Why do some videos play on one phone but not the other?

REVERSEDSKIES · April 4

Hiya

I know you might first think like well, that depends on the app. But let me explain.

My previous phone, a Motorola Moto G8 Power, was despite its low specs even for a 2020 phone (it ran worse than my Moto G4 from 2016) able to play 4K videos quite well. And not even in VLC player or something like that. There's this app I use that's literally called "File Manager" by the developer "File Manager Plus" which has things like a video player built in. This app can on my G8 Power play 4K videos without much of a problem. Only ones where the bitrate gets so high that the phone's SD card reader seems to be the bigger problem have difficulty playing.

Now fast-forward a couple years and I upgraded to a Sony Xperia 10 IV. While I'm pretty pleased with this phone, it has trouble with the very thing that my Motorola does without much effort. Despite my Sony having better specs, it refuses to play most of my videos. Using the same app. One thing that's for sure is that any video with a resolution higher than 1920x1080 refuses to play (except in rare cases where a 4K video might play) and results in the app giving me the error message "codec not supported" but a video with the same codec but at a resolution of 1920x1080 or lower will play just fine. VLC can load basically any video, but most 4K videos get stuck on the first frame. The ones that don't will run at a low framerate.

The videos I'm trying to play are just downloaded from the Internet, but I've tried a bunch of the same videos on both phones. I just don't understand why this is a thing.

My main concern is, now that I'm considering upgrading to Sony's 1 series Xperia phones, that they'll suffer from the same problem. I mean heck, even my G4 with it's 2GB of RAM that's always full for some reason, seems better at playing 90% of my videos than my current Sony.

Now, I asked Sony about this, but without much hope. Which was justified. Their first reply (despite giving them the same story as I've given you) was that it differs per app and that they'd recommend me to use Google Photos. Which I don't want to because I hate that app just like most gallery apps. After asking again whether the Xperia 1 V could properly play these videos and if not, why, they simply said they couldn't guarantee this. Which is fair, but they still ignored my "why" question.

I did find online that it might possibly be a licencing thing, but that was a post from 10 years ago so I don't know how well that still holds up. Especially since Sony is such a big media company.

So can anyone explain me why this is a thing? Why with the same app, some videos play perfectly fine on one phone but refuse to play on another phone even if it's newer and faster?

Thank you!

I'm still catching my head over this one so I would really appreciate proper, in depth answers!

OhioYJ · April 4

Your phone is essentially a computer, and "codecs" are still a thing. The phone that won't play the video is likely missing the piece of information needed to decode that type of video.

I know running custom ROMs I've had to load extra things to play various files.

REVERSEDSKIES · April 5

On 4/4/2024 at 5:37 PM, OhioYJ said:

Your phone is essentially a computer, and "codecs" are still a thing. The phone that won't play the video is likely missing the piece of information needed to decode that type of video.

I know running custom ROMs I've had to load extra things to play various files.

Okay so let's say that Sony doesn't include support for as many codecs as Motorola does, how does that explain the resolution thing? Because one H.264 AVC video at 1920x1080 works fine, but another H.264 AVC video at 3840x2160 does not. They appear to be the same codec but just a different resolution. So how does that work?

OhioYJ · April 5

48 minutes ago, REVERSEDSKIES said:

Okay so let's say that Sony doesn't include support for as many codecs as Motorola does, how does that explain the resolution thing? Because one H.264 AVC video at 1920x1080 works fine, but another H.264 AVC video at 3840x2160 does not. They appear to be the same codec but just a different resolution. So how does that work?

I don't have a good answer for that. However I try and keep everything H264 / MP4 just to avoid compatibility issues like this. Even I have something H265 I'll transcode before I transfer it to a mobile device as I don't want to deal with issues like this.

REVERSEDSKIES · April 5

2 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

I don't have a good answer for that. However I try and keep everything H264 / MP4 just to avoid compatibility issues like this. Even I have something H265 I'll transcode before I transfer it to a mobile device as I don't want to deal with issues like this.

Yeah see I download a bunch of videos online and I don't want to have to transcode all my videos just for that. It's too much work. Especially since VLC can still play most vids. Currently my Sony Xperia 10 IV doesn't play 4K vids in VLC well but I'm guessing the better hardware in something like the Xperia 1 V would be able to play 4K vids in VLC just fine. But I don't know yet until I get it.