Uconnect Max File Size for Video Files
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Just got my 2018 Pacifica Hybrid earlier this week, and I've gotten the system to successfully play back videos from the USB drive, but it's not smooth...it's almost like it's struggling to decode fast enough. I used the handbrake profile someone had shared previously - h.264, 30fps peak framerate, constant quality (22), encoder tune none, profile main, level 4.0. Is the video playback smooth for other folks? Any other experiences on the best set of encoding options?
Same issue for me when using h.264. I’ve settled on using MPEG4 encoding which is less efficient but plays smoothly. At 2mbps the file size for the average movie is about 1.5GB, and looks good on the 10-inch screens. I did a lot of testing to find the optimal settings that work best and have settled on these (see attached screenshots).
Most modern day movies are natively 23.97 FPS. I've found that the uConnect Theater handles this just fine... If you force handbrake to encode at 30fps you're adding 25% more frames per second unnecessarily therefore reducing the quality of the video. It's quite a noticeable difference in video quality if you do the same movie at 23.97 and 29.97 FPS at the same bit rate.
Attachments
Doesn't seem to be any different than the recommendations here. The Uconnect Theater seems to be a separate beast from the Uconnect 4, so it may not be any different than the 2017s. I haven't tried 1080p because the screen is only 1280x800, so there's really no benefit to encoding at 1080p.
I have been encoding with h.264 (Just using the H.264 MKV 720p30 preset in handbrake), but I noticed that the playback is stuttered. I'm thinking the decoder can't quite keep up and drops frames. I intend to try encoding with MPEG-4, or maybe VP8 to see if it plays better. Though I don't think it can handle Vorbis audio, so the VP8 preset won't work as is.
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Sorry for that all things I know are to back up your Mac files to other portable devices that can store your all files on your sides. In fact, I am the one who has a full knowledge of converting iTunes M4V movies and TV shows to MP4 with the help of DRmare M4V Converter for Mac/Windows. But you might be not interested in this field. So if you want to know more, you can learn more by searching it on Google.
After some more experimentation, I discovered that H.264 works fine if you use the baseline profile, rather than the main profile. The compression is still better than MPEG-4, so that's what I'm using for now. VP8 also works, but I had more trouble getting the settings in handbrake to produce a video I was satisfied with. The screen resolution is 1280x800, so setting that resolution with no or loose anamorphic results in files sized just right for the screen.
For audio, the car seems to support AAC, MP3, and FLAC. AC3, E-AC3, DTS, Vorbis, and Opus are not supported. It will read AAC 5.1 audio tracks, but internally downmixes to stereo, so it seems better to downmix beforehand and save filespace/quality. Also, if you downmix to Dolby Pro Logic II, and put the car's audio system in surround mode, it does actually place some of the surround channels in the rear. It does not do that if you use AAC 5.1 or downmix to pure stereo. I've settled on downmixing everything to AAC Dolby Pro Logic II.
The car seems to pay no attention to chapter markings, but they don't increase the size of the file much, and maybe a future software update could make use of them, so I leave them in. As long as the Title metadata is set, then it doesn't use the title of chapter 1 as the name. I'm still experimenting with subtitles. Again, it doesn't seem like the car supports them, but it might be nice to include in case a future update supports them if they don't increase the file size by much. Hard burning is an option if you want them present as well, and for anything with forced subtitles that seems like the only option.
Once I settle on a few more settings I might post a new handbrake preset. There's one other one posted, but it results in the choppy video I've noticed, and misses out on a few of the other optimizations I've come across.
For audio, the car seems to support AAC, MP3, and FLAC. AC3, E-AC3, DTS, Vorbis, and Opus are not supported. It will read AAC 5.1 audio tracks, but internally downmixes to stereo, so it seems better to downmix beforehand and save filespace/quality. Also, if you downmix to Dolby Pro Logic II, and put the car's audio system in surround mode, it does actually place some of the surround channels in the rear. It does not do that if you use AAC 5.1 or downmix to pure stereo. I've settled on downmixing everything to AAC Dolby Pro Logic II.
The car seems to pay no attention to chapter markings, but they don't increase the size of the file much, and maybe a future software update could make use of them, so I leave them in. As long as the Title metadata is set, then it doesn't use the title of chapter 1 as the name. I'm still experimenting with subtitles. Again, it doesn't seem like the car supports them, but it might be nice to include in case a future update supports them if they don't increase the file size by much. Hard burning is an option if you want them present as well, and for anything with forced subtitles that seems like the only option.
Once I settle on a few more settings I might post a new handbrake preset. There's one other one posted, but it results in the choppy video I've noticed, and misses out on a few of the other optimizations I've come across.
Nice info! I look forward to your settings once you get them locked down. I've been working on a docker container to watch a folder and auto-convert anything in it using handbrake but need some good default settings to bake in. Sounds like yours will be perfect.
Updated Handbrake preset
Here's my updated Handbrake preset for creating Uconnect compatible video files. Remove the .txt extension before importing.
I started with the H.264 MKV 720p30 as it was the closest match to the screen and in the more versatile MKV container.
I switched the resolution to 1280x800 since that is the actual resolution of the screen. It won't affect widescreen content, but 4x3 can actually use the full height of the screen now at 1066x800, rather than 960x720.
I set Anamorphic to loose, which matches the pixel aspect ratio of the source. This allows HD content to keep square pixels optimized for the screen size, and for anamorphic DVDs to remain stored anamorphically to conserve space/quality.
I switched the H.264 profile to baseline, as the main profile resulted in dropped frames and stuttered video. The van seems to handle the baseline profile better. Some have used mpeg4, but the compression is still better using H.264 baseline.
I added English as the default audio language so international movies will include the track my kids can understand. If your kids are multi-lingual or not native English speakers, you might want to change this.
I left the audio at 2-channel AAC Dolby Pro Logic II as I found the van can kind of decode the Pro Logic if you use the surround mode, and it still sounds pretty good in headphones or just in stereo.
I also unchecked the boxes to burn DVD or Blu-ray subtitles into the video, as I didn't want these burned in. Feel free to adjust the subtitle defaults to your tastes.
I did not remove chapters. The van doesn't currently use them, but they take up very little space, and might be supported in a future update, or if you use the files on another platform. Some remove them because the van uses the title of chapter 1 if you don't have a title set. So be sure to set a title in the tags tab before you start encoding a movie.
I got the 256 GB SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 drive. It's tiny and will hold lots of movies. I'm not sure yet how many, but enough with room to expand. If you have a smaller drive, you could reduce the quality a bit to save space. I liked RF: 21, but I think I'd be ok with RF: 23 and it would produce smaller files. Also, I formatted the drive with FAT32. I think it's the right choice for maximum support and minimizing the chances of misusing file security features.
To summarize my procedure:
1. Open the source in Handbrake with the Uconnect preset.
2. Set the output filename at the top, and set the Title in the "Tags" tab.
3. Begin encoding.
4. Look for a good cover art, like at fanart.tv (Movie Thumbs at the bottom of each page) or themoviedb.org (choose backdrops in English).
5. Convert the movie thumb to a format that works well with Uconnect using imagemagick:
convert $FILE -background none -gravity center -resize 800x600 -extent 800x600 cover.png
6. Once handbrake is done, use mkvtoolnix to attach cover.png to the .mkv file.
7. Copy onto the USB flash drive for the car.
Hope this winds up being some useful information for someone. I think my kids will enjoy having a personal movie collection for long trips.
Here's my updated Handbrake preset for creating Uconnect compatible video files. Remove the .txt extension before importing.
I started with the H.264 MKV 720p30 as it was the closest match to the screen and in the more versatile MKV container.
I switched the resolution to 1280x800 since that is the actual resolution of the screen. It won't affect widescreen content, but 4x3 can actually use the full height of the screen now at 1066x800, rather than 960x720.
I set Anamorphic to loose, which matches the pixel aspect ratio of the source. This allows HD content to keep square pixels optimized for the screen size, and for anamorphic DVDs to remain stored anamorphically to conserve space/quality.
I switched the H.264 profile to baseline, as the main profile resulted in dropped frames and stuttered video. The van seems to handle the baseline profile better. Some have used mpeg4, but the compression is still better using H.264 baseline.
I added English as the default audio language so international movies will include the track my kids can understand. If your kids are multi-lingual or not native English speakers, you might want to change this.
I left the audio at 2-channel AAC Dolby Pro Logic II as I found the van can kind of decode the Pro Logic if you use the surround mode, and it still sounds pretty good in headphones or just in stereo.
I also unchecked the boxes to burn DVD or Blu-ray subtitles into the video, as I didn't want these burned in. Feel free to adjust the subtitle defaults to your tastes.
I did not remove chapters. The van doesn't currently use them, but they take up very little space, and might be supported in a future update, or if you use the files on another platform. Some remove them because the van uses the title of chapter 1 if you don't have a title set. So be sure to set a title in the tags tab before you start encoding a movie.
I got the 256 GB SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 drive. It's tiny and will hold lots of movies. I'm not sure yet how many, but enough with room to expand. If you have a smaller drive, you could reduce the quality a bit to save space. I liked RF: 21, but I think I'd be ok with RF: 23 and it would produce smaller files. Also, I formatted the drive with FAT32. I think it's the right choice for maximum support and minimizing the chances of misusing file security features.
To summarize my procedure:
1. Open the source in Handbrake with the Uconnect preset.
2. Set the output filename at the top, and set the Title in the "Tags" tab.
3. Begin encoding.
4. Look for a good cover art, like at fanart.tv (Movie Thumbs at the bottom of each page) or themoviedb.org (choose backdrops in English).
5. Convert the movie thumb to a format that works well with Uconnect using imagemagick:
convert $FILE -background none -gravity center -resize 800x600 -extent 800x600 cover.png
6. Once handbrake is done, use mkvtoolnix to attach cover.png to the .mkv file.
7. Copy onto the USB flash drive for the car.
Hope this winds up being some useful information for someone. I think my kids will enjoy having a personal movie collection for long trips.
I too got the same exact thumb drive as you (SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1) although I got the 128GB version because the 256 was more than twice the price. The van seems to be reading it perfectly every time I start the van without having to remove it and re-insert it like I was having to do with my Samsung compact USB drive. I left it on the default FAT32 formatting, so that limits my video files to 2GB on my Mac (all of my movies come out to around 1.2 - 1.6GB).
Thank you for providing your research findings to the group, it is much appreciated. I too have played a lot with the various options to find the "perfect" uConnect setting. I never messed with the baseline profile, but that is great to hear. I had choppy video using H.264 so I used the less compressed MPEG4 which results in smooth video, but at a lesser quality image. I will try the baseline h.264 profile to see if it's as smooth as the MPEG4 compression, and if so, we have a winner!
Just a few questions I wanted to ask you... Did you find that using 30fps VBR is producing better results for you? I couldn't see any discernible difference between 30fps and "Same As Source" setting with CBR, which on 99% of movies ends up being 23.97fps. It seemed to play exactly the same on the van, and produce a smaller file since you are having to encode 20% less frames in the file. If the screens in the van are 60 hertz, and they most likely are, then the vans multimedia system seems to be doing a perfect job of converting the 23.97fps movies (both file based and DVD based) to 30fps. The handbrake documentation says if you choose "Same As Source with CBR" it will keep the encoding frames per second the same as the source movie even if the source has variable frames per second. What are your thoughts?
Also, are you finding that your audio is too quiet? I've noticed when not adjusting the audio gain in handbrake that the audio is way too quiet. So when the speakers switch from uConnect theater to the radio for example, the music is blaring loud!
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One annoying thing about the Theater is that it doesn't remember the last played file and position after the ignition cycle. Maybe it remembers only for certain formats, not the one I use? It would be nice to autoresume the movie.
I keep both music and movies on the same drive. Sometimes I take it from the Theater USB port and plug it in uConnect, which resumes playing the music from the same spot in the track it played last time. It is strange that uConnect memory persists even through removal of the disk, but Theater has no memory at all.
I keep both music and movies on the same drive. Sometimes I take it from the Theater USB port and plug it in uConnect, which resumes playing the music from the same spot in the track it played last time. It is strange that uConnect memory persists even through removal of the disk, but Theater has no memory at all.
Sometimes if the van restart is within a few minutes it will resume on mine, but anything more than that it defaults to the DVD. I did make a feature request to @ChryslerCares for the auto resume capability and they told me they forwarded my request to the uConnect team (one can hope right?).
FAT32 should support 4 GB files. Does mac OS not support large file support? (Using unsigned integers doubles the max file size from 2 GB to 4 GB. Some of my movies might exceed 2 GB with these settings, but 4 GB is plenty.
My preset uses 30 fps VBR peak frame rate. That means it will use the source frame rate up to 30 fps, so movies recorded at 23.97 will still be in 23.97, but the frame rate will never exceed 30. You won't see a difference between 30 PFR and "Same as source" as long as the source doesn't exceed 30 fps.
I found the audio was too quiet if I encoded with AAC 5.1, but found it to be acceptable if I encoded in stereo or Pro Logic II. You'll probably find movies to have dialogue quieter than most music in general, since movies take advantage of a wider dynamic range. If your source is in AC3, you can turn on dynamic range compression when you decode, which will try to normalize all the levels. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot else you can do. Blame the loudness war that your music is too loud.
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will any of these programs you all are referring to convert my itunes .m4v videos, or is that a lost cause because DRM will prevent it?
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With uConnect 4c in the 2018 models with LTE and streaming, 1080p still doesnt work. I have 1843x720 working which appears 720p widescreen is now acceptable.
Note:1900x800 did not work.
All of what @jbebel reports remains true as tested on the uConnect 4c.
But in summery..
All AAC output types work, MP3 and FLAC tested fine.
AC3, DTS, E-AC3, DTS HD still do not work.
USB flash drives accept 4GB file size standard but re-formated to NTFS accepts beyond 4GB limit.
uConnect 4c plays files larger than 4Gb. I have tested upto 4.9Gb no problem and will report on the max size soon
Edit: Biggest I could create was 16.5Gb and played it from a USB flash drive. The file size is likely limited by the file system used.
The supported file types I've tested are MP4, Divx AVI, MKV but require the correct audio format ACC, MP3 or FLAC.
My entire library is now converted into x264 MP4 AAC and I found if the resolution is incompatible the file is ignored by uConnect and goes missing
Initially it appeared that uConnect couldnt read mkv or avi but infact it was the 1080 encoding. With a compatible resolution and incompatable audio format (ie: ac3) the file still plays but without audio.
Cheers
Hello,
I have been using Adobe Premier Encoder to convert some videos and I cannot get them to show up when browsing via uConnect screens.
All the originals are there but I wanted to downscale the 1080p videos and upscale the 480p videos to 1280x800 x264
Do the videos have to be 1200x800 ? I read in one of these posts that the screen resolution is 1280x800
Any suggestions ?
I have been using Adobe Premier Encoder to convert some videos and I cannot get them to show up when browsing via uConnect screens.
All the originals are there but I wanted to downscale the 1080p videos and upscale the 480p videos to 1280x800 x264
Do the videos have to be 1200x800 ? I read in one of these posts that the screen resolution is 1280x800
Any suggestions ?
They actually have to be <= 1280x720. The screen is 1280x800, but the decoder can't take it.
If you give it 1280x720 video, you will have black bars at the top and bottom. If you give it 960x720 it will stretch vertically to fill the screen and leave black bars on the left and right.
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