Video Playback Issues

MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio plays on every current SpinetiX player; beyond that, support depends on the model. The HMP400, iBX410 and iBX440 also decode H.265 (HEVC), up to 4K at 60 fps on the HMP400 and iBX410 and up to 8K on the iBX440, while the older HMP350, HMP300 and DiVA have no H.265 and stop at 1080p. MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, Windows Media Video 9 / VC-1 and Motion JPEG play up to 1080p on the HMP400 and iBX models. Accepted containers include MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, TS and WMV. SpinetiX players do not decode Apple ProRes, Flash video, lossless or uncompressed video, or MXF files, and VP8 and VP9 work only inside HTML5 content on the HMP400, where VP9 is decoded in software and may not reach 4K at 60 fps. The quickest test is to drop the file into an Elementi project set to the right player model: if Elementi imports it, the player can decode it.

Usually because the file is outside that player's decoding specification, in which case the player shows a black rectangle where the video should be and writes a warning to its player.log. The common causes are a codec the model does not decode (H.265 from an iPhone on an HMP350 or HMP300, ProRes from an editing suite, VP9 from a screen recorder), a 4K file on a player that stops at 1080p, and a bitrate well above what SpinetiX recommends; SpinetiX advises transcoding any video above 25 Mbps. A second frequent cause is an Elementi project set to the wrong player type, which makes Elementi reject a Full HD file the real player could have played. Elementi 2015 and later offers to re-encode an unsupported video during import, which fixes most cases without a separate encoder.

Sometimes it is the firmware, not the file, so read the release notes for your version before re-encoding anything. DSOS updates have occasionally introduced a playback regression that a later release fixed. Two documented examples: DSOS 4.7.1 shifted audio against video by 100 to 200 milliseconds depending on the display, fixed in 4.7.5, and 4.7.6 stopped video capture input from working, fixed in 4.7.7. If the notes list a fix, move to that release. If they do not, test the same file in an Elementi project set to your player model; a file that imports cleanly and still fails after the update should go to your integrator together with the player's diagnostic report, because it may be a new regression. A firmware update never changes which codecs a model's hardware decodes: an HMP350 does not gain H.265 from new firmware.

Usually the frame rate or the bitrate. A 25 fps video on a player outputting 60 Hz cannot map frames evenly, so some frames are shown twice and others three times, which reads as judder; set the player output to 50 Hz for 25 fps content and 60 Hz for 30 fps content, and use 60 Hz for 24 fps or mixed material. Bitrate is the second suspect. SpinetiX recommends about 8 Mbps for 1080p H.264 and advises transcoding anything above 25 Mbps, which covers most camera originals. If the picture freezes while the sound continues or drops out, the file is badly multiplexed rather than too heavy, and a fresh encode cures it. A layout that decodes several videos at once also adds load, so test multi-zone video layouts on the target model before publishing them.

Usually a multiplexing fault in the file, not the player. When audio and video are interleaved so poorly that keeping them in step needs more than 1 MB of buffering, the SpinetiX player loses sync and its player.log reports that stream demuxing failed because more than 1048576 bytes of buffering is required. Re-encoding the file in Elementi or FFmpeg into MP4 with AAC audio fixes it. A second cause is the .mpg extension, which is often wrongly used for MPEG-2 program or transport streams that the player then misreads. Renaming such a file to .ts or .m2p, or rewriting the streams into an MP4 container without re-encoding (ffmpeg -i input.mpg -codec: copy output.mp4), usually resolves the drift.

Only some SpinetiX models decode 4K. The HMP400 and HMP400W and the iBX410 and iBX410W play H.264 and H.265 up to 4K at 60 fps, and the iBX440 plays H.264 at 4K and H.265 up to 8K. The HMP350, HMP300 and DiVA stop at 1080p, so a 4K file for those players has to be transcoded to 1080p, which Elementi does on import, or cut into tiles spread across several players as multiscreen content. On a 4K-capable player, first confirm in Control Center that the output resolution is actually set to 4K rather than left at 1080p. Then consider H.265: it needs 25 to 50 percent less bitrate than H.264 for the same picture quality, which makes 4K files lighter to decode and to store on the models that support it.

It depends on the model and the bitrate. The HMP400 has 16 GB of internal eMMC storage and the iBX410 and iBX440 have 128 GB SSDs, and that space holds the whole project, not one video. Bitrate sets file size: a 5-minute 4K video at 40 Mbps is about 1.5 GB, while the same five minutes at 1080p and the recommended 8 Mbps is about 300 MB. To shrink a file, encode 1080p H.264 at around 8 Mbps unless the screen really is 4K, switch to H.265 on the HMP400 and iBX models to cut the bitrate further, and trim footage that never plays.