1080p Handbrake Settings for Mobile Devices

Ok, so I've been looking around and I can't seem to find what I'm looking for anywhere. I know a _bit_ about Handbrake, but I obviously don't know enough about what I'm doing to get this right...

What I'm looking for are the exact settings to mimic a YouTube 1080p MP4 video. The reason I'm looking for these settings is I've converted 720p AND 1080p video for my Android devices and only one of my Samsung firmwares for the GS2 will play my encoded videos properly. My videos were encoded using main profile 720p @L3.0 with an average bitrate of 2000kbps. When played back on my Infuse/GS2, it works with stock Samsung firmware, but is incompatible with CM7. Now comes the part that confuses me. My 720p encoded videos play like a slideshow on CM7, but the 1080p videos I pulled from YouTube (with a MUCH higher average bitrate and high-profile L4.0) play flawlessly.

Some of you may be asking... why do you need 1080p video on a phone?! Well, I travel a good bit and my phones can output 1080p over HDMI to a bigscreen and it's nice to have some media around when there's nothing else to do.

I've tried several settings, but nothing seems to work... if anyone has any ideas or knows the settings, there's definitely some +rep in it for you.

 

Few things.

There is no 1 setting every device has its own specs for video that it can properly play.

This can include anything from supported codecs to maximum bitrates.

Even after you aquire those basic statisitcs there are often times much more complicated settings they do not share like maximum reference frames, bpyramid, CABAC, ETC.


So once you find those you can start to experiment and find the settings that work. I dont use Handbrake its too simple and does not offer the configuration settings I would desire to encode a video. Sometimes they will give you a "profile" that your device supports like say H264 Main Profile. I you know this you know what settings and bitrate you can go up to but not surpass.

See the chart here for a bit more understanding: H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With your question answered, now time for advice. Do not put 1080P on your phone! That is not a good idea for so many reasons.

1080P is way harder to play than 720P your phone wont handle it very easy leading you to have to use very low bitates and low optimizations to prevent bad playback. By the time you get there the 720P footages with good bitrate and good optimization will look WAY better than the 1080P footage also it will use up a lot less space on your phone.

If that was not reason enough how many places do you go that have 1080P TV's for you? Most places use 720P TV's because they can still advertise HDTV but not pay more for something most people wont notice.

I have done so many encoding tests and even when you scale up 720P footage unless your doing side by side comparisons the 720P looks pretty much identical to the 1080p. In most cases the source was not worthy of 1080P in the first place. The only footage I have seen that really takes advantage of the detail 1080P can provide is CGI stuff with a lot of fine effects or video game footage.

Summary: Read the manual for your phone, look up the online profile/settings for that device. Use 720P not 1080P


As far as youtube, just because its tagged HP 4.0 does not mean it is using HP 4.0 I know youtube uses the max of 3 reference frames, no bpyramid and also removes a ton of detail from the footage it almost cust the quality of my videos in half when I upload them. They actually get recompressed to a higher bitrate than I upload them as because I use a quantitizer while youtube just throws a good high ABR on there. So my videos are 10x more efficient per bit and would require a stronger device to play because it has to decompress/work harder.

 

^Thanks! That was very detailed!

I know all my devices are capable of encoding/decoding FHD in hardware, I just don't know where to look to see what profiles/bitrates/other stuff I need to set to encode with.

Though you are correct with the 1080p/720p thing. The videos I normally encode are 720p. And my Samsung firmwares will play just about anything you throw at them, aside from videos with DTS. MKV/MP4/AVI... you name it, 720/1080p... it's all playable on Samsung ROM's. It's just that aside from the video playing abilities, Samsung ROM's aren't that great compared to CM7. What I've been doing is when I know I'll be using the HDMI, I'll just flash over to a Samsung ROM, then afterward flash back to CM7. That's getting really old.

 

Best place to look is online documentation, the manual, and any kind of device forum that would have that device.