Play mp4's on portable DVD player

[David_UK]

Hi all
I'm thinking of buying a LOGIK LPD860 portable DVD player, because it claims to play MPEG4 files. I took a couple of discs to the shop to check but it failed to play:
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - avc1 codec (video) with mp4a: MPEG-4 AAC LC (audio) - mp4 container
and
MPEG-4 Video - mp4v codec (video) with mp4a: MPEG-4 AAC LC (audio) - mp4 container
in both cases, frame size is 640x480 and the player errors with "unsupported file format".

Could anyone point me towards what may be wrong? The manual has little technical info and simply states MP4 format - no codec info. Change to a DVD frame size perhaps?

Many thanks

[guns1inger]

mpeg4 in the context of cheap DVD players usually means Xvid and Divx files encoded within narrow specifications and stored in the AVI container. It rarely means the MP4 container, or H264 video.

Mpeg-4 video compression actually covers some fairly wide ground as far as compression and quality are concerned. Part 4 covers Xvid/Divx et al, while Part 10 covers H264. MP4 - the container - is another kettle of fish altogether.

Refer : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4

I suspect the player you are looking at is only able to handle AVI files encoded without qpel or GMC using Xvid or Divx.

[David_UK]

guns1inger
Thanks for your helpful reply. I have used FFmpeg to encode an AVI using xvid. Do I have to deselect this:

encoded without qpel or GMC using Xvid or Divx.

or is qpel not used in Xvid?
Thanks

[guns1inger]

It is, but I don't use ffmpeg, so I am not familiar with the commands.

[David_UK]

guns1inger

Many thanks - you solved the problem. This works (using ffmpeg with no other switches):

video codec - mpeg4
audio codec - pcm or mp2 (leave as default in ffmpeg)
fourcc - xvid
container - avi