Fast video on eink using A2 with 1 bit depth with shades

[Waiting4somethin]

Originally Posted by mdp

It looks to me (rough measurements, the video is emotional and the phone holder could not take it and shook like a willow) like 8fps, which means 125ms/frame so it reached the limit of A2 speed on EPD (as I know it). Very nice.

To see video as played on the Max2, check the thread I just opened: Video on the Max2.

In the past, we measured it as 4fps; the numbers alone can be misleading, so check the effect.

I am not showing dynamic clips because I do not believe that is the correct medium - whereas I see the use for didactic material and I from time to time exploit it.

I thought max2 would equal yotaphone FPS, at least in monitor mode. But it looked ok.

Utkarshj is talking about his C67ML I believe. What about new devices (C67ML, Likebook Plus) do they achieve 4 FPS video quality?

[mdp]

Originally Posted by Waiting4somethin

What about new devices (C67ML, Likebook Plus) do they achieve 4 FPS video quality?

The Icarus/Boyue Likebook is certainly out because it does not have a dithering rendering natively while in A2 - it uses dumb threshold ("shilouette"): it cannot be used natively for video. An Android player plug-in as I described before would work, but first someone has to write it...

[mdp]

Originally Posted by Waiting4somethin

Utkarshj is talking about his C67ML I believe. What about new devices

The C67ML is from around Summer 2016.
The Max Carta is from around Spring 2017.
I saw the dithering rendering in A2 first on the MaxCarta: it could probably be in other devices released after mid 2016, and I presume in all of the Onyx devices released after early 2017.

[Waiting4somethin]

Originally Posted by mdp

The C67ML is from around Summer 2016.
The Max Carta is from around Spring 2017.
I saw the dithering rendering in A2 first on the MaxCarta: it could probably be in other devices released after mid 2016, and I presume in all of the Onyx devices released after early 2017.

I hope they do a Likebook Plus 2, with this “dithering”, so I can buy £200 eink device to watch video.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by Waiting4somethin

I hope they do a Likebook Plus 2, with this “dithering”, so I can buy £200 eink device to watch video.

As expressed a few posts above, I think it's a matter of firmware, not of hardware.
I own the Icarus / Boyue Likebook Plus, and I certainly prefer Onyx, as expressed in the past. The lack of hardware buttons makes it a pain to use, the lack of the Micro-SD card makes it unusable for tasks I would have employed it for, the firmware is not as featureful as that of Onyx. I sent them an e-mail listing the faults and lacks I noticed, I received a reply that went "thank you, we will reply you as soon as possible", I never received any reply so I suppose they are all dead or worse.

I do not see why you should wait for a bargain from Boyue, as if Onyx was not basically already there (but for the lack of small devices with fast processors).

Oh, by the way Onyx, DO NOT RELEASE SMALLER DEVICES WITHOUT A MICRO-SD SLOT.

With which Onyx is most warmly invited not to release smaller sized devices that do not have the expansion capability of a Micro-SD. Because, really, when it's not there it is missed.

[Waiting4somethin]

Hope there is a good device soon.

[utkarshj]

Originally Posted by Waiting4somethin

How fast is the FPS, is it as smooth as in this video (after he turns phone over to the eink side)??

https://youtu.be/OxsTRup3Z80

For fps, you better look at the videos uploaded my mdp, as there the device is natively dithering in A2 mode.
The video conversions I have tried are limited by the size constraint, hence the quality is never as good as you showed. It *might* be achieved, but then the video size will be *very* large.

Last I tried, I was able to reduce a 40 min video to 400MB. Then I played it in MX player. At what framerate it was playing, i dont know, but it was watchable.

But then again, its a memory intensive process, where each frame extracted at 8fps, resized, dithered, converted to 1bit depth png, and then muxed. It takes half as long as the video itself.

I will upload the instructions and the results sometime later.

And yes, I remembered, if the dither artifact size is kept very small, to get a smoother and sharper image, then there is a lot of ghosting/shadowing from the previous frames, that make the video look bad. But if the dither artifacts are kept larger, say you dither first, then resize, then the video is not that sharp, but the shadowing goes away, and it becomes watchable.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by utkarshj

It *might* be achieved, but then the video size will be *very* large.

Last I tried, I was able to reduce a 40 min video to 400MB. Then I played it in MX player. At what framerate it was playing, i dont know, but it was watchable.

But then again, its a memory intensive process, where each frame extracted at 8fps, resized, dithered, converted to 1bit depth png, and then muxed. It takes half as long as the video itself.

This is all very good, but don't you agree that a plugin for a media player would be the best solution - most efficient, practical, with better results - to translate in real time any video to dithered black and white in devices which do not do it already?

It could even improve the job done by Onyx with the Floyd algorithm, because the implementation from Onyx has very (very!) high quality but it is not that conservative in switching dots as little as possible. With some expense in rendering quality, you may reduce the battery consumption.

[mdp]

I erroneously stated here before that the frames-per-second in these devices were measured as 4fps: that was on the MaxCarta.

Recently posted video played on the Max2 showed a framerate of 6.3 fps. Again, the effect counts, and I find it quite usable.

[utkarshj]

Originally Posted by mdp

This is all very good, but don't you agree that a plugin for a media player would be the best solution - most efficient, practical, with better results - to translate in real time any video to dithered black and white in devices which do not do it already?

I completely agree with that, and even looked into it the first time you mentioned it. But sadly, I dont have that expertise/knowledge!! I will try to do it once I get some free time, till then, brute force it is

[utkarshj]

Also, I dont think the dithered video will ever match your quality due to low pixel density in my device. Can you upload any screenshot captured on device while playing a dithered video ? or I think even an image with dithered A2 will do. I want to crop it to my device's resolution and check how it looks.