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I have searched high and low... this is crazy. I have my entire DVD collection ripped from DVDfab to VOB format and it works great with VLC player, WD Live tv, etc. I copy the movie I want to my Xoom and no player will play the friggin files. Some of the players will play the first VOB file, then just die out. Never making it to the next one.
I really do not want to convert or pay for a coverter to switch to MP4 formats...
What players have you tried so far?
Just about every single video player in the marketplace. Rocketplayer, vplayer, doubletwist, etc. I just found a VOB merger.
http://beginwithsoftware.com/videoguides/joinvobfilestool.html
Merging hot tub time machine right now and see how it goes.
I have vob's too..i just used Total Video Converter to convert mine to mp4 ..you have to pay for it but im sure there might be some free converters out there.
It seems like it is soooo close to working by default with Rockplayer or Vplayer. Its like the same mess I went through with WDLIVE box to get to play videos.. finally it works great now. I really do not want to convert and take up that time....
This might be a dumb question, but did you try changing the extension to .mpg?
It won't solve the finding-the-next file problem, but at least they might play?
It does actually somewhat play. I have the Black Knight and it has a fairly large VOB file and on my xoom, it spits it out perfectly through HDMI using RocketPlayer. But once that VOB is done.. it craps out.
Try Moboplayer.
Yeah, no love from mobo either. Its seems so easy.. but I guess not... Its like I just turned the hands of video playing back 12 months to my WDlive box and everyone trying to get it to work as well.
Your problem stems from the weird way you chose to store your videos. Ripped videos are usually converted to MPEG4--ASP (DivX) for older stuff, AVC (H264) for current stuff. Most players therefor are designed for MPEG4, not MPEG2, and not the VOB container.
Your method was OK for the PC because it has a mature software ecosystem, and lots of available players. On mobile devices, you get hit by a double whammy of hardware restrictions and limited software. Most every current Android player is using ffmpeg lib, meaning no HW accel. HW accel will come for Android, but not for MPEG2. Online videos are all using MPEG4 AVC nowaday.
If you want to stick with VOBs, then buy a tablet geared for PMP use. The Archos Gen8 currently can play VOBs, as are a host of no-name Asian tabs. Chinese & Korean vendors have a long PMP history, and typically have strong video support. Their downside, for now, is no HC and low build quality.
Versatile media playing is one of the "Killer" features that Honeycomb should have had from the outset as it one of the obvious features that Android tablets could beat the iPad on hands down.
Research has already shown that a lot of tablet use is made at home and the large screen is perfect for media playing. MPEG2 and VOBS have been around a long time and when a low powered WDTV media player or an Archos can handle a wide range of audio and video formats it seems perverse that Android users are having to wait for these features.
Honeycomb needs to be able to play just about any video or audio format thrown at it. Google/Honeycomb needs features like this to demonstrate an obvious advantage over other tablets and "Chinese" media players.
The more that a Honeycomb tablet can do, the more successful they will be. To my mind it's just the sort of thing the public and the press would see as a major "plus" factor. Why should one have to buy a number of separate devices when one device could do them all?
I have read that the VLC media player is being ported to Android so we can live in hope but it really should have been in Honeycomb as a native feature from day one.
A native way to save and/or print a web page should also have been a "native" feature as well as a screencap feature - at least this last feature is included on the Asus Transformer so there is hope!
I'd need to check but maybe a way around this would be to setup a playlist and play each VOB in sequence? I think, but again I'd need to check, that Moboplayer has the ability for playlists...
Sure, HC should have any number of things. It should've been finished. But it isn't.
Consumers always want things done yesterday. The reality is that software development always lags. Rather than dwelling on the "shouldas", IMO it's more productive to focus on what is, and plan your decisions accordingly.
Lack of MPEG2/AC3 support isn't a matter of power. It's a matter of licensing. Many product decisions are made on business reality (read: $ cost), and not what's technically feasible. Most videos nowaday use MPEG4, and that's where the demand lies. Like it or not, VOB/MPEG2 viewing is a niche need. Those used to the PC's abundance in software will have to recalibrate their expectations for Android.
I dont think its a honeycomb issue. I think there is not a player out there to handle VOBs correctly because there has not been a device to come even close to being able to play the hi-res video files. Xoom can do it. I have said before somewhere, if I have a single VOB such as the Dark Knight, it plays awesome on my Xoom and through HDMI out to my TV.. (streaming no less from my WD 1tb NAS drive). It really works.. to me, its a player issue and nobody has made a player to play multiple VOB files. Id pay $20 or $30 had a player to make all my current ripped dvds work on the xoom.
and to top it off, MPEG4 stinks. I "converted" a VOB using one of the bazillion convertor software programs out there and it shows up on my xoom fine, but looks like crap compared to the VOB
Suggest you try a good converter. There's a reason why the whole computing world is using MPEG4. For a no-brainer converter that can do drag-drop batch processing (so you can do all your vids in one go), try HandBrake with my automated script.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=978529
Can I have this convert my existing VOBs? Or do I need to go back to the DVDs and do this?
I tried a convertor and it took about 2 hours.. insane.
The script accept folders as input. Each folder should hold a movie, and should have the VIDEO_TS.IFO file (this contains the stream info), along with the VOBs.
Yes, depending on your system speed, it will take a while. That's why there is batch processing. You drop 5-10 movies onto the script, and let it run overnight.
Speed is set at medium as default. For about 30-50% faster processing, at the cost of about 10% size increase, edit script and change speed to 'veryfast'.
I would recommend arcMedia player, after trying Buzz, MX, Mobo and Rockplayer I can say that arcMedia player handled this (megaupload. com/?d=O7ZMO5GK) video file the best so far.
If you turn off "skipping frames" at Buzz, video is being played with hanging / freezees, although CPU isn't being overloaded.
Other players just don't play ac3 audio properly.
give it a try to understand what I mean.
I have all of my Videos in VOB format also. when I convert these movies to MPEG4 is there a way to save all of the DVD features like subtitles, menus, and extras?
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.
Just posting mainly to get this to the top of Google if anyone else ever does similar searches to me. The Galaxy Tab's AllShare app (so I assume this also holds for the Galaxy S, Vibrant, and all the other devices that are appearing in the "similar threads we found" prompt as I post this) expects MKVs to be supplied with a mimetype of mkv/x-msvideo. If not, whatever DNLA software you're using, you'll get the unsupported format error. I've just spent the day yesterday wading through every DNLA server known to man trying to get streamed MKVs working. The only combination I've found that works is Twonky plus editing its clients.db file to modify the mimetype of MKVs. Once done, streaming MKVs works a treat.
Hope this is useful to someone in the future (probably incoming people from Google!)
I've actually got .mkvs to stream via "VLC Direct", along with VLC open with a web interface. This works over 3g, but depends heavily on your upstream. You can use this program as a VLC remote for your PC too, as well as stream videos from your tab to your PC.
Loccy
you supposed right, I'm in the same situation with a Galaxy s..
I think this is one of the very few features i really miss right now, having Allshare (or similar) capable of streaming mkv's from a server to the phone
Later today i'll try stekum's solution, i will consider paying the pro version if it works just fine, even if it requires a server side software (that's why i still prefer "regular" pc's over nas).
I've also read about PlugPlayer app. I might give it a try, anyone already did?
I don't mind not having a fancy graphic interface, so i tried EsExplorer over LAN, but with no sucess.. anyone knows if there's a player/file browser wich could handle mkv over lan?
Cheers
I had xvid and mkv's streaming over wifi on my network via SMB shares before I wiped and installed my current rom. Now i've got xvid working, but no matter what combo i try mkv's will not stream.. Thinking about going back to stock to see if the same settings work again to stream mkv's. I'm using a combo of file expert + vplayer. rockplayer seems to try and play streaming mkv's.. but it fails at it (will play, but they are unwatchable)
The thing to remember is that the Tab stock ROM, or those based on stock (eg. Overcome) actually have support for hardware decoding of MKVs in the stock player. Anything that is seen as an MKV file is fine - I suspect the internal mimetype for MKVs is the same as AVIs, so that's why SMB works (although I was never able to get my wifi to push data fast enough to the tab to make that combo work). The internal player treats AVIs and MKVs on the local filesystem identically. SMB shares are mounted on the local filesystem, so when you open an MKV, the OS says "ooh, mkv/x-msvideo" and the player says "great, an AVI file, I can play that". Non stock ROMs don't have that MKV support - in fact most Android flavours don't, as I've found recently with a cheaply 10" tab I bought recently to take over the Galaxy as my video device.
When you get into DNLA it's the server that supplies the mimetype for the file. As most DNLA servers supply the "correct" mimetype for MKV AllShare doesn't know recognise the file type, and (incorrectly) reports that it can't play the file. So if you're using DNLA you MUST modify the mimetype the server sends for MKV.
The VLC solution is fine, but is transcoding, so what you're getting is not actually an MKV at all.
Twonky was the only DNLA server I managed to do this with without similarly resorting to transcoding.
Could you guide us please which section of the clients.db did you modify?
Sent from my GT-P1000 using Tapatalk
a parse of your clients.db would be awesome, tried changing mimetype for Android and samsung TV (added a mkv line to Android and modded the other) No luck
I'm running twonky on my headless ubuntu server if that means anything
edit:
I changed the media reciever in the webinterface to Android and made the android settings in clients.db look like this:
NA:Android
HH:Android
DB:AUTO
WB:webbrowse-n95
TP:MP4,-relocate_moov
MT:mkv video/x-msvideo
after that i can play most of my mkv files, so i guess i got it working.
Ok, I've tried many solutions and combinations so far in my galaxy s .. nothing worked except for VLC DIRECT, as steckums suggested.
I haven't tried twonky yet though..from what loccy explained i can see it still needs an application running server side... i was hoping for something like allshare..but hey we can't have it all
Thanks Loccy and Psymon for the hint, i'll install twonky on the server and see if it works for me..
p.s. with such a little screen i couldn't notice a big loss of quality when VLC streamed, transcoding, my test movie. Maybe with tabs it is different
braz+ said:
Ok, I've tried many solutions and combinations so far in my galaxy s .. nothing worked except for VLC DIRECT, as steckums suggested.
I haven't tried twonky yet though..from what loccy explained i can see it still needs an application running server side... i was hoping for something like allshare..but hey we can't have it all
Thanks Loccy and Psymon for the hint, i'll install twonky on the server and see if it works for me..
p.s. with such a little screen i couldn't notice a big loss of quality when VLC streamed, transcoding, my test movie. Maybe with tabs it is different
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your in for treat if you can get it working. Simply play the same file one after the other in the respective format and you instantly appreciate that the higher the resolution the crisper and more vibrant the video quality and watchability (not real work I know) regardless off screen size. The only caveat being the original capture equipment used and post production ect.
My question for this in the know is this; my understanding (basic as it may well be) is that mkv can also handle more colours simultaneously and has the ability to display a much larger range overall. Firstly is this correct? Or reserved for vc1 or blueray and the upper echelon of displays? If correct by changing the mime does this, as would be logical, mean the extra bits are ignored as it believes its a simple avi. Also I find 720p HD avi is the happy middle for me and it can be as complicated to achieve good playback and battery life even using these. I think I may just do some research re the mime difference between regular and HD avi... thank you for the tips... most timely considering the impending awesomeness of BOCA v2.0 . Cheers guys..
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Loccy said:
The thing to remember is that the Tab stock ROM, or those based on stock (eg. Overcome) actually have support for hardware decoding of MKVs in the stock player. Anything that is seen as an MKV file is fine - I suspect the internal mimetype for MKVs is the same as AVIs, so that's why SMB works (although I was never able to get my wifi to push data fast enough to the tab to make that combo work). The internal player treats AVIs and MKVs on the local filesystem identically. SMB shares are mounted on the local filesystem, so when you open an MKV, the OS says "ooh, mkv/x-msvideo" and the player says "great, an AVI file, I can play that". Non stock ROMs don't have that MKV support - in fact most Android flavours don't, as I've found recently with a cheaply 10" tab I bought recently to take over the Galaxy as my video device.
When you get into DNLA it's the server that supplies the mimetype for the file. As most DNLA servers supply the "correct" mimetype for MKV AllShare doesn't know recognise the file type, and (incorrectly) reports that it can't play the file. So if you're using DNLA you MUST modify the mimetype the server sends for MKV.
The VLC solution is fine, but is transcoding, so what you're getting is not actually an MKV at all.
Twonky was the only DNLA server I managed to do this with without similarly resorting to transcoding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd still be inclined to suggest perhaps its a little more involved than a simple trick like that. To achieve real hardware acceleration you would need to split the streams to be piped to respective chips. 5.1 faux surround soumd and a distinct, noticeable difference in the mkv picture quality being played via CPU vs true gpu and sound card decoding with the rather large differences in battery drain and the sharpness and vivid colours the rest make me really think there is a little sophisticated trickery going on here than meets the eye.
A haalil media splitting like service would also need to know to hand then differently. I think it just plays xvid but like xdva or whatever its obliged to to split the streams for their respective processing chips/centres avoiding CPU usage as an extremely important requirement. Simply the CPU would be more involved in the distribution side in regular stuff than the files like x264 and vc1 which are the gpu/hardware accelerated/decoded files.
Could be wrong here honestly not an expert but that's how I have always broken it down when try to wrap my head around it all.
So sleepy.. prolly oodles of sleeping (heh or even spelling) mistakes but they will have wait to be dealt with at a later date. Any resources that you may know of I'd be interested in learning more too. :-D
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joshuaauger said:
http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/issues/detail?id=486
Comment #4:
MimeTypesChanges=audio/wav=audio/L16|video/x-matroska=video/avi
Added that to my android.conf on ps3mediaserver. Works for mkv!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Grand will try that, just used mono or vlc for this though and had no issues but always nice to have alternative.
But I end up downloading the file as get great wifi in the house it serves me the best but will definitely try this out next weekend.
Was looking at upgrading the media server in here and transcocing is fine most of the time but.....
HELP!?!?!
Can you put this in stupid plain English??? I'm having the same problem but don't understand how or what to download/change/update... Tx
I know this is old, but as this is the first google result, a hint from the Playback creators, "Samsung TV users have reported mkv streaming working... If you just rename the file .avi instead of .mkv". It's a mime type issue, so just get around it by lying
I worked for me. File didn't play as .mkv, just renamed it. I bet the allshare app can be hacked to fix the mimetype issue, assuming it's in plaintext string, but why bother.
Same for flv videos.
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.
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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 been searching high and low for a really good video player for Honeycomb. Annoyingly, Google wasn't helping much, with people generally parroting advice like 'install MoboPlayer' (its awful, and its a stretchy app - not even optimised for Honeycomb.)
In short I needed to be able to do the following:
1. Smooth video when played over DLNA (I use Rygel on Ubuntu as my DLNA server, and the excellent Skifta as my client). IMO, the only way to watch torrented videos on a tab is via DLNA - forget CIFS or copying the file locally. What a drag..
2. Optimised for Honeycomb - the "turn the lights out" status bar dots feature was really important.
--
I tried...
RockPlayer Lite - It has an annoying R logo in the corner and doesn't do lights out.
MX Video Player - I found it would go all slow and jerky. At first I thought it was the ads (very obnoxious ad version btw), so I purchased the full version. It did it again so I quickly got a refund.
Daroon Player - I couldn't get it to work very well using DLNA
MoboPlayer - awful stretchy. Comes highly recommended on the web, but I hated it. Doesn't do turn the lights out either.
and the winner is..
DicePlayer
This loads videos quicker than any other via DLNA, and it does lights out. It also has the excellent 'lock screen' feature and gesture control. Its paid, unfortunately, but it does come with an ad free trial.
ANYWAY, here endeth the lesson on what is the best Honeycomb video player. DicePlayer.
mxplayer works ok for me... did you install the armv7 plugin for it? if it is using hw to decode, it should be smooth
I tried the dice player trial version, when playing mkv files with subtitles, it seems to require extracting the subtitles file first, which takes a whole minute's time, that is annoying.... do you have similar issues?
ray1234 said:
mxplayer works ok for me... did you install the armv7 plugin for it? if it is using hw to decode, it should be smooth
I tried the dice player trial version, when playing mkv files with subtitles, it seems to require extracting the subtitles file first, which takes a whole minute's time, that is annoying.... do you have similar issues?
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Click to collapse
mx player - yes, codecs as suggested. i can't remember if I had the lights out feature working on that.
not sure about the subs - i haven't got any to test. actually I wonder if a subs file over DLNA is even possible?
I concur with your assessment of Dice Player. Decent codec recognition, fast loading, swipe controls for brightness/volume/ffw/rwnd, on the fly adjustment of aspect ratios for screen fit, and the programmer got around the AC3 bottleneck by running the decoding of AC3 on the second core. Something that meant alot to me, as alot of my archived rips have AC3 audio, and it was the only one I found that could decode AC3.
According to the reviews, you have to have an internet connection to use it as it checks the license key when you start the APP every time? What about watching a movie on a plane, in your car, etc?
Seems ludicrous to me
I just disabled wifi and launched Diceplayer. I'm using the licensed edition. I'm using it right now with wifi turned off. Not sure about the reviews you saw, but I can confirm an Internet connection is not required with the full version.
Morpheus384 said:
I just disabled wifi and launched Diceplayer. I'm using the licensed edition. I'm using it right now with wifi turned off. Not sure about the reviews you saw, but I can confirm an Internet connection is not required with the full version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do me a favor please? Turn of wifi, reboot, then launch the app with wifi still off?
Ty
---------- Post added at 07:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:32 PM ----------
First review on the page:
Fantastic - but shame about the licensing issue. by W99 – November 9, 2011
Amazing app, plays every 720p mkv file that I've thrown at it. HOWEVER: I couldn't play my movies on a 7-hour flight because the app tried to go online to verify the license. Had to resort to reading a book instead!
Disabled wifi, rebooted, and double checked that wifi was still turned off. Status bar confirmed "No Internet Connection". Launched Diceplayer. Smooth sailing with no wifi. I'm unsure, since I purchased the app when I found that it fulfilled all my requirements, but perhaps the reviewers were alluding to the trial app checking the licence as a form of copy protection? That would be my first guess. When I saw your post I knew I'd used it in the absence of wifi, but decided to double check before posting.
Morpheus384 said:
Disabled wifi, rebooted, and double checked that wifi was still turned off. Status bar confirmed "No Internet Connection". Launched Diceplayer. Smooth sailing with no wifi. I'm unsure, since I purchased the app when I found that it fulfilled all my requirements, but perhaps the reviewers were alluding to the trial app checking the licence as a form of copy protection? That would be my first guess. When I saw your post I knew I'd used it in the absence of wifi, but decided to double check before posting.
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Click to collapse
Thanks bro, I appreciate it. Not sure why someone would be commenting on a trial for a plane ride, but there's no accounting for that
Now I just have to decide if paying $5+ for a video player is worth it lol
ty again for checking for me
I consider it the best money I've spent since getting my tablet. Its played everything I've thrown at it up to 720p MKV, Divx, Xvid, MP4 etc. Its feature rich as hell, with a splendidly simple user interface. I really like the swipe gestures in play. Swipe across center to the right fast forwards 30 seconds, swipe left rewinds the same. Swipe up or down on the right controls brightness, swipe up or down on left controls volume. The "toggle box" just above sequence slider toggles stretch/4:3/16:9 and many others for full screen/TV out compatibility. My research showed when I bought it that it was the only player that could use Hardware Decoding to save on battery life as well. Plus as of this writing its the only one I know of that can decode AC3. I wouldn't use it on an Android phone as the system requirements are higher, but On Honeycomb it's awesome. Just my 2 cents
Another vote in favor of Diceplayer. I use it exclusvely now, both local files and DLNA streaming. It has played just about everything. I tried the others before this, clearly the best.
Does anyone know if i can switch folders in dice player? i only see my internal and external sd card and i would like to play movies off of my external hdd.
I'll stick to my current player and I'm happy with it.
It can play almost most of media format including MKV files (Matroska) and most importantly, it's FREE.
MXVideo player is the best player. Most importent function for me is hand add subtitles. Very useful if you don't wish to rename subtitles.
elsuirad said:
I'll stick to my current player and I'm happy with it.
It can play almost most of media format including MKV files (Matroska) and most importantly, it's FREE.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I'll bite... Got a link? Maybe the name of the player?
Please.
:/
+1 for Dice Player. Tried all the usual suspects and came to the same conclusion. Top notch app, however the $5 price tag did seem a bit steep. $2-3 would be more fair, but hey, can't always win.
As far as Mobo Player being highly recommended, I must say it does wonders for me on my phone, however it was less than satisfactory on the A500. Thought I'd point that out. Since buying Dice Player though, I now use it on my phone as well. Might as well get the most out of my $5 right?
brewmaster said:
Does anyone know if i can switch folders in dice player? i only see my internal and external sd card and i would like to play movies off of my external hdd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just use any file manager to open your videos from anywhere. Problem solved. I have tons of movies on my external HDD and just do it this way and it works great. Infact, I never use the internal file manager
JdgM3NT4L said:
Ok, I'll bite... Got a link? Maybe the name of the player?
Please.
:/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
It's nice to hear that you have a good player, but it does no good without saying what it is...
I have noticed that no one tried BSplayer.
It's free, plays 720p MKV with subtitles, hides buttons and DLNA works great over my PS3 Media server.
I found it plays MKV much better than Diceplayer.
I purchased MX Player and it plays all of my 720P MKVs with AC3 sound well.
I use HW decoding for the video and software for the audio.
It won't play my 1080P MKVs though.
Are you guys saying Dice Player is better?
I have tried the stock Acer Media Player, Rock Player, Mobo Player, Doubletwist, and Act 1 Video Player. Until recently, Act 1 was my player of choice, but I bought Dice Player and I have to say that to me, it is hands down the best one of them all. The purchase price was money well spent.
As for using an external SD card, I know that in the app settings, you can designate two different media folders. One can be the movies folder on your internal memory, and the other can be a folder on your external SD card. The only thing is that you have to know the folder path as you can only type in the path and not file browse to it when making this setting.
ninek said:
I have noticed that no one tried BSplayer.
It's free, plays 720p MKV with subtitles, hides buttons and DLNA works great over my PS3 Media server.
I found it plays MKV much better than Diceplayer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This works pretty well. I like its performance compared to Mx, but I think Mx has the better interface.