Android HTC Hero/Eris x264 (h.264) video encoding with HandBrake

Note: This article focuses on the HTC Hero, but should work just as well for the HTC Eris.

The HTC Hero can play a variety of video codecs and formats, but there’s one far better than the rest. That would be the x264 codec, which is the open-source version of the h.264 codec. According to the HTC Hero’s specs it’s able to play x264 mpeg4s (.mp4), so I wasn’t going to settle for anything less. Finding the correct settings turned out to be a close to impossible task, but after some testing I figured it out. My goal was to create a profile in handbrake that could output a video, which would play perfectly smooth, have good quality, and wouldn’t take up too much space.

As for those who don’t know what handbrake is…it’s a open-source application used for encoding and transcoding video into other formats. In my case, going from a DVD to a format that would work on my HTC Hero. handbrake is free, simple, and it isn’t trashy like so many other video converters. It also runs on PC, Mac, and Linux, so it should work on your machine. You can download handbrake from http://handbrake.fr.

Moving on, here’s the end results of my handbrake profile settings. (for creating my x264 HTC Hero videos)

Handbrake Profile Settings

 

Here’s the same results as above, but in a text based version:

Output Settings

• Format: MP4 File
• Large file size: unchecked
• Web optimized: unchecked
• iPod 5G support: unchecked

Picture Settings

Crop

• Crop: Custom
• Top: 0
• Right: 0
• bottom: 0
• left: 0

Size

• Width/Height: 480 x 272 (note – this is for widescreen videos, if your video isn’t widescreen 480 x 320 may work better)
• Anamorphic: None

Filters

• Detelecine: unchecked
• Decomb: unchecked
• Deinterlace: None
• Denoise: None
• Deblock: Off

Video

Video

• Video Codec: H.264 (x264)
• Framerate (FPS): 24 (note – 15 works fine for most videos too, try both and see which you prefer)

Advanced Encoding Settings

• Grayscale Encoding: unchecked
• 2-Pass Encoding: checked
• Turbo first Pass: checked

Quality

• Target Size (MB): leave blank
• Avg Bitrate (kbps): 384 (note – feel free to play with this setting, but as a warning the hero sees my videos at 536kbps when I specify 384kbps in handbrake.)
• Constant Quality: 0%

Audio & Subtitles

Audio Tracks

• 1: Automatic (or choose english)
• Audio Codec: AAC
• Mixdown: Stereo (if you’re going to be using the phone’s speaker you can choose mono)
• Samplerate (kHz): 44.1
• Bitrate (Kbps): 160
• DRC: 1

Subtitles

• Subtitles: None

Chapters

Chapter Markers

• Create chapter markers: unchecked

Advanced

Advanced H.264 Options

• Reference Frames: 2
• Mixed References: unchecked
• B-Frames: 0
• Motion Estimation Method: Uneven Multi-Hexagon
• Motion Estimation Range: Default (16)
• Subpixel Motion Estimation: Default (16)
• Analysis: Default
• 8×8 DCT: unchecked
• Deblocking: Default (0) x Default (0)
• No Fast-P-Skip: unchecked
• No DCT-Decimate: unchecked
• CABAC Entropy Coding: unchecked (note – having this turned on will result in solid green screen when trying to playback video)

Query Editor

Query Editor

• Click the Generate Query button and your command line should look simular to the following (except the file names and paths will be different).

-i “D:\VIDEO_TS” -t 1 -c 1-21 -o “B:\Hero Video\super_troopers.mp4″ -f mp4 -w 480 -l 272 –crop 0:0:0:0 -e x264 -b 384 -2 -T -r 24 -a 1 -E faac -B 160 -R 44.1 -6 stereo -D 1 -x ref=2:me=umh:cabac=0:bframes=0 -C 8 -v

This profile was created on version 0.93 of handbrake, I plan on doing some more in depth tests when I have the time. If anyone discovers improvements for these settings please let me know!