Micro SDHC

[mercyreaper]

Since my device should arrive this week, I was wondering if anyone has been playing movies off of their micro SDHC cards and what class will work since the file has to be converted vs say a 720p h.264 file for a movie in .mkv format.

I was thinking no less than a class 6 card, although not sure what the bit rate of the converted files are, does anyone know or can measure what their bit rate is?

 

[Suntan]

How are we supposed to know the bitrate of your files?

Personally, I see two scenarios working here. 1) You encode your files specifically for playback on your tablet. 2) you want to play any and all files you ?download? from the internet.

1) When I had the Xoom for a week or so I tested a couple of encodes and the thing plays fluid 720p AVC. For reference I encoded video at a rate that would give files of a little less than 1 GB per hour (2Mbps.) The video looked good, but not great. I wouldn?t go much below that personally unless I was heading out for a long trip and needed a lot of content with me.

By 3Mbps I would hazard to say that the video quality would be pretty good and likely wouldn?t see any breakups or macroblocking except in very hard scenes (underwater, smoke/fire, etc.) And 4 Mbps would be doing really good if you had the space.

Even a class 2 card is supposed to be capable of 16 Mbps.

As for 2) I don?t know what the average pirate uses for a bitrate so I can?t really comment on the requirements for that.

-Suntan

 

[hero992000]

I found an app called mobo player it plays all types of videofiles I have 2 4GB microSD cards and they are both class 2 once you download the app you install thecodecfor your device works like a charm

 

[mercyreaper]

Maybe I should have phrased my question better....well I will try and experiment with some different settings to see what the results are and post them when I know more.

I am not sure where the pirate reference comes into play, so whatever you mean I am not sure.

Thanks for a little help, I will just do trial and error and figure it out, just wanted to see which card to buy for certain needs. Thanks .

 

[Suntan]

although not sure what the bit rate of the converted files are

I was not implying anything about you. You commented in the past tense about converted files. Which led me to believe you had a hard drive full of videos, but you didn?t say anything about their contents. In general there have been a lot of posts on the tablet forums asking about mem card speed ?for movies.? With little more to go on.

If you encode your own, specifically for use on the tablet, make them 720p AVC at a bitrate of about 2 to 4 Mbps and you should be happy. Plus they will play with most any card.

For people that expect to take an illegal downloaded copy of a BR, stuff it on a Class 2 card and play it, or some bastardized .mkv that was encoded by someone, somewhere with who-knows-what settings; they will likely be unhappy.

-Suntan

 

[jon_stewart]

Suntan,
A properly encoded ie high quality BR probably won't be any good anyway, since it's likely to be over 4Gb, especially with a DTS audio stream; that's a problem with fat32, isnt it?

I've got some of mine encoded for streaming at about 3Gb and the quality is very good and a 52 inch screen, and also play off a class 6 on the Desire HD.

 

[Suntan]

Suntan,
A properly encoded ie high quality BR probably won't be any good anyway, since it's likely to be over 4Gb, especially with a DTS audio stream; that's a problem with fat32, isnt it?

I've got some of mine encoded for streaming at about 3Gb and the quality is very good and a 52 inch screen, and also play off a class 6 on the Desire HD.

Well yeah, that was kind of my point.

If you are getting videos that are so high of a bitrate that they overpower even a class 2 card, you?re probably going to have files so big as to be impractical in the first place.

Keep in mind, not all cards actually run at their rated speed on all devices. I haven?t seen any subjective tests to show what real world throughput people are seeing on the Transformer (or any tegra2 based honeycomb tablets.)

Also, keep in mind that a fast card has benefits in other areas. Namely, how long it takes to copy the movies over to it in the first place.

-Suntan

 

[mercyreaper]

I beleive FAT32 is limited to less that 4 Gb, and I figured a class 6 would be more than enough. I mostly have SDHC and not mirco SDHC cards so I just did not want to end up having a waste on some micro cards lying around. Still I will try and post info once I have done some testing to help anyone out there with encoding and give as many specs as I can.

The files I have already converted are constant bit ratios to ensure smooth playback although I don't have any in front of my right now. I will put up more info in the future sorry about that, my question is kind of general.

 

[jon_stewart]

I agree with Suntan there.

Yes, Mercyreaper 4Gb is the limit per file. I still occasionally run into it with stitched photos from the digital back I use (2.5 x 39Mpixel @ 16bit LOL ).

I ordered a 'cheaper' Memorette Class 10 as a means of hedging my bets! It may or may not actually be class 10, but it'll probably be fast enough and came in at about the same price as a class 6.

I have to wait another 2 weeks for my tf , although I've played and examined a number in various stores. I find it a bit bizarre that none of the Dixons group (Dixons, Currys, PCWorld) I've been in can actually hook the demo model to the internet! (No problem with Apple kit, since Apple pay for their own networking in these stores (I was amused to find out).