iPod Touch Bug: MP4 Videos Recorded with Nokia Nseries Fail to Play

LonelyBob
Oct 14, 2007 at 8:09 PM
19 comments

I have had the iPod Touch for 1 week now and have found a critical bug. MP4 videos that are VGA resolution (640x480) recorded with Nokia Nseries devices (N93, N93i, etc.) will sync using iTunes and will display a thumbnail in Videos on the iPod Touch but when I try to play the video no video output is displayed! The video is opened and audio is played and can be heard but the video output remains black/blank! This seems to be a bug specifically for VGA (640x480) resolution videos because I have tried playing other MP4 videos recorded with different resolutions and they play fine with video output displayed. MP4 videos that were 320x240 (QVGA) and 352x288 resolution could be played fine. The 640x480 MP4 videos recorded with Nokia Nseries devices (Nokia N93, N93i, etc.) play without any problems in Quicktime on both Mac OSX and Windows XP so this is a bug specifically for iPod Touch. I don't have an iPhone to check with but possibly the problem is in iPhone also. Firmware that is on the iPod Touch is sw Version 1.1.1 that is the latest available.

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Are you sure it is a 'bug' and not a 'feature'? I mean... the specs say it should cope...

I think it's a Nokia bug, not an Apple bug. Vox also chokes on some flavors of Nokia video.

Vox had a different issue, 320x240 (QVGA) MP4 videos from N93/N93i were not successfully transcoding/converting into Flash video. But there weren't any problems with transcoding/converting 640x480 (VGA) MP4 videos on Vox.

Syncing the videos with iTunes works fine and since the videos also are listed in Videos on the iPod Touch and have thumbnails, as a user of course I expect the videos to be able to play! The videos are standard MP4 videos, no special proprietary codecs so they should be able to play without problems on iPod Touch.

The i-touch is specified for MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz.

Apple Quicktime movie info on one of my N95 movies have a bitrate from 2.5 upto 3 Mbps. Audio is about 128 kbps. So yes there most like is to be trouble with video playback if you are using the high quality video setting for the N95. Try the lower video quality setting. That should abouthalf the bitrate.

The same videos that fail to play correctly on iPod Touch do play correctly with video output shown on iPod Classic Video.
iPod Touch and iPod Classic Video have the same video playing specs. Therefore this is a bug in iPod Touch.

For comparison the specs for iPod Touch are here
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/specs.html

Specs for iPod classic are here
http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html

Ahhh, well. The fact that the iPod Classic Video exceeds its specifications does not mean the iTouch can too! More so since the iTouch has different hard and software than iPod Classic Video. Remember that Apple made a show of them running OS-X on the new iPhone/iTouch. So why should they both react identical to a video that exceeds both their specifications? Still you can alway suspect some evil minded Apple policy...

Don't mind me, I am still cranky without my N95...

Basically the bug is this: MP4 VGA videos recorded by Nseries (N93, N93i, N95, etc.) can be synced without any warning onto the iPod Touch, in the Videos listing on iPod Touch videos are shown with thumbnails, therefore the user expects the video to be able to play on the iPod Touch. But when the user does play it no video output is shown and only audio can be heard. Should end users have to manually check every video before they copy it to their iPod? Of course not!

iTunes is required to copy anything onto iPods. In the case of some videos iTunes does show a message "processing" presumably this means the video is being compressed or altered in some way so that the iPod can better play the video. Why doesn't iTunes perform the "processing" and downscale/compress the video on the VGA MP4s from Nseries if it is too high bitrate to be played? iPod Touch/iPhone have been claimed to be the "best iPods ever" yet they don't play these videos and the iPod Classic does? Come on this is a bug.

Ahhh, well I though you were miffed since it did not run. You are miffed that you are not told it won't run. Would be nice if itunes did all the neccesary detecting and conversion. Or at least offers it to convert recognized formats for you. But sounds like a lack of feature in itunes. Not a bug in the itouch.

I'm just pointing out a major problem.
iTunes does a conversion of some type as I mentioned, but for whatever reason it doesn't for the VGA resolution MP4 videos taken with Nseries. Since the iPod Touch has problems playing videos taken with Nseries it will have problems playing other MP4 videos created with other similar video cameras as well.

Apple claimed iPod Touch/iPhone tobe the "best line of iPods ever". I expect the best iPod to have video playback capability at least equal to iPod Classic Video if not better, but instead I find it's worse, this issue is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

The only reason why I am hesitant to not point the finger at Apple is because I have run into video files in the past, from Nokia devices, which do not play off the device - when other matching file formats do play. It seems as though Nokia has their own flavor of the format - or maybe they are slugging the file with some extra information. I do not know. I'm just saying I would not rule out the thought that it could be something happening to the file on the device.

Nokia devices do not add any extra information to the videos. Different user selectable quality settings in the Camera only change the recorded resolution and Frames Per Second.
Settings are:
- Highest is 640x480 resolution at 30 FPS MP4 video,
- 640x480 resolution at 15 FPS MP4 video,
- 320x240 resolution at 30 FPS MP4 video,
- 320x240 resolution at 15 FPS MP4 video.
- lowest setting is 176x144 resolution at 10-12 FPS 3GP video for MMS sending.
Highest data bitrate for the highest quality videos (640x480 at 30 FPS) can be up to 3 Mbps.

All MP4s contain MP4 video codec and MP4A/AAC audio codec.
3GP videos contain H.263 video codec and AMR audio codec.
MP4s are compatible with iPods and 3GP videos are not.
So unless you were copying 3GP video files, all of the MP4s will play fine in Quicktime on Macs and windows and should play fine on iPods as well.

Just by playing the same videos on iPod Classic Video and iPod Touch video you can compare video playback support. With software corrections video playback support should be fixable then made available in a firmware update. I am disappointed that iPod Touch video playback is worse than the older iPods.. Newer generation iPods (and devices in general) should perform better not worse!

so what you're saying is, it is not possible that there be a software bug associated with writing video files on a nokia device? i have seen first hand, in the past, problems with video files from devices that say they are saving standard files, but end up being their own flavor, which chokes some players/converters.

I think that the problem does not rate the label 'critical bug'. Especially talking about features outside the specifications. This of course does not in anyway reduce you annoyance or disapointment of swapping data between the i-touch and the n-95. One would wish to simple sync content between them through wifi... Hopefully a successor to the N800 will beat the crap out of the i-touch in compatibility, userinterface and performance.Then again, Nokia might start selling a phoneless N95-8GB version... The god of phones help us!

Anyway the i-touch does do H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, at 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Run the Nokia movies through Erightsofts super to convert MP4 to H.264-mp4 and you get a better videoquality in a smaller size.

He is using the device outside the specifications!

I have synced videos taken with N93, N93i and N95. All of the VGA videos fail to play any video output on iPod Touch. It might be possible a bug may cause 1 or 2 bad video files to be saved/created but then only those specific files wouldn't play properly, that is not the case here. The case here is all video files VGA resolution taken by Nseries fail to play with video output on the Touch!

Snoyt, I know I could re-encode/compress the videos and then they would play on the iPod Touch but that is not the point. The point is the videos play without alteration on iPod Classic Video but fail to play correctly on iPod Touch.

Schomer, if you would like I can send you some of the videos so that you can check them yourself. If you agree, you can let me know via private msg what E-mail address or method to send you the files.

gosh, you seem to care so much about this! it's as if you work for nokia or something! tell you what... how about you send me an N93 instead of videos? i am lacking any decent video capabilities since leaving my devices at six apart. :-) i'd send you an iphone, but i don't think it would work where you are located.

i would be happy to forward video files to some iphone/ipod people, if you would like me to. i'm sure you'll have something new tomorrow, since it's thai truck day!

(btw my address is my vox username at apple.com)

In case you have a N95 video that is 27 fps and 640x480 and below 2,5 Mbps and it still won't play then there is maybe a Nokia unfriendly feature in the ipod... Apple is know to try to keep their users in a private universe. A kind Microsoft attitude if you ask me. Heck Bill and Job are friends.

An i-phone would work here in Europe! I'd be glad to do some tests for LonelyBob, heck I'll even send it back after a while! It' can't replace the N95 for me. But I love a good gadget to play with. An i-touch with 60 GB seems like a good idea too. The day that Apple used FreeBSD for their OS-X, they made me a fan! If they just would release a real firmware for my N95.... I'd flash it ;-)

From an end-users point-of-view and an iPod Touch owner I do care that the videos recorded by Nseries devices can be played on iPod Touch.

I'll correspond with you via E-mail about sending test video files for iPhone/iPod video people to look at.

iPod Touch Bug: MP4 Videos Recorded with Nokia Nseries Fail to Play

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