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Is there any software/player that can cut down dimension to fit VGA and be playable on Diamond DIRECTLY? For example, Diamond won't play 640x480 (it plays but freezes every 2 seconds).
It could be an all-in-one player or an intermediate streaming software like ORB. We all know ORB can cut down bigger dimension/resolution and stream the smaller to your phone, and the result is that every media file regardless of its dimension/resolution can play on your Diamond. Is there any software that can do exactly the same thing, but deal with FILES ALREADY ON YOUR PHONE? Basically it converts files already on your phone and simultaneously "streams" it to CorePlayer or WMP. Play as it converts.
But not a converter. I hate to convert in advance all those files to smaller size for Diamond, and keep bigger files for computer. I am sure a lot of you have all those "lone-night" movies that you abandon after watching once.
The CPU already chokes when it tries to playback high-birate video; converting on-the-fly just adds to the required processing. That is, it still has to read the file, demux the container, pass the individual streams into the codecs, and then instead of just displaying the decoded video on the screen (which it's already having trouble doing), you're asking it to take the video and re-compress it.
Unfortunately the vast majority of video codecs simply aren't scalar, so there's no effective way to do such a thing on a mobile device. It is possible to recompress on-the-fly by using a separate server, such as Flash Media Server on a PC or using a Slingbox, but obviously those files aren't locally stored.
I use upn play and mobo player to stream video over home network.
hello
I use also iMediaShare, and Skifta (both DNLA)
why wouldn't my streamer apps (UPNP, Skifta, clear.fi etc.) not detect the mp4 files I am putting into my servers shared video folder? The apps see a my other video files, like the avi files and mpg files, but none of my mp4's show up.
Does that make any sense? Does UPNP ignore mp4 files? yet it seems like everyone converts their files to mp4 (which by the way play ok on the device if I attach and play through usb.).
I just want to convert everything to something that I can both stream and put on hard drive and take with me...
Ok, the tagline is misleading...
I picked up an A500 about a week ago and still trying to decide if I want to keep it. Primarily, I wanted it for reading. At this it does pretty good, tried a few eReader apps and settled on Moon+. So, it satisfies my reading requirement BUT as an android tablet I expect more. It is supposed to play audio and video files but I find that android is rather crummy at that. It will only play .mp3's for audio, 95% of my music is in lossless WMA. For video, it only plays .mp4. All my video is either mpg, avi or wmv. So it seems an android tablet kinda stinks for entertainment purposes.
So, I hit the forums here and started looking for info and alternatives. I heard some other apps would work. I downloaded winamp, poweramp and playerpro and none of them would play my wma files.
For video, I downloaded Moboplayer (had good reviews here) and Arcmedia. Arcmedia just totally croaked on all files. Moboplayer would play wmv but the sound was completely hosed. Moboplayer did play mpg's and mkv's ok though, but again most of my video is wmv. Sure wish VLC worked on android.
So, right now it looks like the only thing this tablet is really good for is reading books. For that I could just get a nook or something and save some money. I wont even mention gps, thats another thread.
So have I missed something or are android tabs just lame for entertainment (only playing mp3/mp4)?
PS
Yes I know others have asked similar questions. Sorry for the redundancy, but perhaps some progress has been made that isnt on the forum.
They are OK but you have a lot of files in Windows Media Audio or Video format which is IMHO badly supported on Android phones.
Did you try RockPlayer? Some people report good results with that but I don't have any WMA or WMW files anywhere to try it out.
So your Android device has major problems playing Microsoft DRM'd proprietary files... I am not the least bit surprised, as licinsing would be expensive, and not Open Source. Mine plays all my ogg audio, AVC/AC3, AVC/OGG, Mpeg4/OGG, Mpeg4/MP3, etc. just fine. Of course it can't do all the video natively (I suspect the MKV parser is a dud, as it can decode properly the same streams from an mp4), but Moboplayer handles those just fine. The problen you are going to continue to have is expecting MS codecs to play nice on Android devices. Maybe find one that advertises WMA/WMV support?
Try RockPlayer for video.
It has run everything I have thrown at it.
As far as your music collection, I have not seen a lot of support for wma anywhere outside of a microsoft product (windows, zune, xbox, etc)
You might want to bite the bullet and convert those to a more sustainable format.
Also, even though you have found a book reader, try Aldikio. I love it. I just wish it had syncing options...though those are supposedly in the works.
Best Players for Android Honeycomb are:
Doubletwist Player and Moboplayer.
Give these a try. Moboplayer has codecs inside of it should it SHOULD be able to play anything.....and its FREE.
you could also try handbrake to convert your video files into a more android friendly format. However, no matter what you end up doing, the Iconia is going to run circles around a Kindle any day of the week.
Rumor is that Amazon will be coming out with a couple of android tablet in the next few months. Surely before Christmas if they are.
As for WMA lossless very few players can handle it out of the 50 or so I have reviewed for my blog. Check the Android market for "WMA player". You might get lucky.
Thanks for the info all !
Didnt have much luck with rockplayer either
(Moboplayer says it will do wma, but if you dig a little deeper it says it cant do the lossless wma)
Oh well, I certainly cant put my whole audio/video collection on a tablet anyway so I could just occasionally convert some files to put on it in a format it can handle. BTW, these files are not drm'd they even play on my "dumb" phone.
As far as ebook apps, I did try Aldiko and liked it but what kinda killed it for me was that it cant do annotations.
perry59, your biggest issue is that you've chosen to use a Microsoft's own proprietary format that simply isn't supported too well anywhere, and the reason for that is that Microsoft requires a hefty sum of money in licensing deals for the support.
FLAC is probably the most widely-supported lossless audio codec these days, so unless there's some very specific reason for you to keep using WMA you could transcode all your audio files to FLAC.
H.264/.mp4 also seems the most ubiquitous video codec+container, but I admit that transcoding all your video files from one lossy codec to another is not only messy and time-consuming, but it also loses on the picture quality a little. However, if you do decide to just transcode videos for the tablet every now and then and keep the original files you could use Handbrake or Cyberlink MediaEspresso; Handbrake does the transcoding in software so it takes quite a bit longer, MediaEspresso does it in hardware if you have an Nvidia CUDA-compatible card or ATI Stream one.
Mp3 is best format small in size at same time high on quality use it instead
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk
umanko said:
Mp3 is best format small in size at same time high on quality use it instead
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mp3 is a lossy format, the OP chose a lossless format for a reason.
Try VPlayer for videos
VPlayer is the best video player for Android.
Video formats: divx/xvid, wmv, m4v, flv, rmvb, avi, mkv, mov, mp4, 3gp, ts, tp...
Streaming: http, rtsp, mms and m3u(apple http stream, m3u8
https://market.android.com/details?id=me.abitno.vplayer.t&feature=more_from_developer
Only free for 7days, altho it is only like £3
To identify qualty difference with ears u need very high quakity speakers which might cost more then tab itself
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk
umanko said:
To identify qualty difference with ears u need very high quakity speakers which might cost more then tab itself
Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a lot easier with headphones as there's no echo from the walls around you, the furniture doesn't affect the sound, and finding headphones with wide frequency response area isn't difficult.
I have a gigantic media server, over 10TB, mostly video (my music collection, while huge, just doesn't take much space comparatively).
While there are a variety of approaches/solutions to distributing this media around the home via a network, I've found that the easiest means for me is to simply mount server share(s) on playback devices when possible, rather than using solutions like TVersity and ORB.
Windows shares (a.k.a. CIFS) are simple to set up, provide full-resolution / quality playback of the material, and for whatever reasons (there are many), is more broadly compatible as a means of streaming. I've run into too many files that AllShare balks at, yet will play just fine when the file is streamed directly.
So what's the point of this thread?
Two-fold. 1) stimulate discussion on technology and methods used for streaming video on a LAN to get the best results, and 2) share my own solutions.
Here's what I've found:
CifsManager is Da Bomb. It does a great job of adding a system-wide Windows Share mounting and access capability to an Android device. Once a share is mounted on your phone, it looks just like any other mounted filesystem to any app, so files can be access on the shares as if they were local.
x264 encoded video plays very nicely on the stock video player. It's obvious that it has been optimized to take maximum advantage of hardware acceleration. I use the stock player to play HD content from a share over my network, which almost always means something in a mkv or mp4 container.
HOWEVER: The stock player can't play AAC encoded audio. This is a problem for mp4 -- these days, many people encoding for mp4 use AAC, so I find I have to demux, transcode audio (usually to mp3), and then remux. This is a PITA, but I haven't found any other solution... None of the third-party alternatives I've tried (most of them) can play x264 HD content and keep up. None.
To make things worse, for some reason hardware acceleration doesn't seem to have been implement for the Divx/Xvid (h263) default codec, so xvid video (usually SD format in avi containers) plays haltingly, and locks up frequently when streaming over CIFS. Oddly, copying a file over to local storage makes this problem go away with the stock player. My theory is that the network processing load combined with the CPU effort necessary to decode h263 without hardware assist just overwhelms the processor. Regardless, the stock player is not an acceptable solution here.
After trying many different players, the one that works best for "avi" files (almost always xvid encoded) is arcMedia (market, free). Close to flawless playback of this type of media streamed via CIFS. Unfortunately, arcMedia is completely useless for h264 (mkv, mp4 containers).
Streaming the direct source media, rather than going through a streaming server that will transcode, gives you the best possible quality and experience. While the above may sound complicated and involved, it really isn't -- in fact, it's the simplest:
Share your media library files in the usual way using the "Sharing and Security..." context-menu item on your windows media server.
Install CifsManager from the market.
Install arcMedia player from the market.
Mount your media shares on your phone with CifsManager.
Using your favorite File Manager, browse your media shares the same way you would your local SD card filesystem. To play an HD media file encoded with h264, click on it and play it in the stock player the same way you would if it was on your SD card.
For h263 encoded media (divx/xvid, virtually always avi container), run arcMedia and use its built-in file browser to navigate to the media file, then play it.
There are many, many advantages of convenience and ease-of-use in this approach over streaming with servers like TVersity, ORB, etc. On a LAN, where bandwidth isn't an issue, this approach works really well!
By the stock Video Player, did you mean on Android? Or Windows?
If Android:
Vital Player
If Windows:
Media Player Classic.
always looking for good info, and this is good stuff. Going to try it out when i get home and see if i have better luck than i've been having getting xvid and mkv's to stream from my network shares...
If you use GB rom, try diceplayer.
diceplayer can play 720p MKV+DTS with full HW acceleration.
I wish we had a thread like this for over the net streaming. If I'm at home I just use upnplay with rockplayer from my mediatomb box which is set to transcode anything ps3 can't play natively.. Haven't had any problems yet.
Cd's or tapes?
I use this:
http://www.serverelements.com/?target=NASLite-M2_x64
I have a dual core tower with 2 250 gig drives but want to add 5 1 tb drives with 8 gig of ram. This OS runs off a 8 gig jump drive with NO issues. I use UPNP to my Xbox and laptops. I haven't tried on my phone yet but I don't see why this wouldn't work.
schnowdapowda said:
I wish we had a thread like this for over the net streaming. If I'm at home I just use upnplay with rockplayer from my mediatomb box which is set to transcode anything ps3 can't play natively.. Haven't had any problems yet.
Cd's or tapes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check or something called Plex its great, I used orb for years and was never happy with playback...Plex is amazing and the android app is awesome.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
pvtjoker42 said:
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cifs works with samba. Don't know if you knew that or not.
Cd's or tapes?
pvtjoker42 said:
see, my whole thing is I don't want to run some extra server software just to have this work. I've got a networked media box (Patriot Box Office) and it plays everything over my network flawlessly from my NFS and SMB shares, and I want to be able to do the same thing from my Epic and Tab (mostly Tab with the bigger screen.) Working on some dev stuff with my Tab so it's not fully setup, but once i've got it back to normal I'm going to test Cifsmanager and see if it's the missing link to the issues I've had with getting mkv's to stream.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
schnowdapowda said:
Cifs works with samba. Don't know if you knew that or not.
Cd's or tapes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, and with ordinary Windows shares.
CifsManager is one of the best pieces of software I've put on my Epic. And I have A LOT of stuff...
Shinydude100 said:
By the stock Video Player, did you mean on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android, Samsung player that comes with the Epic.
For windows, I swear by CorePlayer. I'd buy it all over again full price if they'd add Android to their platforms (with HW acceleration, of course).
formula84 said:
Check or something called Plex its great, I used orb for years and was never happy with playback...Plex is amazing and the android app is awesome.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to find it and try it out right after I finish posting this.
I've been using Orb for years, and it has always had its issues. With Android, it became a major PITA because they only transcode to WM9 as of 6 months or so ago -- and WM codec support on Android is scant.
Great thread. Love this type of info. I've been messing with streamin off and on to my epic and this just pretty much sums up what I've been trying to do. Gonna go try that now...
Thanks!
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Do I need to be rooted to mount my shares with cifs?
Also, can you recommend a tutorial or software for ripping my dvd collection to my storage server?
As a side note I am pretty happy with twonky for music dlna solution.
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Does anyone know how to play mediacenter tv recordings in my htpc on epic?
Tried orb but didn't like the quality.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
PlayOn is amaaaazing. But it's 70 bucks to get it forever. You can stream out of your network over 3g/wifi to your Android and it look great! Even does subtitles. For my PC or PS3 I love PS3 Media Server. It's pretty much perfect and streams HD over WIFI G even.
sethlo said:
Do I need to be rooted to mount my shares with cifs?
Also, can you recommend a tutorial or software for ripping my dvd collection to my storage server?
As a side note I am pretty happy with twonky for music dlna solution.
Thanks
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, Cifsmanager requires root AND a cifs compatible kernel
I run Windows Home Server .v1 and have tried multiple combinations of players/clients without a whole lot of success.. until recently. Movies are in .mp4 and .mkv format. I use UPnPlay for access and MoboPlayer for streaming playback; the combination works great! I have tested on a rooted Nook, rooted Hauwei Ideos S7, Evo Shift (Not rooted.. Darn 2.3.3!), and my rooted Epic.
I have a couple of questions about streaming your own content, rather than Amazon's, to the Fire that I'm hoping someone who has one can answer for me.
Can you stream content you upload to Amazon's content locker (5 GB free, or pay for more)? Is that limited to music or do videos work too? If so, what is the streaming quality like?
Can you stream content to the Fire over your home network, from a media server? If so, what kind of infrastructure and app support do you need?
Could you stream from a Wifi-enabled external drive, like a Seagate Satellite or a Kingston WiDrive?
I'm hoping the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, which will go a long way towards ameliorating the 6 GB usable internal storage. It's kind of sad considering my phone has 32 GB (16 internal and a 16 GB micro SD card).
The KF specs only lists MP4 and VP8 for video formats, which is standard for Android 2.3. As for 3rd-party video players, per Engadget review, "Amazon's own media players work well, but third party ones that offered better compatibility with file formats universally did not."
one word - Skifta
The Skifta app is working great for me on the fire - and available in the amazon app store to boot. no hacking required and it's free.
Skifta.com
I choose my NAS w/some m4v files (encoded w/handbrake for atv2) as the source, my fire as the player, then it lets me browse, play, stream over 802.11 in my house.
You can stream your stuff to your phone using Emit. It's in the Amazon marketplace so no sideloading.
https://www.emitapp.com/
Thanks for the tips, I'll check out those apps as soon as I have my home NAS running again!
I can also answer one of my questions now that I have my Fire in hand:
Can you stream content you upload to Amazon's content locker (5 GB free, or pay for more)? Is that limited to music or do videos work too? If so, what is the streaming quality like?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apparently you get unlimited storage for your own MP3s in Amazon's Cloud Player and they work great. Streaming quality is quite good. Haven't tried videos, books, or documents in the 5 GB space yet.
Cool note about Skifta I forgot to mention...is that it's DLNA certified. In other words, if you already have DLNA video devices, it works great with them without having to add new servers and such.
(in my case, my NAS does DLNA out of the box so it just finds it and works) - think they also have a mini server for PC/MAC if you don't already have one.
+1 for Skifta. Works great for me.
Emit works awesomely! realtime encodes the files on demand and streams it. much better than what i was going to do (open up a aws account with e3 and cloudfront, and have a website for all my stuff after hand encoding all my media to mp4... ... ... ya...)
thnks kernodle
robopanda333 said:
Emit works awesomely! realtime encodes the files on demand and streams it. much better than what i was going to do (open up a aws account with e3 and cloudfront, and have a website for all my stuff after hand encoding all my media to mp4... ... ... ya...)
thnks kernodle
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you know if it can re-encode and stream mkv files and make them work on the Fire?
e.mote said:
The KF specs only lists MP4 and VP8 for video formats, which is standard for Android 2.3. As for 3rd-party video players, per Engadget review, "Amazon's own media players work well, but third party ones that offered better compatibility with file formats universally did not."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Engadget made too many assumptions in that statement '3rd party players ....universally did not'. This is inaccurate. The VLC Media Player (alpha) and Mobo Video Player Pro do many formats. Mobo works well and is smooth playing. VLC is still in alpha, but once final one is launched it will be more capable. VLC can play 1080P WMV, but is a bit choppy due to no hardware video acceleration optimizations incorporated in this early version. There are other players on the market that should work with the Fire if these two do.
Go flex satellite
Sideloaded goflex app and rockplayer app and streaming from the satellite hdd is working on the Fire.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned PlayOn. It's free if you just use the local media streaming part of it, and it works really well. I have it on my Droid Incredible, PS3, Wii and on my KF, and I can stream remotely as well (even via 3G).
Unfortunately, it's PC only, and it's needs at least a dual core to run well.
sl0ttedpig said:
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned PlayOn. It's free if you just use the local media streaming part of it, and it works really well. I have it on my Droid Incredible, PS3, Wii and on my KF, and I can stream remotely as well (even via 3G).
Unfortunately, it's PC only, and it's needs at least a dual core to run well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 : PlayOn is awesome. I use it currently with my Windows Home Server to stream to PS3, iPhone and Nexus S.
I just want to be able to put on some mkv files without re-encoding so I can watch on the plane.
shaxs said:
Do you know if it can re-encode and stream mkv files and make them work on the Fire?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes it takes my avis and mkvs and converts on the fly. bigger files will have to "load" a little bit because of that. you can also tel it to preencode files. all the settings are what the device asks for too, so if you decide you want a different resolution, just change it in the options. i really love it.
goodness noone mentioned subsonic?
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
stream music via app may need to sideload it(although its in amazon approval process still)
u can also use browser version for video streaming and it supports full screen i have a subsonic server setup on my home lan with all my music/movies (5Tb) now accessible anywhere with subsonic on my fire
best solution imho and if u happen to be handy with rss feeds for your content u desire u got yourself a much better solution then anythign amazon can put out and faster