what they're asking for. The device is advertised as supporting Divx - and many of the files in my library do play. Unfortunately, many do not. I grabbed a video analysis tool to look at some of the files. The results:
- almost all Divx4/5 files play on the device, assuming they're low res
- No Divx 3 or earlier video plays (I've sadly got a lot of these)
- Some video files have audio that won't (for some reason) play.
Devices are closed and you can't just go get a random codec, so some video files will always fail to play.
Resolution and bit rate are another. Many of my files are high res or bitrate video files that the device apparently can't handle. In these cases, they warn you when you tranfer the files, but just tell you to go transcode the video. And of course most users wouldn't really want a two hour DVR-MS movie (5.3GB) on your device when it could get turned into a sub-1GB file.
Unfortunately, there's no way a user can understand or diagnose that the max requirements of their device are such-and-such and their file uses an unsupported mode of divx. They just try and fail, and can't tell what's going on.
This is why transcoding is a part of life, at least for now. The PC is so powerful and flexible, it can play/transcode 99% of files. Ideally, the software will just detect what the device can/can't do and just tranfer or transcode for you.
For now, Zune can't do all the files that matter, but we're working on it. Until then, getting a good third party transcoder and batch transcoding into a guaranteed format is the best solution I've found.
5 Comments:
native support of all these files isnt necessary. i myself would just like the video conversion process to be less painful. its good that your working on divx transcoding support, but i believe a temporary file of some sort is necessary. it would make things much easier to convert files before they go on the zune, so when you do plug in your zune, you can have a quick, speedy sync. this temporary folder would also be beneficial becomes im ofter cycling the video material on my device. i may switch from season 3 of futurama to season 1 of house, but i dont want to have to reconvert the files every time i want them.
there can be options for, for instance, certain videos i only use for my zune, like podcasts. so i wouldnt be upset if those actual files are converted.
i know you guys have alot on your plate here, but my biggest gripe about marketplace is the amount of time i have to plug in my zune due to conversions.
I honestly don't care how much my dvr-ms files get compressed or shrunk to get them on my zune. I just want to load them up my zune and get them on there in an easy, manageable fashion. Using Dcut, DVR-to-WMV and all of these buggy programs is the last thing I want to do. I already have enough junk on my computer. Honestly, and not to be rude, but I paid $249 for this Microsoft media device (and I bought one for the wife), and it's just insane that it can't play media center files. And, I'm hearing rumblings about an update having to wait until spring of next year. That's not my idea of nimble.
It was one of my fears when I bought the device that the Zune team would try the XBOX approach of two major updates a year. That just doesn't work for a portable media device. I use my mp3 players everyday, so it'd be nice if these annoying things like no dvr-ms support could be improved sooner (like this year) rather than later (spring of next year). Kind of makes me wish I would've waited to buy the device next year.......or not at all.
I think a lot of people agree on this one, native support isn't as important as is an easy way to get these formats onto the Zune in a painless way.
I also completely understand that there are a ton of different codecs out there, with each codec usually having different versions and different vendors, but the one glaring flaw in that is the lack of smooth dvr-ms-to-Zune transcoding.
Microsoft tightly scripts the dvr-ms format, they tightly control the Zune format... seems like a no-brainer that those formats should at least play nicely with each other.
I know it's a trade-off, you want to make it easy for the average consumer yet powerful enough for the early adopter. It would be nice though if there was a to have the Zune software do transcoding in the background to the correct format/resolution *before* the actual sync. I'd love to be able to set the Zune software to transcoding while I'm at work and then just plug-in and sync quickly when I get home.
Lastly, any merit to the "Spring Update" rumors sportsunit is talking about? I really hope the team isn't doing something as drastic as only two updates a year. A gaming console really isn't something you want to update constantly but a music device is much more nimble and in this first release people would actually like to see updates happen quickly, makes them feel like they did right by early adopting the Zune.
I wouldn't care if I had to install a nightly build of software, as long as I could see progress I'd feel much better about my purchase.
Thanks for these posts by the way, I'm sure it seems like we're coming down hard on the Zune but we just want to see it really shine, as I'm sure you do.
Converting videos is not a big deal, but it can add up to an inconvenience.
I'm surprised my digital camera's .mpg files are not readable natively. I have to convert them to .wmv, and there are a LOT of them!
I'm not affiliated with them, but have had good results with M2Convert for Zune. It's a package that rips-and-converts many video types into Zune-compatible format. We reviewed it recently on the site.
There are also free packages of course, that take a little more setup but are ultimately more flexible.
Harvey
Editor, Zunerama
http://www.zunerama.com
I don't really care that i have to transcode my video, or what format it is on the device, as long as i don't have to think about it. If all i have to do is add the file to the library and it'll take care of everything, then i'm willing to wait to let it do its thing. However it needs to JUST WORK with ALL of my video.
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