HP Video Converter

We'll start with the biggest feature first, the new HP Video Converter, which is pretty remarkable all things considered. HP's goal is to simplify the process of getting a wide variety of digital video that may be lurking on your PC into a format suitable for streaming to devices around the home, as well as remotely to PCs and portable devices (namely their new iStream App for iPhone). 

Digital video can be in a wide variety of different formats. For example, MJPEG video taken from many consumer digital cameras typically lives in an AVI container, but won't play on most set-top DMRs or popular game consoles like the XBOX 360.

How it works

The HP Video Converter monitors one or more folders for compatible video files, and will attempt to convert them into an MP4 file using h.264 video compression and 2 channel AAC audio. In fact, depending on your configuration settings, it will attempt to create two different files; full and mobile quality. The original is not overwritten; converted files are stored in a new "Converted Videos" folder, where inside you'll find one folder for full quality encodes (FQ) and mobile quality encodes (MQ).

Encoding video is a resource intensive task, but you won't find that it negatively affects your Server's performance. Video encoding is relegated to the lowest priority task you can assign it, meaning that encoding will take place in the background when it has spare cycles. During all my testing, I never noticed any slowdown due to video conversion.

By default it monitors the Videos folder, but if you're like me, you'll want a little extra control as to what gets converted. It can't monitor subfolders, so you'll need to set up a new root shared folder (Home Server Console --> Shared Folders --> Right Click and select Add). I named mine "To Convert."

Compatible Formats

I did mention "compatible video files" above, as it obviously won't be able to convert every possible file you throw at it. I haven't gotten the opportunity to test all possible configurations of compatible source files since it's compatible with a pretty wide variety of formats, but here's a quick list on formats that HP says should work:

I wouldn't say the list above is complete either, and probably isn't perfectly accurate. For example, I didn't have any problem encoding an XviD file with AC3 audio. Definitely no MKV, MTS, WTV, or ISO... bummer. :-(

Alex and crew over at the MediaSmartServer.net enthusiast site have figured out some behind the scenes trickery to expand the number of formats the HP Video Converter can work with. It's not something for Grandma to attempt, but if you're computer savvy, it can be done.

Converting DVDs / VOB

Anyone with a DVD based camcorder is going to get really excited about this next one. Browsing through the list, you'll notice that it supports VOB files. For those new to the transcoding game, VOB files are MPEG-2 files on a DVD disc. HP Video Converter can convert entire DVDs into a single h.264 video file, simply by copying the contents of the DVD into your monitored folder. It handles stitching together the VOB files and converting it all without any hassle.

I know what you're thinking... "Whoo Hoo! I can convert all my commercial movies easily!" The answer is, no not really. It doesn't support CSS encrypted content, so you can't simply copy the contents of a commercial DVD onto the server and get a digital video file made for you. I know, a simple Google search can show you how to strip CSS from discs and extract it to a hard drive. But honestly, you probably don't want to use the HP converter for this purpose anyway.

For starters, and I'll touch on this more in the impressions and limitations section below, the full quality versions are huge for h.264. Part of the problem specific to commercial DVDs is that they can't be sure which VOB package is the main movie, so it stitches together all VOBs located in the folder. This means you're going to get any extras, previews, and other content that may be on the disc. It seems to put the longest title first since that's usually the main movie (which is nice), but depending on the disc, you could be encoding hours of additional crap that you don't need.  Sure, if you know which VOBs make up the main title you could only copy those in, but it's not always easy to tell.

Next, it doesn't handle anamorphic video in a way that's mobile device friendly. Unless your client can detect and appropriately resize it, any anamorphic content you have will appear squeezed, as in the photo below.

Another problem specific to commercial DVDs, and this is a big one, the HP Video Converter doesn't account for things like forced subtitles. Many movies, like Star Wars for example, display subtitles for alien speaking creatures, which are pulled from the subtitle track regardless of your choice to display subtitles... hence why they're called "forced." Without them, you wouldn't know what Greedo or Jabba the Hutt is saying. It wouldn't affect all discs, but trying to watch The Da Vinci Code after running it through the HP Video Converter was a frustrating experience.

Impressions and Limitations

Before I continue with the limitations, I have to give kudos to HP. The HP Video Converter is a massive undertaking, and overall it works pretty well. I don't know of any other product that as attempted to automate this kind of functionality in the way that HP has, or any that does such a good job at it. It's by far the most "Media Smart" feature on the server.

That said, I do have some nagging complaints that hopefully will be addressed as this feature evolves. 

HP wanted to keep this as simple as possible, and that meant stripping out any ability to customize the encoding settings for your full and mobile quality encodes. There are no config settings anywhere to be found, so they're using some pre-determined settings. 

As a result, the image quality for both the full and mobile quality versions are impressive, but the output quality of the full version is almost too good. I don't really think it's taking advantage of h.264's ability to maintain good quality at lower bitrates. In the future, I'd like to see some ability to customize the full quality output to find a better balance between disk cost and quality... like "near full quality." 

Next, it doesn't (without some hacking) support conversion of h.264 formats (I tried and it didn't work). I guess for full quality converts it makes sense (it's already in the format you'd be converting to), but it would be convenient to throw a pre-existing h.264 file at it to get a mobile version without having to use external software.

Finally, the anamorphic video issue as noted will also be a problem for anyone with a digital video camera that shoots in anamorphic widescreen. Original 720x480 anamorphic DV_AVI taken with my WS camcorder appeared squeezed after conversion. In order to get it to the proper proportion, I was forced to run it through a program like Movie Maker and save it out to a 856x480 WMV file first. It shouldn't matter when streaming to most set-top DMRs, PS3, or 360, but many mobile clients (including the now video-endowed HP Media Streamer) doesn't provide aspect ratio control.

The reality is that most people want to play digital video files they on a TV or mobile device, but have no idea how to get them to work. For the person that's never transcoded a digital video file, or even knows what the word transcode means, the HP Video Converter is a blessing.

The advanced user will also find some convenience in this new feature, but will end up using it for quick converts of non-essential short videos from camcorders, digital cameras, and stuff downloaded from the web. Those savvy enough to try and expand on it's current capabilities may be able to better tweak it to their needs, but modifying the registry to change things like framerate just isn't worth it; external video converting software is much easier and far more flexible.

Next Page: HP Media Streamer, iStream, and More...

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