MMI and Video on SDCard...Confusion

**hotleadsingergu** · 08-10-2015 02:06 PM

Weird issue, regarding watching video on the MMI: It will play DVDs great, it'll play video I've converted and put on the base of the SDCard, but it doesn't seem to play videos in a subfolder (in this case, Music Videos). I convert using Handbrake with the following settings:

MP4, X.264 codec. Audio just passthrough (most are AAC, 180-300kbps). Video bitrate: 1500kbps, Baseline, 2-pass. For 16:9 videos it's a max width of 720px, for 4:3 it's max of 640.

For the videos I converted and put in the base, it works great. Trying to use the same preset on the music videos they just don't play. Most just skip and turn gray in the list, but a few even pop up an error saying the format is unreadable. I haven't-yet tried moving them to the base (I'm going to do that now, but won't test it until I go out to the car again).

Anyone else experiment with video from an SDCard? The only guides and information I've read are at least 2-3 years old.

**hotleadsingergu** · 08-10-2015 03:08 PM

So to fully-test, I did AAC conversion and AAC passthrough on a music video file I had, using the same settings that I transcoded the other videos with. Neither file plays, even in the base directory.

This makes no sense to me. The files I'm trying to play are a good amount under the resolution requirements and well within the rest. How are all of the videos I created the other day playing fine, but these aren't??

**shonseb** · 08-10-2015 03:18 PM

I was able to play mp4 videos on my mmi 3g+, but not on 3g

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

**hotleadsingergu** · 08-10-2015 03:41 PM

Originally Posted by shonseb

I was able to play mp4 videos on my mmi 3g+, but not on 3g

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

I'm on a 2015 S4, so MMI 3G+

**pdqgp** · 08-10-2015 04:32 PM

Originally Posted by shonseb

I was able to play mp4 videos on my mmi 3g+, but not on 3g

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

I have a 2014....is it 3g+ ? Says 3g on my display. How can I tell?

**drevil2k2** · 08-10-2015 08:30 PM

Originally Posted by pdqgp

I have a 2014....is it 3g+ ? Says 3g on my display. How can I tell?

14 should be 3g+ - have the central black push button joystick.

I could not find a definitive video conversion setting - only certain older 4 years + divx movies play from the SD card. Quality was not great.

**hotleadsingergu** · 08-11-2015 05:26 AM

It's just confusing.

Last night I re-transcoded a video that I know works on the MMI. I used, as far as I can tell, the same exact settings. The newly-transcoded video does not play, while the old plays fine.

**B18b1ex** · 08-11-2015 07:58 AM

I have a 13 not sure what version that is but for me some mp4 music videos would play while other would not, so I convert all to Mpeg1. All seems to play, it's a 5" screen so resolution is really not an issue to me.

**hotleadsingergu** · 08-11-2015 08:36 AM

I think I've figured it out. I transcoded a bunch to see, but only testing with a single file in a bit (it was all converted on my server at home, and I'm transferring them to myself at work). I think the MMI can't handle Baseline L4.0. I transcoded the same video 4 times with different settings, and the one that worked was the following:

h264 Baseline L3.0 - 1500kbps - 2-pass
AAC 160kbps with Dolby Surround
Max width 720px

I can update once I test it, but I think they should all work with these settings. The big one is that the default for Baseline is L4.0 in Handbrake, so the default settings will just pop up an error or skip the file.

**hotleadsingergu** · 08-11-2015 09:51 AM

Well, that seemed to be it. The first video I transcoded using those settings worked perfectly in a subfolder, so I put the rest on the SD Card and I'll give most of them a run-through when I leave work in ~4 hours. I think that's the ticket though, if anyone else is interested in running video from an SD Card in their car.

Of course, I have the Die Hard DVD in the drive at all times. You never know when it'll be necessary to watch some Die Hard.

**Agilis** · 01-08-2017 08:13 PM

Hi hotleadsingergu, I noticed for the audio that you allowed Dolby Surround - Are you sure multichannel sound is working in the MMI 3G Plus? In my testing and research, anything that was not stereo resulted in only 1 audio channel being played.

**thowell** · 10-24-2019 04:40 PM

Sorry to resurrect an old thread. I'm wondering if anybody has found the magic formula for video encoding. About 80% of my videos play just fine, but the rest fail to play. It feels like I have now tried every combination of settings in Handbrake, but have yet to find a combination that works on all videos.

In general I'm using the same settings from this thread (and 5 or 6 other threads over the years) but without Dolby Surround :

h264 Baseline L3.0 - 1500kbps - 2-pass
AAC 128kbps with 2.0ch
Max width 720px

I can encode 2 videos with the exact same settings and one will work, the other fails to play. Forcing Baseline L3.0 alone is not enough to fix all videos in my case.