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Watch ANY movie or video on the Bolt Display!

42K views 44 replies 23 participants last post by  GJETSON 
#1 ·
I have researched and tested and have found the proper solution to playing any movie or video on the Bolt center display by pushing the Gallery button. :)

First, the movie/video must be in MP4 Format, and only a couple of resolutions will play.
The preferable resolution is 1280 by 720 pixels, which will display and use nearly the entire screen.
higher resolutions will not work. Slightly lower standard resolutions may work, but the picture is too small on the screen.

Unfortunately, very few Utube videos or movies are in the desired resolution.

Fortunately, there is a high quality Freeware program available that can convert virtually all other format videos to the desired 1280 by 720 MP4 format. It is: HD Video Converter Factory, by WonderFox. :)

It is exceptionally easy to use. You select the video to convert. Then you select the MP4 format. Then you slide the selector to the 720P resolution. Then you click the RUN button. It will remember the MP4 format after the first one, but you have to re-select the 720P resolution for each file.

If you wish, you can purchase the Pro version of the program for $25, which allows even higher resolutions, including 1280P and 4k ones, as well as allowing you drag/drop batches of files to be converted.

In addition, WonderFox has DVDRipper Pro for an additional $10, which can convert DVDs and ISO images to any video format.
 
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#3 ·
I have researched and tested and have found the proper solution to playing any movie or video on the Bolt center display by pushing the Gallery button. :)

First, the movie/video must be in MP4 Format, and only a couple of resolutions will play.
The preferable resolution is 1280 by 720 pixels, which will display and use nearly the entire screen.
higher resolutions will not work. Slightly lower standard resolutions may work, but the picture is too small on the screen.
My experience has been different. Some mp4's play, some do not. Resolution is not relevant - even at exactly the same resolution, some play, some don't. I've had no problem getting full screen display of lower-resolution files, so I have no need for conversion software.

I am curious as to why some mp4 files do not play. But not curious enough to do a lot of testing...

I did go so far as to create two 30-minute files using exactly the same capture, recording, and conversion software. Exactly the same settings, resolution (not a typical/standard resolution), frame rate, etc., just different content (two different half-hour TV shows). One played, one did not. This suggests to me that there is may not be an easy answer.
 
#5 ·
I have had some mp4 files that did not play, even though they were the full 720P resolution. But when I ran them through the WonderFox Converter, then they did play. It may be some weird condition of compression level being wrong on some files, I am not sure.

Probably the Bolt decoder is not sophisticated enough to handle all of the variants that MP4 files can have.
I also like using the 1280 by 720 resolution so the picture is as large as possible, because us old people need all the help we can get. :)
 
#9 ·
I am playing mp4 music videos so I have a bunch of them so they play in sequence.

Naturally the screen turns off when I am driving but that is understandable as I need to focus on the road.

The music continues to play which is fine with me as I have many mp4 songs.

The issue comes when the car is driving and I want to change to a different screen, the mp4 stops immediately and hence my music stops. Frown
 
#12 ·
Or they don't enable it. If you troll through the FOSS licenses (warning it's long) there are a lot of shared libs compiled in. Including, I noticed, FLAC my favorite format. But you can't play FLAC, unless you do a trick apparently of naming it to .wav. Well anyhow it looks like the format is included but they didn't allow it in the file parsing.
 
#18 ·
Is there anyone on the latest software (14.4.2) who can confirm that video playback is still possible?

I just got my car last night, it came with 14.4.2 and I can't seem to get the gallery to even see my video files let alone play them. I don't even have a movies tab in the galley only a pictures tab. I'm thinking this entire feature might have been removed.
 
#30 ·
I read at "gm-volt.com" that the Chevy Volt can also play videos on its screen from a USB drive. I do know that many Ford vehicles with larger displays do play videos by using the RCA jacks inside the center console area between the front seats, but you have to attach a portable DVD or video source to do it. Some F-150 truck owners have defeated the video source switch and play videos while driving!
 
#36 ·
After creating around 50 sample video files with different resolutions, filenames, lengths, profiles, bitrates, sound codecs, I came to the conclusion that video files matching the following rules, work:
  • video codec: H264, profile level: 3.0 (5.2 does not work)
  • audio codec: AAC (even though the manual states that Dolby Digital (AC3) works, unfortunately it does not.), in Stereo (Surround stutters)
  • resolution: max. 720P (non-standard resolutions like 720x424 Pixels, also work.)
  • size doesn't matter (of course file size is limited to 4GB, on FAT32 formatted USB-Sticks (from the 2020 Bolt, NTFS can be used also))
  • filename length doesn't matter, also special characters don't matter
I recommend Handbrake.
 
#37 ·
After creating around 50 sample video files with different resolutions, filenames, lengths, profiles, bitrates, sound codecs, I came to the conclusion that video files matching the following rules, work:
  • video codec: H264, profile level: 3.0 (5.2 does not work)
  • audio codec: AAC (even though the manual states that Dolby Digital (AC3) works, unfortunately it does not.), in Stereo (Surround stutters)
  • resolution: max. 720P (non-standard resolutions like 720x424 Pixels, also work.)
  • size doesn't matter (of course file size is limited to 4GB, on FAT32 formatted USB-Sticks (from the 2020 Bolt, NTFS can be used also))
  • filename length doesn't matter, also special characters don't matter
Excellent, I will try that too.
 
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