Unlocking Some Secrets of the Android G1 Video Capabilities
The following is a copy and paste of a subsequent Pat Moorhead blog post.
In my last blog, I covered my first experiences with T-Mobile's G1 Android-based phone. I liked it, but could learn to love it if the promise of open-source software comes true. One of the drawbacks I saw on Day 1 was the lack of a video player to playback videos on the phone, and I would like to provide an update to that. I will provide the good news, the bad news, and then provide some suggestions on how to improve the situation.
The Good News
The good news is that on Day 2, one day after launch, a video player became available on Android Market, right off the phone. Android Market says "Video Player 1.0" comes from a chap named "Jeff Hamilton", and states that, the "File should be MPEG4 or 3GPP with H.264 or H.263 video and MP3, AAC, or AMR audio. Videos need to be 480x352 or smaller to play back properly." This is a good start, but not the whole equation.
The Bad News
The bad news is that if anyone has played around moving video onto mobile devices, there are a lot more variables you need to know to make the video play well. For example, video bit rate, profiles (ie baseline, simple), and frames per second are important. For the audio inside the video file, sample frequency, bit rate, and channels are key.
The Apple iPhone provides all this data. As an example, data from the iPhone's technical specifications page clearly states:
"Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats ."
While to many, this sounds like gibberish, whoever wants to put their own content (not purchased from iTunes, like family videos) it gives you enough to work from.
The Android G1 didn't have any of these detailed support statements, which provided a medium-sized challenge. :>