Video recoding with ffmpeg

Question

I asked in another question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8012494/sorry-this-video-cannot-be-played-streaming-mp4-to-android/8012874#8012874) about video playback in android using VideoView. Apparently, the problem there is due to the way my video is encoded, as another video (512Kb mp4 off the web) plays correctly using my code. As videos are uploaded by my end users to the web site, I don't have any control of the videos themselves, however I do have control over re-coding these. I re-code them using ffmpeg to bring them to a standard MP4 (H.264+AAC) format and scale them to the same size (320x240).

Here's the ffmpeg info of a video that would not play:

sh-3.2$ ffmpeg -i video.bad.mp4
FFmpeg version SVN-r25679-snapshot, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov  5 2010 09:34:37 with gcc 4.3.2
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --enable-shared --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid --enable-postproc --enable-libgsm --enable-x11grab --enable-libx264 --enable-libtheora --extra-cflags=-Wall --enable-swscale --enable-libdc1394 --enable-nonfree --disable-mmx --disable-stripping --enable-avfilter --disable-altivec --disable-armv5te --disable-armv6 --disable-vis --enable-nonfree --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-version3
  libavutil     50.32. 6 / 50.32. 6
  libavcore      0.12. 0 /  0.12. 0
  libavcodec    52.94. 3 / 52.94. 3
  libavformat   52.84. 0 / 52.84. 0
  libavdevice   52. 2. 2 / 52. 2. 2
  libavfilter    1.56. 0 /  1.56. 0
  libswscale     0.12. 0 /  0.12. 0
  libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'video.bad.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
    encoder         : Lavf52.84.0
  Duration: 00:00:45.93, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 591 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 320x240 [PAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 535 kb/s, 15 fps, 15 tbr, 15 tbn, 30 tbc
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 51 kb/s

And here's the ffmpeg info of a video that plays correctly:

sh-3.2$ ffmpeg -i video.mp4
FFmpeg version SVN-r25679-snapshot, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov  5 2010 09:34:37 with gcc 4.3.2
  configuration: --prefix=/usr --enable-shared --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid --enable-postproc --enable-libgsm --enable-x11grab --enable-libx264 --enable-libtheora --extra-cflags=-Wall --enable-swscale --enable-libdc1394 --enable-nonfree --disable-mmx --disable-stripping --enable-avfilter --disable-altivec --disable-armv5te --disable-armv6 --disable-vis --enable-nonfree --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-version3
  libavutil     50.32. 6 / 50.32. 6
  libavcore      0.12. 0 /  0.12. 0
  libavcodec    52.94. 3 / 52.94. 3
  libavformat   52.84. 0 / 52.84. 0
  libavdevice   52. 2. 2 / 52. 2. 2
  libavfilter    1.56. 0 /  1.56. 0
  libswscale     0.12. 0 /  0.12. 0
  libpostproc   51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'video.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : isom
    minor_version   : 512
    compatible_brands: mp41
    title           : crazytown - http://www.archive.org/details/Cartoon-Crazytown
    encoder         : Lavf51.10.0
  Duration: 00:07:50.40, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 578 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 320x240, 510 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 50 tbc
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 63 kb/s

I have two questions here, actually. First, which of the details in my "bad" video does android not like? And, second, what parameters should I use with ffmpeg to recode my videos? As present I use this:

ffmpeg -i $input_video_file -y -s 320x240 -vcodec libx264 -vpre medium -acodec libfaac -b 510K -ar 48000 -aspect 4:3 $tmpfile.mp4
qt-faststart $tmpfile.mp4 $output_video_file.mp4

But this produces a video that's not playable on android. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

First, your version of ffmpeg is over a year old. A lot has improved with ffmpeg and H.264 since last year. Please try upgrading to at least ffmpeg-0.7.

It's a little difficult to tell exactly where the problem is because ffmpeg isn't displaying all the options passed to x264 for H.264 encoding. Try increasing the verbosity of ffmpeg output (using -v 1 or -v 2 somewhere near the beginning of the ffmpeg command). But based on my experience using ffmpeg to transcode videos for Android, my guess is that you're not using the H.264 Baseline profile (see the wikipedia article on H.264 if you're curious). Try adding -profile baseline if you have ffmpeg-0.7 or later.

If you can't upgrade your ffmpeg for some reason or another, you can specify the Baseline profile by using the -vpre baseline option after you specify -vpre medium. If for some reason you get an error trying to use the Baseline preset, you can manually force the Baseline options by specifying -coder 0 -bf 0 -flags2 -wpred-dct8x8 on the command line after the -vpre medium.