Third party decoder for N900 to support more video formats

N900 has built-in video decoder that supports H.264, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, H.263 encoding with mp4, avi, wmv, 3gp formats. But for users who want to play HD content and online video stream on N900, the built-in decoder is not enough. However, when most users are still waiting for the delivery of their N900, there are more and more software developed and ported to N900 (Maemo 5). Here is a third party decoder called Decoders support 0.1 is released to support more video formats on N900. Here is the feature list of Decoders support 0.1:

• MKV support
• FLV support
• MPEG2 Transport Stream support
• AC-3 audio in video files support
• More codecs might come later

It is said that Decoder supported 0.1 is available so quick because it is ported from the GStreamer on Linux.

Users need to keep in mind that these new third party decoders cannot call the DSP of N900 for hardware decoding yet. All decoding work is purely done by software. In other words, with the built-in decoder, N900 can player 720P mp4, avi videos with H264 encoding smoothly. But to play mkv, mov or flv videos, third party decoders needs to be installed on N900. The third party decoder can handle legacy MPEG-4, Xvid, H.263 with purely software decoding without problem. But if the video is encoded with H264, which has high requirement for performance, purely software decoding will be insufficient. People from ifanr tested a 480P 2012 trailer, the conclusion is that: “mplayer can play this clip, but it is too slow (<10fps).”

Anyhow, I believe that either the third part decoder will support hardware decoding with the built-in DSP or the default decoder of N900 will support more video format in the near future.