garageCube

Hey all, I'm having fun getting to work with my new miniMAD (my first). It's perfect for this gig, a lovely little compact media player-as-standalone solution.

I'm just curious –– why must the video be compressed so heavily? The video quality would be my one gripe with the miniMAD's performance. Do all Raspberry Pi-based players require H.264 or something? Even when choosing the "0" option, which is stated as "lossless," there is a noticeable quality drop from my original video.

Are there any suggestions for encoding my video before exporting to miniMAD, so that I have as much control as possible, and the miniMAD makes as few adjustments as possible?

The Raspberry Pi (which miniMAD is based upon) supports H264 hardware decoding with a very specific pixel format YUV420p so most of the time transcoding (compressing) is required when exporting to the miniMAD.

Then, depending on the resolution and framerate of the original video-file, the part of it that will actually be mapped, and the selected projector resolution, MadMapper will crop and downscale the original file while transcoding to guaranty a smooth playback on the minMAD that has limited computing power, especially when using the graphics adapter for live video-mapping and color management as we do.

There are a few advanced options that are available for tweaking the transcoding and get better results for a specific content.
But if you feel like so, you can transcode your files with your favorite video-file-encoder and place the results in the mapping/ folder of the miniMAD. Just keep in mind the file has to be H264 / YUV420p encoded to be played by the miniMAD.

Thank you for the thorough answer, and suggestions...but yikes! 420p! Well, you live and you learn.

420p suggest you're using more than the usual 25/30 fps, isn't it?

420p suggest you're using more than the usual 25/30 fps, isn't it?

The video is 30fps. If I exported at 25 would it remain at 1080p?

Yes, using a lower framerate should increase the resolution.
You can send me the original file in a PM so I can analyze it.