Portable hdd player determining playback limits

[terramir]

Okies I got this portable hdd player and some files play fine some files the audio drops out, I'm figuring that the files with the audio drop out have to high bit rates/ resolution etc.
I would like to analyse the files I'm using and figure out what the limit is for the player to run smoothly. it's supposed to support divx/mpeg2(dvd)/vcd/mp4 and rm/rmvb. really what I need is to figure out what files it can play at what resolution bitrate etc. files it plays best and how to make it work for the player, it's got a 100 gb hitachi drive in it so it's not file size that's the problem (except the player has ntfs problems so it's formatted fat32 so 4gb file size limit)

What's a good free tool to analyse video files?
terramir

[aedipuss]

mediainfo.

but the specs are usually in the manual and/or listed online. what make/model is it.

[terramir]

mediainfo.

but the specs are usually in the manual and/or listed online. what make/model is it.

here's the problem POS china thing LOL here it is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250471160617
and this is what I slapped in there: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160359155980
so less than 60 bucks for the whole thing.
and well this thing I had in the first place: http://products.polaroid.com/products/productdetail/part_number=PT372/1848.0.61268.61269.0.0.0 plus the inverter driving the adapter for the player, one of these days I'll build a 5.6V 2A supply that can run off 10V to 14.4V volts for it.
anyways you see my dilemma, Also I found out that vob's play fine so do xvid files encoded at around 1420 kbps for 624x352 with 128 kbps lame mp3, however the same video size file with lower 1200kbps (dx50) bit-rates stutters and loses audio like crazy, I'm assuming that the higher bit-rate means less work in the playback department also maybe the divx codec might be more work intensive than xvid in the playback department, since it can play vob's without problems it's not a disk issue.
Anyways I'm gonna have to learn alot more about dvix/xvid encoding since I usually use off the rack tools the other day I tried encoding a 720p file and well it ended up running at half speed (it didn't interlace the frames) so I ended up with a file twice as long LOL. :P
terramir