Movies playing on a USB stick

Hi All!

Long time lingerer, first time poster lol. Picked up my lovely new toy last week and loving it, but one thing I still don't get.

I've read on here that movies on a USB can be Divx or MP4. However, I can only get my Evoque to recognise/play Divx files. If I have it loaded with MP4 files, it just says "Device Error".

Any help appreciated at I'd really love to be able to watch movies in my new Si4 Dynamic, but Divx have to be the worst sorts of movies to encode!!

Thanks all.

Welcome to the forum dan, I cannot help you but I'm sure that the resident experts will be along shortly! Another Scottish Evoque - we seem to have more Evoques on the road per head of population up here than in the rest of the world!

Actually MP4 / MPEG-4 is simply a container format and the actual video / audio streams inside use a certain codec. Common video codecs within MP4 are H.263 and H.264, common audio codecs are ALS, SLS, MP3, etc. Many players only support certain codecs and if you have a problem, it's probably because either your audio or video are encoded differently.

Unfortunately LR doesn't give us detailed information, they just claim they support (some kind of) MP4. DivX is much more clear. If it's a certified DivX, it will play on certified DivX players.

Now if they would only build my Evoque, I would surely look into this further!

ps/ With software like GSpot, you can check which codecs are used in your MP4 file. You'll have to try a few files and see which ones work.

Could you point me to where Land Rover claim the Evoue will play MP4? I can't find anything in my user handbook.

All I know is I used Handbrake to encode the files as H.264 to play on my Mac/iPad/iPhone and Apple TV. And I also know it seems to be impossible to convert the files to Divx.

Shame they didn't make the Evoque more compatible.

According to the online user manual (page 126 - Portable Media):

USB VIDEO
The vehicle system will play video files stored
on USB 2.0 devices recorded in MPEG4 DivX 3,
4, 5, 5.2, 6.0 or MPEG4 XVid only.

So you'll need to make sure your MP4 files are encoded with XVid for the Meridian system to play them it would seem.

The thing is that DivX is actually based on MPEG-4 but as I said it's only one type of MPEG-4.
What you're trying to play is probably MPEG-4 H.264 and apparently it doesn't play that.

Just put a DVD in the DVD drive far less hassle!

(24-10-2011 05:43pm)andyuk Wrote:  Just put a DVD in the DVD drive far less hassle!

.... is it ?

Video containers/codecs are a nightmare, I took ages to find the exact encoding for playing my Camera movies on the Playstation3 thanks to weird resolution, I notice in Handbrake there is MPEG-4 (FFmpeg) as an alternative to h.264, might be worth a go, also reduce the resolution to start with something less that 720 vertical, and build up if it works.

I'll be trying when I get mine...

Hi Dan, it seems that the JLR have not really specified so I suggest the best way would be to play around with the options you have...

Based on your message I opened up Handbrake to have a look around.... of course you cannot decode to Divx with Handbrake so I would advise you to take a small video.... and decode multiple times to check if either combination works....

in handbrake you can either do H.264 or MPEG-4 for video codec.... and audio either AAC, MP3 or AC3....
... you can then build a Handbrake queue with the 6 different combinations and check which ones work.

I would do myself but still waiting for the Evoque to try it on
it would be good it you could keep us up to date on your progress.