what exactly is a Mp4 player supposed to play?

[rontopia]

hi all, first time poster


so this seems like it would be simple but I guess its not ment to be. I have a 4bg nano style mp3/4 player. I have used it to play music just fine. but im confused about video.

there was a sample video that has a .amv extention.. I played it when I first got the player and thoguth oh thats nice. the next thing I did was made a back up copy of everthing on the player. Now, I have a psp and play games and even listen to mp3's on that. it also plays mp4's and I bought a cheap mp4 converter for my psp and I have no problem putting in a dvd and ripping the mp4 and putting it on my psp.. everything works ..

but.. these players all say mp4.. but they dont actaully play mp4's? if this is the case what does the "mp3/4 player" actually mean?

the next question is hmm i have a bunch. maybe we should stop there for now?

thanks for your time.
Rontopia

[admin]

Hi Rontopia,

I'm not entirely sure of the full history but have been told by manufacturers of these players that the main distinction they put between "mp3" and "mp4" is that "mp3" players only play music and NO video, while "mp4" players can also play music and VIDEO.

The MP4 format itself won't play on these players straight up, but needs to be converted. Its like saying it can play "avi" and "wmv" videos, however NEEDS TO BE CONVERTED firstly.

Hope that helps.

[rontopia]

thanks for your reply. I understand what your saying

[freddyzdead]

I get cranky, too, with all this MP4 crap. It's just a buzzword that ignoramuses use to mean "Video Player". It wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't an actual video format called "MP4", which there shouldn't be, because it's too similar to MP3. And it's a crap format anyway.

Most of these players from China use Rockchip, which understands XviD, but they are very finicky about the exact format. The picture size has to be EXACTLY whatever the native screen size is, and given a black matte top and bottom if it is a widescreen format. The audio must be MP2, nothing else. Video frame rate must be an integer between 15 and 22. Some work, some don't.

For anybody who doesn't know, viDrop is the definitive answer to making videos that play on these little machines. None of the other converters give you any control over the result.

-freddy

[ditterdi]

there is a distinction between the codec used for video eg mpeg2, divx, mpeg4
and the container of the video and audio streams eg avi vob 3gp.

My player wont work with a avi container it needs 3gp, the one used for cellphones.

see my post about 3gp converters.

Leo.