MPEG4 and digital cameras

Has anyone else noticed that when a product/company says it supports MPEG4 that 1) It's a subset of the full standard (which I understand - for simplicity sake), and 2) they never specify what their exact specs are for the format.

I said I'd work on the Kodak Picture Frame extension, but quite frankly, I don't think it's gonna be finished any time soon, unless Kodak ponies up the specs for the MPEG4 specs that they use. Of the 3 formats they support (MPEG4, MPEG1, and MJPEG), I've only been able to produce a fully working MJPEG version file (with the massive size hit, of course) - not acceptable, by my standards, to create an extension for, solely.

Compressing to MPEG1 only provides mixed results. 75% of the time, the frame plays the first 1 or 2 minutes of the vid, then starts to puke horribly on the mpeg1 file - looping in some unbelievable way.

It's too bad. These are nice frames. I have an EX811 - with WiFi so I can just dump the vids onto a server and then play them back immediately on the frame.

Moving on from the Kodak frames, I also have a really cheap camera (SVP HDDV-8800) which said it supported MPEG4 videos. Now while it records to MPEG4, and I have endlessly tried to duplicate the exact format from the recorded version of vid, nothing works! Not a one! I haven't been able to play a single video on that unit (other than what is recorded on the camera). Some conversions yield a vid which will show as a single frame on the unit, then the player will HARD reset. Nice firmware.

Anyway, if anyone has any insight on how to exactly duplicate video formats and/or any information on these units, I'd be grateful to hear anything.

P.S. Thank goodness for MediaCoder - at least once we find out what the settings are supposed to be, we can use MC to create something usable!

[stanley]

Speaking of Kodak, I used to work for Kodak.
I suggest you start from the most conservative settings for XviD, say disabling all quality-favored options, like motion estimation, GMC, QPEL etc. Maybe also set resolution FPS to low enough.
Looking forward to your extension.

Speaking of Kodak, I used to work for Kodak.
I suggest you start from the most conservative settings for XviD, say disabling all quality-favored options, like motion estimation, GMC, QPEL etc. Maybe also set resolution FPS to low enough.
Looking forward to your extension.

No luck, whatsoever. Tried just about everything. I'm obviously missing something. Unfortunately, Kodak has provided no information on how to convert to MPEG4 format, nor have they provided any tools to convert to that format, nor have they provided any sample videos for me to compare to.

I have sent off an email to them to see if I can get some more detail, but more than likely I will get an email back saying "Have you got the frame plugged in? Did you turn on the power switch?".

Stanley, if you have any buddies still at Kodak, do you think you could get some more information on the EX811/EX1011?

I'll keep trying different conversions. Somehow I doubt I'm going to stumble upon it since I have tried the absolute simplest parameters for MPEG4 that is possible, and that doesn't work.

Looks like the Kodak EX frame extension is not going to happen. I've sent numerous emails to Kodak asking for some specifications or samples of MPEG4 files, and all came back (as I expected) as 'Make sure you plug in your device'. Nothing helpful.

If anyone has any information on the MPEG4 files that the Kodak frames use, please let me know. As it stands, the Kodak frames do not accept Simple Profile MPEG4 files. They obviously have some other restrictions.

Cheers c[]

[mixer]

I guess you've seen this. It's pretty basic. Out of curiosity, I called Kodak Support and got no where (except being on hold for 30 minutes)

File Formats or Container: (Compression formats)

JPEG/EXIF: (N/A)
MOV: (MPEG-4, MJPEG, G.711, PCM, ADPCM)
AVI: (MPEG-4, MJPEG (not DIVX), G.711, PCM, MP3 (not Dolby Digital, DTS))
MPG/MPEG: (MPEG-1, MPEG (1 or 2 Channels))
MP3: (MP3)

I guess you've seen this. It's pretty basic.

Yeah, I've seen that. It's quite annoying since they SAY it can play MPEG4 files, but there is no example, no converter nor any specifications on what particular subset of the MPEG4 format they have implemented.

I can't even get the lowest form of MPEG4 to work on the frame (i.e. Simple Profile). They probably have implemented some sort of resolution restriction or such. I've seen this before - the Samsung YP-P2 restricts their MPEG4 format to 480x272 (so far), but at least they told us that, and their product ships with a converter.

I'm not holding my breath that I will get any information out of them any time soon.

What's really funny is that I have even tried encoding to MPEG1 to display on the frame. It seems that their implementation of MPEG1 is buggy, since almost every clip I've converted to MPEG1 to show on the frame ends up displaying strangely on the frame (gets a few seconds into the clip, then it almost seems like it just loops on some sort of motion vector, tearing video off in the direction that the motion was going when it crashed). Again, I'm not going to hold my breath for a solution to this.

Too bad. I really like this frame. I actually like Kodak too.

Cheers c[]