HOW TO PLAY HD VIDEO ON THE N9 Part 2

Posted by Peach Rabbit on June 4, 2012 · 11 Comments 

This is part 2 of my guide about getting HD video to play smoothly on the Nokia N9. Part 1 can be found by clicking here.

In that post, I mentioned using the video converter Handbreak, but would like to start by saying, this isn’t an endorsement for their software, in fact, generally I prefer using MediaCoder, but for this job I have found Handbreak is the easiest, partly because of the simple interface, and the fact you can easily set a default setting for converting videos. Anyway, here goes.

Before I start my guide, I would like to point out that the video which I find plays best, while I say it is HD, it is not 1280*720. I have found the best bet is to convert a 720p video to 854*480, which is of course the Nokia N9’s screen resolution.

Having installed Handbreak, (Download from their site) you need to set some default settings. How I did this was to take one of the original videos found on the N9, as these look very good, and are 854*480. I used the one named Nokia Pure, make sure this is saved to your PC, I put it the “My Videos” file, and, from Handbreak, select this video as the source (top left corner- see screen shot below.)

You can then set this as the default settings for a “New Device”. Look at the bottom right of the interface, and from here you can press Add Device, but first, there are a couple of things you need to change.
In the lower half of the screen, you have a number of headings, first one is Picture, then Video Filters and so on. You need to make adjustments to these before saving it as a default.

The first change is under the Picture heading, click the drop down box next to the word Anamorphic and select Custom. The Width and Height boxes will now become editable. Write the width as 854 and the height as 480.

I didn’t make any changes to any of the other headings except Video. This is where you put the Frame Rate and Bit Rate, both seem very important in order to get the videos to play with out that “This type of file…” message popping up. As you can see from the screen shot below, I set the Peak Frame Rate to 25 and the Average Bit Rate to 875. I did try this one at 900 but the videos would stop at some points through out playback on the N9 before resuming when I pressed play again. Reducing this to 875kpbs has mostly eradicated  this, but it has happened occasionally. You can set it to Constant Quality, but I didn’t understand these RF values.

After you have set these values, you can then press the +ADD button as mentioned earlier. This will bring up a box, as in the first picture in this post, for you to name it. I used the name “Nokia N9” as there were already defaults named after other devices which I assume have the best default settings for saving to those.

From now on, every time you fire up Handbreak you will be able to select Nokia N9 from the list of devices, and convert any 720p video you want for good quality playback on your device.

A couple of things to bare in mind. I have found, for whatever reason, the videos seem to end up 853*480, but what’s a single row of pixels between friends? This is possibly because 1280 doesn’t divide evenly by 854 (note the genius of Symbian’s screen res!)

Also, you can’t upscale videos. Say if you have a 640*360 video, this will not let you convert it to play at the N9’s native resolution.

Should you have any questions or comments about this post, or anything for that matter, please leave a comment, I would love to hear from you. I can also be found on Twitter, @Chriswwwright, click here to follow.

Thanks for reading, take care, and remember to follow this blog so as not to miss my future posts.

Filed under Technology · Tagged with MeeGo Harmattan, N9, Nokia, Smartphones, Symbian, Technology