Has video/media playback improved?

[Charly]

Hello,

the native video player is not optimal. As a solution that actually always works I use mpv in liberline on the shell.

greetings
Charly

[gpatel-fr]

@Charly

mpv can also be installed via snap.

[hlbkv]

@gpatel-fr it was about a year ago, I didn't do extensive testing, but none of the .mkv I tried worked, and .mp4 were very hit-and-miss. Good to know it isn't Hallium-related, perhaps there's hope to fix it on this device.

@Charly the issue w/ that is that, AFAIK, Libertine apps aren't hardware-accelerated, and video playback often gets choppy (it was one of the workarounds I tried). Didn't try the snap version though.

[hlbkv]

So noone who owns this device can provide any feedback on media playback? I'm planning to reinstall UT anyway, but would rather avoid running into this issue.

[floem7]

@hlbkv Hi, I have fresh tablet with UTouch (24.04). I've verified that: mp4 (checked 2 files), m4v and mkv plays without problems in default app. However ts2 file don't work.

[gpatel-fr]

@floem7 said in Has video/media playback improved?:

mkv plays without problems in default app

a .mkv file is a container format, so the ability of UT mediaplayer to play these files depends on what is exactly the format of media tracks in the file. If the video track is "standard" mp4 or theora or h264 and sound track is mp3 or ogg/vorbis, there will be no problem. If for example the sound is amr or video is 'microsoft' mp4, it will probably not work.

It's not obvious to check on the format of a .mkv file under Ubuntu Touch, it's much easier under a PC running Linux where you can easily install mkvinfo (ffplay or gst-discoverer-1.0 will also be able to interpret the files to some extent).

[hlbkv]

@gpatel-fr said:

@floem7 said in Has video/media playback improved?:

mkv plays without problems in default app

a .mkv file is a container format, so the ability of UT mediaplayer to play these files depends on what is exactly the format of media tracks in the file. If the video track is "standard" mp4 or theora or h264 and sound track is mp3 or ogg/vorbis, there will be no problem. If for example the sound is amr or video is 'microsoft' mp4, it will probably not work.

It's not obvious to check on the format of a .mkv file under Ubuntu Touch, it's much easier under a PC running Linux where you can easily install mkvinfo (ffplay or gst-discoverer-1.0 will also be able to interpret the files to some extent).

Indeed none of my .mkv files work. I've tried converting to .mp4 using ffmpeg, but it still doesn't play.
What target (that we're sure it's supported) video and audio format/encoding should I use?

[hlbkv]

Looking into this with a bit more care, the issue seems to be high definition video such as 10-bit H.264, converting to 8-bit seems to allow playback to work. I'm not sure if it's an hardware limitation, because it works on android roms (at least on custom A14).

[gpatel-fr]

@hlbkv

UT system is based on QT, whose graphic support on Linux is based on gstreamer libraries. Unfortunately by itself while wide, gstreamer support for advanced formats is not limitless.

You can find mkv sample files here

On Ubuntu 24.04 all files can be played by ffplay, even the invalid ones test4 and test7, while the standard gstreamer player (gst-play-1.0) can play 4 of them (2,3,5,7) if ffmpeg support (ffmpeg itself and the link library gstreamer1.0-libav) are not installed, and can play test1 and test6 if this support is enabled.

Ubuntu Touch can play 4 of these sample files (the same as desktop Ubuntu can play if ffmpeg support is not enabled)

gst-discoverer-1.0 test1.mkv 
(...)
Properties:
  Duration: 0:01:27.336000000
  Seekable: yes
  Live: no
  container #0: Matroska
    video #1: Microsoft MPEG-4 4.2

this 'Microsoft MPEG-4 4.2' is probably the same thing as your '10 bit support'.

You can install mpv with snap, it can probably play your mkv files.

Note that hardware support is not involved except when it comes to performance of course.

[hlbkv]

@gpatel-fr thank you for the mkv samples!

@gpatel-fr said:

this 'Microsoft MPEG-4 4.2' is probably the same thing as your '10 bit support'.

not really, the issue is definitely the bit depth of the video, correlated with the format profile. Higher definition videos such as H.264 AVC "High 10" profile (using mediainfo) :

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : **High 10@L3.1**
Format settings                          : CABAC / 5 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 5 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 46 s 0 ms
Width                                    : 1 024 pixels
Height                                   : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 24.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : **10 bits**
Scan type                                : Progressive
Writing library                          : x264 core 165 r3222 b35605a
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=18 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=18.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=81 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.601 NTSC
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.601

To reproduce this, you can use ffmpeg to enforce a higher bit depth on any of these samples:

ffmpeg -i test5.mkv -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -crf 18 -preset slow -c:a copy test5_10bit.mkv

and confirm it does not play on the UT player, despite desktop OSs having no issue playing it (at least that's my experience).
It does, as you suggested, play on (libertine) mpv or vlc, so it seems like a limitation of the default player (I'd open a bug on the app repository, but can't seem to find it for the media player).