video not playing right on phone

[Stanley Szpala]

I accidentally changed something in Vegas Movie Studio 10.0, and no longer can render video clips that properly play on my Galaxy Nexus phone. The clips play fine on my PC, but look scrambled on the phone (very difficult to describe).

To test the phone, I copied old clips, and they play fine on the phone.

I render as Sony AVC into *.mp4
template = Internet 1280x720-30p

description:
Use this setting to create a higher quality 16:9 file suitable for uploading to Internet sites.
Audio: 128 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, 32 Bit, Stereo, AAC
Video: 29.970 fps, 1280x720 Progressive, YUV, 8 Mbps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000



What happened?

[Seth Bloombaum]

That's a big image and lots of bitrate for a phone.

The number one method to get something that works on desktop/laptops but fails on a phone is to exceed the playback capabilities of the phone. Most phones want to see Profile = Baseline, while computers will be fine with Main or High profiles, so do check this. Read more on h.264 parameters at wikipedia, 8Mbps probably exceeds the "level" (another h.264 parameter) that your phone can accommodate.

If creating a stream for a phone, try 640x360, baseline, maybe 600Kbps (less than 1/10th the bitrate you used). This would probably be fine for video that isn't high-motion, but you could go to 800-1200K for high-motion if needed.

Download the free and excellent MediaInfo, and drop one of your old files on it, and you can see exactly what your old setup was, including profile, level, and bitrate. Be sure to select one of the advanced views, like "tree" to see all the goodies.

[Stanley Szpala]

ok, I've done as suggested:
somehow variable bit rate got selected now:
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 9 899 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 16.0 Mbps

while before it was constant:
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 10.1 Mbps

I changed it in the preferences and it works now.

Big thanks!

I also noticed two templates for *.mp4
1) MainConcept AVC/AAC
2) Sony AVC

Is there a difference? Only in the former I'm able to get good playback on the phone, and in Sony AVC it seems to use variable bit rate (without my knowledge).

Anyway, big thanks.