uhh.. the default videoplayer does a good job on my playbook.
it plays most well known formats. had some issues with not having sound at some movies.
i think this is more a file format problem than player related.
I'm back to using official release, was having freezing issues with OS2..
The included video player is awesome, I love being able to play almost every single format.. no having to convert or using third party software..
The other great thing is it can play most MKV files, all you have to do is rename the AVI and voila..
I can't mention the amount of videos I've downloaded, and I can say with confidence that 95% of all videos worked without worrying about having to convert it..
One other thing i'd love to see is support for extracting .RAR files..
AC3 sound isn't compatible with the embedded player. Not a biggy to me... a conversion solves it. For the PB I just avoid downloading AC3 and stick to mainstream stuff.
i'm waiting for the official release of os2 because i want it all to come as a big new experience when it does come along. (i've never wanted to open my christmas presents early haha)
and for the video player, i havent used it yet but i am going on a trip soon, so i'm going to have to test it out soon
That's the nice thing of this forum: If you want to be an A..H..., you will be treated and answered as such, if you have a reasonable question, you will get answers with value.
My one big grief about the Playbook video player is that you can't zoom in on videos by double tapping, this seems like such a no brainer and they didn't include the option. Some widescreen videos have to be manually zoomed in to fill the whole screen and that is soooo tedious and annoying. ALSO, when you zoom in even a little on a full HD 1080p video the quality deteriorates fast, it gets blurry and washed out. Seems to me that the playbook is just zooming in on the pixels of the screen rather than the actual video file, this is a real shame.
Other than that: the Playbook actually DOES play .flv files in the native video player, you just have to use VLC on your computer to repackage the original file into a .MP4 container and VOILA! Plays perfectly, I just recently discovered this myself and this alleviates the need for those clunky third party apps.
The other great thing is it can play most MKV files, all you have to do is rename the AVI and voila..
That really works? If so, RIM is just hiding the fact that they indeed support the matroska container format by not binding the mimetype/extension to video player. I have to give it a try. Usually, what I do with mkv files (with a h.264 video track and an AC3 audio track) on my Linux machine is the following:
This gives you two separate files with the video and the audio track (you can find out the track numbers with mkvinfo). Afterwards, you convert the AC3 audio track (which the Playbook doesn't support) to 5.1 AAC:
That really works? If so, RIM is just hiding the fact that they indeed support the matroska container format by not binding the mimetype/extension to video player. I have to give it a try. Usually, what I do with mkv files (with a h.264 video track and an AC3 audio track) on my Linux machine is the following: ... .
For us non Linux users there is a shareware program called XenonMKV ( Home | XenonMKV ) which will automate the above. Since a lot of mkv files have AC3 audio, even if the renaming trick works there will be a lot of videos without sound. XenonMKV takes care of this as well.
On the original OS, I found too many problems with 2.0 on the browser especially, and could not get video calling to work.
The video player is great for xvids, the picture quality on even lower bitrate videos looks great. Couple things I wish it had -
1) Ability to remember where you left off. Kind of annoying to have to manually scroll everywhere. Also wish it would indicate what videos you have already watched ala iPad.
2) AC3 and DTS support for audio with MKV support. It would help with movies I have converted for home use not to have to make another version for the Playbook.
i'm waiting for the official release of os2 because i want it all to come as a big new experience when it does come along. (i've never wanted to open my christmas presents early haha)
and for the video player, i havent used it yet but i am going on a trip soon, so i'm going to have to test it out soon
Maybe you should buy one on Black Friday, $200 is a steal for this kind of device
For us non Linux users there is a shareware program called XenonMKV ( Home | XenonMKV ) which will automate the above. Since a lot of mkv files have AC3 audio, even if the renaming trick works there will be a lot of videos without sound. XenonMKV takes care of this as well.
I downloaded that xe onmkv but the last tbird of mu video has no soumd. Soumd nefore that seems fine. Happened twice on two comversions.