[RubiKean]

I was curious about this myself and found a couple others were wondering as well, so I thought I would just put all the info into one post to share. Some of this may go over your head, but I will try to lay it out so everyone can get something out of it.
First� because we all love manuals (well, I do anyway); here is the manual for the Supported Media Types

RIM recommended video format for local playback
Video
H.264 mp4 using a High Profile @ 720P (1280x720).
Audio
LC-AAC Stereo or 5.1.
FYI- Playbook screen resolution is 1024x600.
(But RIM said I could play full 1080p!?!?!? Keep reading)

I use a program called Handbrake to compress most of my videos. It is a free download and does a very good job on most compressions without the need to go and tweak the settings. However, if you know how or feel the need to adjust and manipulate the finer details of h.264, the power is there. Of course there are tons of compression programs out there; this is just the one I like best for this purpose.

If you want a movie that is good quality, but comparatively small, I would recommend using an Apple TV HD preset if you have one. Staying around 1280 pixels wide, you will get a nice picture and a smaller file size. Well, smaller than a full 1080p file, anyway. If you have the option, use a High Profile (or Main Profile at the least) with B-frames. Let the program do the math to figure out what the height will be (not all video is a perfect 16x9 aspect ratio). Here are my general settings for portable(ish) and high(ish) quality movies:
H.264 MP4
1280 x (whatever the high ends up while keeping the aspect ratio correct)
29.97 FPS
B-Frames enabled set to every 3
CABAC enabled
Average Bit Rate- 2500-3000kbps
2 Pass encoding
Note- Compression is a combination of art and science. These settings work well in general but may look horrible on some video (ie. Little Jimmy�s midget league football game shot with a cheap camcorder with no lights might not turn out so well). A little experimentation and testing will help tweak your video to look good with a small file size.

The Playbook will play and output full 1080p (1920x1080) via HDMI. However, keep in mind that h.264 can be very processor intensive. Playing back full 1080P using a High Profile h.264 with B frames WILL result in a noticeable drop in battery performance. I will be testing battery performance with different compression profiles later. If you must have the highest quality possible then go for it but be warned... if you compress a full feature length movie to 1080p, it's going to be big. Real big.

Here is the full list of media formats
File Formats (aka- �containters�)
VIDEO
3GP, 3GP2, M4A, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPEG-4, AVI*, ASF, WMV, F4V
(*I need to confirm this but I think there are special rules for AVI)
AUDIO
MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV
CODECs
VIDEO
H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, VP6, Sorenson Spark
AUDIO
MP3, AAC, PCM, Windows Media Audio (9, 10, and Lossless)

This is all I have right now. I�ll try to get some real world results ASAP. If you have more info, please feel free to chime in. I hope this helps someone.

[bcbobcat22]

when I play a .mov file on my Playbook the video quality is great but I cannot get any sound...does anyone have any ideas?

[RubiKean]

most likely the audio is in an unsupported format. run it through handbrake and see if it plays. use either an apple tv hd preset or iphone4 preset. there is a way to check your codecs using a free program called mediainfo. ill post an update to this thread tonight on troubleshooting non playing media.

[footmatix]

i'm using Toast Titanium for all my conversions or compressions. works well......

[jcastilloalonso]

Hey RubiKean thanks a lot for your tips!

Could you make some Handbrake profiles for the community so we don't need to modify the options? You seem to understand quite a lot and maybe you could upload 2 or 3 profiles for different scenarios (action, cartoon, concerts, old videos etc) so we can use them?

Thanks again!

Jose

[berrydeck]

any suggestion for handbrake settings for sd dvd's?

[vecharo]

is there a free version of foxreal?

[William32]

i just tried foxreal dvd ripper, wow, i have an important discovery. it is a free audio converter, and i convert dvd to mp3, ac3, aac or other audio formats successfully. Really is a loophole!

and i guess the other foxreal products also have similar loophole!

[dfaris]

Does anyone know why when I rip a DVD the sound is off by like a second. I'm using Audials Tunebite to rip but what I'm looking for is what settings should I play with to try and fix this sound issue.

[William32]

I used a lot of software, such as iskysoft, 4videosoft, xilisoft, more or less a little bit of audio out of video problem. I think it is the source file problem at first, then i understand that this is because software problem. through the Friend's introduction, I used the foxreal dvd ripper, and i didn't meet any audio and video problem. i think u can also try it, good luck!

[billgTO]

Just tried to put an AVI file on the playbook in the videos folder. It doesn't show the file as being there at all. Does anyone know the constraints on AVI files?

[FF22]

How did you try getting the avi file to your PB? I use drag/drop. It should show even if the wrong format, I'd think. Folks have run into issues where they hear audio but no picture or picture but no audio. So generally the filename should show but may not play if it's a bad format. How large?

[JustAnotherBeerbot]

reboot it. media library sometimes gets stuck.
also, make sure you have .avi as the file extension.

[ifmoir]

I downloaded an MP4 Movie and it played fine, but the resolution was rotten. What am I doing wrong?

[FF22]

The resolution depends solely on how it was encoded into mp4. What source? Some are severely shrunk for some phone screens and will not be very high quality.

I've found some incredible files or created my own (can be tedious!)