[boxcarwilly]

I've been trying to load up some USB drives with movies and TV shows to keep the kids entertained on long trips but I seem to have run into some kind of artificial limit on max file size.

The Uconnect documentation says the max supported size for USB drives is 32GB but I've already disproved that and am using a 128GB Sandisk Ultra Micro drive without issue (just have to format it at NTFS). What I've found is that it seems like there's a limit where files have to be smaller than 1GB to be read by the Uconnect software.

I haven't tried burning the video files on a DVD and seeing if the Blu-ray player has this same limit because I would rather use the USB port if I can.

All of my video files are MP4 format.

Just wondering if anyone else has run into this issue and found a workaround.

 

[cue003]

Uconnect theater seems to be turning out to be not so great. First the fact that only something like MP4 can be used and now you are pretty much limited to only loading shows/movies that are 480p or shows in 720p that are 20 min or less. That sux big time.

Spend all this money for the system and then everyone just uses their iPad/phone instead.

Please let us know if you find the workaround or solution.

They should just give limited prospects the option to simply add the 20 speaker setup without the uconnect theater.

 

[boxcarwilly]

Did some testing tonight and while I didn't find a solution I believe I found my answer.

I tried loading various video formats from the USB port (MKV, AVI, MP4, WMV) and MP4/M4V is the only one that Uconnect will read.

The size limit on files is 2GB, not 1GB as I originally though. Uconnect is based on the QNX software platform which is a 32-bit system. That means the max supported file size that it can read is 2GB.

Another interesting note, I copied a couple of MP4 videos to a DVD+R to see if the Blu-ray drive would read it to see if it would at least read something larger than 2GB. It doesn't read the disk at all. I don't know if that means I have to burn the disk as a DVD-video instead of DVD-data or if will only read commercial DVD/Blu-ray discs.

Either way it looks like I'll be re-encoding some of my movies to get them under that 2GB size.

 

[ajwkmills]

I have spent the last 10 days trying all sorts of things from scaling down to trying different file types. Most frustrating of all is that I have some files that work that are exactly the same type and almost the same size as others that do not. Have been primarily using MKV files. Also have confirmed it works with a 128GB and made no difference switching files onto a 8GB. If anyone has any joy, would love to hear the fix.

 

[cue003]

Did some testing tonight and while I didn't find a solution I believe I found my answer.

I tried loading various video formats from the USB port (MKV, AVI, MP4, WMV) and MP4/M4V is the only one that Uconnect will read.

The size limit on files is 2GB, not 1GB as I originally though. Uconnect is based on the QNX software platform which is a 32-bit system. That means the max supported file size that it can read is 2GB.

Another interesting note, I copied a couple of MP4 videos to a DVD+R to see if the Blu-ray drive would read it to see if it would at least read something larger than 2GB. It doesn't read the disk at all. I don't know if that means I have to burn the disk as a DVD-video instead of DVD-data or if will only read commercial DVD/Blu-ray discs.

Either way it looks like I'll be re-encoding some of my movies to get them under that 2GB size.

Thanks for the additional testing and tracking down some of the limits.

Looks like USB files less than or = 2GB in MP4/M4V format only. Largest USB stick size tested is 128GB.

As I understand it, if you are using a USB stick for one rear screen you cannot from that one location play movies on both screens. Is that correct? or do you need a USB setup per monitor/screen?

 

[ajwkmills]

Hallelujah, I finally worked it out. Comes down to screen width, had to scale down to 1200 screen width to make it work. Realized as it was an issue with newer films in windscreen 1920 vs older programs in 800/1200 width. Now have scaled movies at 1200 in mkv format on a 128GB stick.

As far as playing the movies on more than one screen. Each screen can watch whatever they want off the USB stick. They can even watch the same program at different points.

Oh and finally if you are looking for a program to do this, I have been using "Handbrake".

 

[kkodstl]

Hallelujah, I finally worked it out. Comes down to screen width, had to scale down to 1200 screen width to make it work. Realized as it was an issue with newer films in windscreen 1920 vs older programs in 800/1200 width. Now have scaled movies at 1200 in mkv format on a 128GB stick.

As far as playing the movies on more than one screen. Each screen can watch whatever they want off the USB stick. They can even watch the same program at different points.

Oh and finally if you are looking for a program to do this, I have been using "Handbrake".

Thank you for sharing. I just downloaded Handbrake and will get this a try. I have a question regarding playing videos from a USB device: I have two small children (too little to be able to operate the U Connect Theater system on their own) and was wondering if videos etc will play automatically like they do on a DVD. I was considering purchasing some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes but would need these to play continuously one right after the other. Will this happen when downloading to a USB? If not, I will need to stick to DVD's for a while longer. Thanks for any advice.

 

[BrettP]

Hallelujah, I finally worked it out. Comes down to screen width, had to scale down to 1200 screen width to make it work. Realized as it was an issue with newer films in windscreen 1920 vs older programs in 800/1200 width. Now have scaled movies at 1200 in mkv format on a 128GB stick.
...
Oh and finally if you are looking for a program to do this, I have been using "Handbrake".

This is news I can use! Thanks so much, ajwkmills, for figuring this out. Reformatting just about anything to 1200W and storing it in a MKV container file may be the universal fix we needed to fill that big ol' memory stick up. Awesome!

 

[ajwkmills]

Thank you for sharing. I just downloaded Handbrake and will get this a try. I have a question regarding playing videos from a USB device: I have two small children (too little to be able to operate the U Connect Theater system on their own) and was wondering if videos etc will play automatically like they do on a DVD. I was considering purchasing some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes but would need these to play continuously one right after the other. Will this happen when downloading to a USB? If not, I will need to stick to DVD's for a while longer. Thanks for any advice.

You will need to stitch them together, they will not auto play one after the other. :crying:

 

[generaltso]

Hallelujah, I finally worked it out. Comes down to screen width, had to scale down to 1200 screen width to make it work. Realized as it was an issue with newer films in windscreen 1920 vs older programs in 800/1200 width. Now have scaled movies at 1200 in mkv format on a 128GB stick

Do the files also need to be 2GB or smaller? Or are bigger files okay as long as the screen width is 1200?

 

[KW23]

Handbrake Question

Hallelujah, I finally worked it out. Comes down to screen width, had to scale down to 1200 screen width to make it work. Realized as it was an issue with newer films in windscreen 1920 vs older programs in 800/1200 width. Now have scaled movies at 1200 in mkv format on a 128GB stick.

As far as playing the movies on more than one screen. Each screen can watch whatever they want off the USB stick. They can even watch the same program at different points.

Oh and finally if you are looking for a program to do this, I have been using "Handbrake".

Do you have any tips for using Handbrake? I have unsuccessfully tried to copy a couple DVDs to hard drive using Handbrake and I'm not sure why it won't work. I select the source DVD drive and it begins to scan / prep the job but I have yet to successfully complete a full copy to hard drive.

Thanks,
KW

 

[VoltNow]

Do you have any tips for using Handbrake? I have unsuccessfully tried to copy a couple DVDs to hard drive using Handbrake and I'm not sure why it won't work. I select the source DVD drive and it begins to scan / prep the job but I have yet to successfully complete a full copy to hard drive. This is just for Mac.

Thanks,
KW

This has been pretty frustrating for me in what should be pretty simple.
I have Aimersoft DVD Ripper. Works great but I tried to rep and save a m4v file and it was 2.46GB. (huge). It was sized at 856x480. H.264 compression. I paid for this one already.

I then tried Mac DVD Ripper Pro. The same settings as Aimersoft resulted in a file with a screen size of 853x384 (slightly smaller screen because it was smart enough to remove the black bars. The file size was only 500MB. I was using the demo.

Now I wanted to try Handbrake. That took on a long adventure. For Handbrake to work, you also need to have some decrypting software called libdvdcss. However, with El Capitan, it won't let you install this in the usr/local/lib directory due to System Integrity Protector.

I had to disable SIP (restore mode, terminal: csrutil disable) and then manually add the file to usr/local/lib
Then renable SIP.

Then I re-installed Handbrake and it now works. I'm doing some tests to see some filesize comparisons are. I might also try out RipIt for Mac.

I'm just burning DVD's so the screen resolution will never be over 1200.
Here is a screenshot.

Handbrake was way more difficult than it needed to be. But not that it is working, I think it will be fine. All I want to do is create a USB drive with about 20-30 of my kids favorite DVD's. This is much easier than dealing with the Bluray player one at a time. Plus, I can strip the previews and menus.

 

[thx1138]

Hi there, just got my Pacifica and planning to fill a USB stick with video for the kiddies; I am pretty familiar with Handbrake but for setting a custom resolution of 1200W, what vertical resolution do we need to use? For instance, I got into presets on Handbrake, create a new one, select custom and specify w x h; What should the height be for 1200w so picture will still look proportional? Thanks much!

 

[Autumn Thunder]

I'm not sure about changing it in the presets, but when I open the program and select a source I get the attached screen. On this screen, I just change the width, and it will maintain that aspect ratio. So on that example, if I change the width to 1200 it will maintain the sources 1.78 aspect ratio (current HD format of 16:9). I let it do all that adjusting.

If you want to manually put it in there, it should be 674 for to maintain the 1.78 aspect ratio. If your source is 4:3--or an aspect ratio of 1.33--and you adjust your width to 1200, it's going to be a height of 900.

 

[thx1138]

Thank you! On Mac OSX, Handbrake does not have that screen, but its available in a sub menu called Picture Settings! Many thanks for the screenshot!

 

[Autumn Thunder]

Happy to help! Hope it all works out.

 

[BC44]

I just got our pacifica.
trying to load .mp4 files onto a 32gig flash drive. All 20 min episodes with no other issues. Still says "files not recognized".
Should I just go converting to the other format or what?

 

[twcoll]

I decided to take this opportunity to convert my DVD/Blu-Ray collection to digital files for a Plex server and at the same time, go on and format the files for the UConnect theater as well. Here is what has worked for my UConnect setup.

1 TB Hard Drive - I used a Western Digital My Passport drive. Nice slim format that slides into the pocket of the dash. Formatted NTFS. Currently about 1/2 filled.
MKV video format converted via Handbrake. As others have stated, maximum width is 1200 and height is automatically scaled within Handbrake.
2.99 GB is so far the largest file I have tried and worked. It would probably work beyond that, but that is the largest that I currently have on my drive.

The drive has 768 files (music and videos) on it. It took a couple minutes to first initialize (maybe indexing) when starting UConnect Theater, but it was much quicker on the following power ups.
A couple more notes when converting for the UConnect. You may want to either disable the chapter markers or rename the first chapter to the video name within Handbrake as when I first tested this out, I had several movies named Chapter 1 even though the filename was the video name. If you are converting only for UConnect, you should be able to remove the chapter markers as I haven't found a way yet for the UConnect to recognize chapter markers. Make sure you also test your movies with a proper audio format as well before converting your collection. I had to do a couple trial and errors so that my TiVo could play a proper format as well as the sound to be played in the vehicle. I am not an audio or video expert, so I would rather not disclose my settings as i'm sure others may have better options that will work for them.

Hope this helps clear up a couple questions that some have had regarding drive and file sizes.

 

[cue003]

I decided to take this opportunity to convert my DVD/Blu-Ray collection to digital files for a Plex server and at the same time, go on and format the files for the UConnect theater as well. Here is what has worked for my UConnect setup.

1 TB Hard Drive - I used a Western Digital My Passport drive. Nice slim format that slides into the pocket of the dash. Formatted NTFS. Currently about 1/2 filled.
MKV video format converted via Handbrake. As others have stated, maximum width is 1200 and height is automatically scaled within Handbrake.
2.99 GB is so far the largest file I have tried and worked. It would probably work beyond that, but that is the largest that I currently have on my drive.

The drive has 768 files (music and videos) on it. It took a couple minutes to first initialize (maybe indexing) when starting UConnect Theater, but it was much quicker on the following power ups.
A couple more notes when converting for the UConnect. You may want to either disable the chapter markers or rename the first chapter to the video name within Handbrake as when I first tested this out, I had several movies named Chapter 1 even though the filename was the video name. If you are converting only for UConnect, you should be able to remove the chapter markers as I haven't found a way yet for the UConnect to recognize chapter markers. Make sure you also test your movies with a proper audio format as well before converting your collection. I had to do a couple trial and errors so that my TiVo could play a proper format as well as the sound to be played in the vehicle. I am not an audio or video expert, so I would rather not disclose my settings as i'm sure others may have better options that will work for them.

Hope this helps clear up a couple questions that some have had regarding drive and file sizes.

Great info and thanks for posting

 

[Autumn Thunder]

A couple more notes when converting for the UConnect. You may want to either disable the chapter markers or rename the first chapter to the video name within Handbrake as when I first tested this out, I had several movies named Chapter 1 even though the filename was the video name. If you are converting only for UConnect, you should be able to remove the chapter markers as I haven't found a way yet for the UConnect to recognize chapter markers.

I had similar issues with the naming of files for the UConnect display. I realized (at least in my case) that it had to do with the metadata associated with the file. As in, I could name the file whatever I want, but the title that was in the metadata was the one being displayed on UConnect. In the case of some files where there was no title in the metadata, it showed up as "title 01" or "Chapter 1." Once I edited the metadata, everything showed up exactly like I wanted on the UConnect movie selection window.