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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

"new Ipad" (3) , how do I get highest quality demo video on it ?

Les Dittert

Les Dittert

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So I walked into a mall, and picked up the ipad with the 2k screen.
( no line, in stock ! )

My question is how should I get a video on it with the absolute highest quality playback ?
Even if I have to use 1920 x 1080, what do "iusers" recommend for HQ encoding and playing ?
I'm not really an Apple guy. So PC tools would be my choice for prepping.
I'm sure other redusers are after the exact same thing as well.
Thanks!
 
Mark, I haven't tried the iTunes method recently but it used to limit the resolution and size of video files transferred to the iPad. The iPad 2 was easily capable of playing high bitrate video but you had to get it on there using a different method.
 
Ok,
But is silly apple re-encoding / crushing it one more time, to some horrid bitrate?
If so, is there a recommended encode parameter to at least avoid this?

I certainly hope Apple uped the max bitrates for the increased power of the new iPad!
 
Thanks for the links Mark.
I looked up the avplayerhd, and see that it hasn't been updated in 2012 . While it may still play true 1920 video, does anyone know if it really does?
what I mean is: if I play a test pattern, will it show 960 line pairs horizontal resolution ?
call me picky, but when I mean 1080p, I mean 1080p ;)
 
Les Dittert said:
Ok, But is silly apple re-encoding / crushing it one more time, to some horrid bitrate? If so, is there a recommended encode parameter to at least avoid this?
Click to expand...
I think available storage limits are going to be a bigger factor. You really want to watch uncompressed 2K on a device with 64GB of storage? Realistically, I think playing a TS2 Blu-ray MPEG file would be perfectly acceptable. And that's gonna take up 25GB right there, for a simple Blu-ray movie.


Again, this is still an 8-bit device, and it's a monitor that can't be calibrated and has no setup controls (at least to my knowledge).
 
Got the iPad yesterday and tried to throw on Tom's 2.5k Timescapes trailer as a good demo for folks to oooohh and awwww over, but after a fair amount of testing it seems to be limited to 1080p as a maximum resolution. (A good quick way to get a copy is the 500 meg direct download from Vimeo at 1080p, though it wouldn't load through iTunes, more on that in a sec).

I tried encodes at 2.5k, 2k, and 1080p with and without audio, in the native video app and with CineXPlayer (a 3rd party video player that I really like) and in all cases only 1080p content worked. The bit rate can be through the roof though. Bluray level bitrate at around 20 megabit and above worked fine with h.264 high profile and some of the fancier psycho-visual stuff turned on (If you have a lot of detail in the shadows, enabling 'No DCT Decimate' in Handbrakes advanced settings prevents it from auto-crushing the blacks). Just be careful with your audio format. From testing, it seems like having multiple audio tracks or 5.1 Ac3 audio can cause problems at times.

CineXPlayer is less restrictive than adding files to the native video app. It plays the Timescapes trailer fine, while iTunes won't copy it over natively.

Bill
 
Thanks for the info Bill,
I was testing PlayerXtreme , and was having some issues with it at 8Mb/sec. It also looks like it actually scales the video up to 2K and then back to 1920 .... which is really odd.
I can see this because I placed a small pixel-on-pixel-off pattern in the center of my test video. I was hoping it would get played with no scaling artifacts.

So Cinexplayer can play the 2.5K timescapes trailer ? Or is that the 1920 version ?
 
The new iPad supports H.264 encoded at a maximum of High Profile level 4.1 at 1080p30 for the video track. The video track can have a maximum data rate of 62.5 Mbps. Technically, the video decoding hardware in the iPad supports up to 2048x1024, but Apple's placed restrictions in iOS to prevent that. The iPad's specifications state that the audio track has to be AAC-encoded at a maximum of 160 Kbps, but I've tried it at 320 Kbps and it works.

If you want to get the highest quality video on the iPad, you absolutely have to encode in High Profile level 4.1. QuickTime does not support conversions to that H.264 specification, so you have to use a program like Sorenson Squeeze and manually specify both the profile and level. Also, if you do decide to use Squeeze, set it to use the MainConcept H.264 encoder instead of the H.264 or x264 one.

Also, set the entropy coding mode to CAVLC.

HandBrake is excellent, but you have to know precisely what to set where or else not-so-good things will happen. :-)
 
Brian, thanks for the info, that helps. I have an iOS dev account, are there any white papers or anything that you've seen with more info like this?

Les, unfortunately no, CineXPlayer seems capped at 1080p.

I'm really starting to feel like this screen is a great and portable way to convince people why 4k (and up) is so important. Everyone I've shown reacts so strongly to the resolution and it's pretty easy to extrapolate out the benefits on the big screen. It has more pixels than a 2k theater.
 
POI don't believe Apple has any white papers on supported video specifications, but I'll double check.

There is no app for the iPad that can play video at a resolution higher than 1920x1080. It's impossible with release builds of iOS.

The new iPad's display is amazing. But unfortunately, Apple has limited video playback to 1080p. That, in my opinion, is highly unfortunate considering that the device is perfectly capable of 2K decoding in terms of hardware performance.

BillBarnes said:
Brian, thanks for the info, that helps. I have an iOS dev account, are there any white papers or anything that you've seen with more info like this?

Les, unfortunately no, CineXPlayer seems capped at 1080p.

I'm really starting to feel like this screen is a great and portable way to convince people why 4k (and up) is so important. Everyone I've shown reacts so strongly to the resolution and it's pretty easy to extrapolate out the benefits on the big screen. It has more pixels than a 2k theater.
Click to expand...
 
2048-1920=128 , what's 128 pixels among friends anyhow ;)

Brian, what players have you tried ?
I am curious if any of them can pass the 1920 cleanly. If you put a small res pattern of XY pixel stripes on the video, you can see if it survives the trip !

The whole reason I got the 'new ipad' ( what a dumb official name, did Prince help them name it ...makes searches hard .... ) is for the new screen.
You can tell people that the 4k material will be almost twice as sharp as what they see on your demo video.
I can also do decent 3d side by side with a viewer gadget.
 
Les Dittert said:
Brian, what players have you tried ?
I am curious if any of them can pass the 1920 cleanly. If you put a small res pattern of XY pixel stripes on the video, you can see if it survives the trip !
Click to expand...

Do you mean video playback apps for the iPad? If so, I personally just use the "Videos" app that's part of iOS. Video playback on the iPad is assisted by Apple's graphics processor built into their A5X and it functions at the system level. So, I believe any third-party app still uses the video decoding power from the iPad's 'system-on-a-chip' (as long as your playing H.264), however, I'm not completely sure on that.

Also, the only testing I've done has been on an iPad 2. But, the software specifications for video playback on both the iPad 2 and the new iPad are identical (which is odd considering the new iPad's additional processing capabilities.) I would have guessed that higher-than-1080p video playback would be enabled in iOS 6 in a few months, just as 1080p playback was enable in iOS 5 for the iPad 2 months after its release (when it shipped, it would only play 720p video), but Apple doesn't seem to be too concerned about 2K playback. Looking back at their history of video playback on mobile devices, they were stuck at 720p for quite a long time...

"The new iPad?" I would've preferred "iPad 3." :-)
 
Yeah, if you have 2048x1536 working, details please! The only outside the box technique I can think of would be some form of HTML5 Streaming.
 
BillBarnes said:
Yeah, if you have 2048x1536 working, details please! The only outside the box technique I can think of would be some form of HTML5 Streaming.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, HTML5 streaming uses the same video decoding method as local playback on the device, so it's limited by the same requirements set in the system. Therefore, that too is limited to 1080p30 also.
 
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