best format for USB delivery

[Anthony McErlean]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Thanks Dave. Anthony, exfat will not work on my brand new TV either.

I tested again and formatted USB to NTFS and this worked.

[Steve Bleasdale]

NTFS will stutter, just do fat32 and get the bitrate low and all good...

[Anthony McErlean]

Originally Posted by Steve Bleasdale

NTFS will stutter, just do fat32 and get the bitrate low and all good...

Hi Steve, but doesn't the file size need to be under 4GB for fat32, how would you keep bitrate low and quality high?
How would you put 2hrs of HD footage onto a USB drive? :)

[Steve Bleasdale]

See my post USB to TV for under the 4gb.. that was only a hour long feature movie!
two hours of HD footage now you have me stumped. Do you really give your clients two hours of footage?

[Anthony McErlean]

Hi Steve,
I don't want to, but that's the norm in my parts. I don't see any way round it.
If I could get away with less I would.

[Chris Harding]

I have always broken up the USB footage into "events" so no file exceeds even 2gb!! They will play seamless on most devices and although I should work on an HTML 5 menu for now I just name the file intelligently so even a dumb bride should understand that a file called 0001Preparation.mp4 is her getting ready. (It's important to have a bunch of zeros otherwise computers tend to list them badly. If you have a file called 00003Ceremony.mp4 she should be able to figure out that's her ceremony and it will also be 3rd on the list after Prep and Arrivals

They seem to have no problem with individual MP4's and it also allows them to skip to any event whether it's on a TV, computer or media player

[Steve Bleasdale]

Originally Posted by Anthony McErlean

Hi Steve,
I don't want to, but that's the norm in my parts. I don't see any way round it.
If I could get away with less I would.

OK cool, try using a 8gb then divide the film into two sequences, burn one sequence to the USB then the other sequence see if that works. Failing that you may have to stick with your original plan but let the customer worry how to play on the TV. Or as Chris says? steve

[Anthony McErlean]

Originally Posted by Steve Bleasdale

OK cool, try using a 8gb then divide the film into two sequences, burn one sequence to the USB then the other sequence see if that works. Failing that you may have to stick with your original plan but let the customer worry how to play on the TV. Or as Chris says? steve

Hi Steve, thanks for the tip, I'll try that.

[Tom Van den Berghe]

My usb stick is fat32 and the video is MP4 with AAC audio.
In my first test my old samsung tv (about 7 years old) said video codec is not supported.

Google told me that only AAC audio will play with samsung tv's (or maybe only the older ones)

Now it played the mp4 file but the video is stuttering. I made the MP4 with handbrake.
The framerate is the same as source. Have no clue which setting this causes...

I tested the same video on another tv at home and this played perfect.

If I can solve the issue on my samsung tv I would be very happy. So can I offer my filmed "carnival" project only on usb. Till last year I made 2 dvd's with in total 7 hours of video! The local carnival is big here.

But always I lose so much time with cutting and cutting too much video to make it fit on a dvd. the fat32 usb stick will play on windows and mac laptops/pc I read in this topic but I want also it can play on their tv with usb.

[Pete Cofrancesco]

If you just need to play it on that tv I have two suggestions. One get the tv manual or go to their web site and find out the exact specs for supported video formats. Tv with usb are in their infancy and commonly have these plackback issues. The second and better option is plug into your tv hdmi a video player whether that’s a laptop, ipad, or consumer bluray player that has usb port. I bought a Sony bluray for $50 a few years ago so I could playback movies on my tv.

[Donald McPherson]

With the advent of smart TV's why not try streaming from laptop.

[Roger Gunkel]

I deliver about 50 weddings per year on USB and have found that the most playable format across tvs in general is to format the usb as fat32, then use mp4 with avariable bit rate with 10,000kb/s average and 14,000kb/s maximum. That gives a maximum length of about 55 minutes, to fit with the 4gb limit. Any longer will require more than one file, but providing you number them sequentially, they should automatically play the next file on most makes of tv. If your files are much shorter than 55mins, you can increase the bitrate accordingly for higher quality providing the tv can handle it, although the bitrate I quoted above should give very acceptable results.

The usual reason for stuttering on older tvs is the very limited amount of processing power compared with more recent smart tvs. The only way round that is to use a much lower bit rate which will likely compromise the quality noticeably.

Roger

[Tom Van den Berghe]

hello Roger,

First I wanna thank you and the others for helping to solve me problem.

I found out my led tv is a samsung UE40C6000 so it will about 9 years old now.

The (online) manual says it not support 1920x1080 50p (60p) but 720p 50/60p. And H264 till level 4.1

In handbrake there a setting for changing the encoder level. So I can't go above 4.1 for my tv.

I exported in magix vegas pro to MP4 with a bitrate of 16000 Kbps. after handbrake the bitrate is now 5697 kbps.

I just tested a 720P file and it played perfect! If a make a blu ray it also doesn't support 1080p 50/60P but only 720P or 1080i. So the quality look the same I guess.

So maybe a better keep it safe with the 720P because progressive plays smoother on laptop/pc's than interlaced.

I will test the quality settings further in handbrake but always stay in the 720p output.

[Peter Riding]

Hey Paul your TV is probably older than 95% of your clients TVs and the cost of buying a new one is "peanuts" these days - in the UK at any rate, don't know about Belgium.

LG are one of the best now. You can get 4k (don't need 4k but it will upscale very nicely from 1080 and even standard def DVDs), high dynamic range, audio return channel etc for £350. The physical dimensions may attract your partner as well as they are much thinner and lighter than older sets so are easier on the housework :- )

You can pay more for an OLED spec.I have an OLED 55" and an LED 43". They are both great.

They will all do NTFS so no mucking around with FAT32. You could easily re-edit for the occasional client who still has to have FAT32 simply by doing two files instead of one file. You will still have your new TV's maximum speed over which it has trouble playing back so just experiment e.g. for MP4 I use max 20 average 14 for clients and max 24 average 14 for myself such as on my SSD laptop or on USB3 sticks of my own n.b. faster USB sticks work better in TV USB sockets.

Pete

[Roger Gunkel]

Just a word of caution on using NTFS. Not having the 4Gb file limit is great, but I reverted to Fat32 for clients after finding that only the more recent tvs would read the NTFS files and many of my clients couldn't run them. FAT32, although a bit more dated, will run on just about everything. For my personal use I tend to use NTFS as I also have a couple of LG OLED tvs and like Pete, would highly recommend them.

Roger