Hi all. I'm a long time lurker and 1st time poster. Having been a long time WinMo user (O2 xda2 mini -> HTC Tytn II -> HTC HD -> HTC HD2), I finally made the switch to Android with the Galaxy S (16GB, baseband version I9000ZSJF7) last week. I bought the phone mainly because of the fantastic looking screen and (supposedly) out-of-the-box FLAC playback. With much anticipation, I went to buy a pair of Westone 3 yesterday. Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned as it seems like FLAC playback is broken on Samsung's Music Player that came with the phone. It seems like the Music Player is unable to finish playing a track w/o crapping out, and it would appear to crap out at the same location of the track every time it is played. When that happens, the music would stop with a popup saying that the Music Player has stopped unexpectedly, and I'm told to force close the application. Some of the things I've tried include:
1. Moving the FLAC from the microSD to internal storage. Same issue.
2. Installing andLess which would give me an "initialization error" whenever I play a FLAC file, regardless of whether "direct h/w access" (performed power cycle after change) is enabled or not.
3. Installing Meridian Player which simply fails to play any FLAC file.
The same FLAC files have always been fine on my HTPC (foobar2000), and appears to be working on the HD2 (CorePlayer). Also, I was able to replicate this FLAC playback issue on my friend's Galaxy S with the default Music Player and same basedband version as mine.
Has anyone successfully played your FLAC on your Galaxy S? What kind of software/setting do you use?
It'd be much appreciated if you guys can enlighten me! Thanks.
junglist1996 said:
Hi all. I'm a long time lurker and 1st time poster. Having been a long time WinMo user (O2 xda2 mini -> HTC Tytn II -> HTC HD -> HTC HD2), I finally made the switch to Android with the Galaxy S (16GB, baseband version I9000ZSJF7) last week. I bought the phone mainly because of the fantastic looking screen and (supposedly) out-of-the-box FLAC playback. With much anticipation, I went to buy a pair of Westone 3 yesterday. Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned as it seems like FLAC playback is broken on Samsung's Music Player that came with the phone. It seems like the Music Player is unable to finish playing a track w/o crapping out, and it would appear to crap out at the same location of the track every time it is played. When that happens, the music would stop with a popup saying that the Music Player has stopped unexpectedly, and I'm told to force close the application. Some of the things I've tried include:
1. Moving the FLAC from the microSD to internal storage. Same issue.
2. Installing andLess which would give me an "initialization error" whenever I play a FLAC file, regardless of whether "direct h/w access" (performed power cycle after change) is enabled or not.
3. Installing Meridian Player which simply fails to play any FLAC file.
The same FLAC files have always been fine on my HTPC (foobar2000), and appears to be working on the HD2 (CorePlayer). Also, I was able to replicate this FLAC playback issue on my friend's Galaxy S with the default Music Player and same basedband version as mine.
Has anyone successfully played your FLAC on your Galaxy S? What kind of software/setting do you use?
It'd be much appreciated if you guys can enlighten me! Thanks.
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No problem with tested 43.79M 5:01/5:01 flac song.
Hi Dexter, thanks for your response. I guess you must be using the stock Samsung Music Player? I suspect that the FLAC playback issue I'm having is related to the stock ZSJF7 ROM. This same issue can be replicated on my friend's phone with the same ROM and I couldn't seem to find another person having this problem after some Googling. Maybe I should bring the phone back to Sammy's service center for them to have a look at it.
Haven't had any issues myself.
Been playing Tupac's All Eyez On Me album (2CDs/27 tracks of epic lossless ).
Tested on a few firmwares - JF1, JFB, JFF, and now JG1.
I have had music player crash once though (when I was downloading about 5 items at once.. and running a bunch of apps in the background, phone mega lagged and crashed lol)
The fact thats crashing on the same spot suggests to me that it might be a problem with your files, ie. they might be corrupt. I'm not a flac expert thought, but I've had similar issues with MP3s that are corrupt or imperfectly conforming to the MP3 standard, where some players would play and some wouldnt.
IIRC mixzing player might be able to play flac (free version can be downloaded from market)
oswade said:
Haven't had any issues myself.
Been playing Tupac's All Eyez On Me album (2CDs/27 tracks of epic lossless ).
Tested on a few firmwares - JF1, JFB, JFF, and now JG1.
I have had music player crash once though (when I was downloading about 5 items at once.. and running a bunch of apps in the background, phone mega lagged and crashed lol)
The fact thats crashing on the same spot suggests to me that it might be a problem with your files, ie. they might be corrupt. I'm not a flac expert thought, but I've had similar issues with MP3s that are corrupt or imperfectly conforming to the MP3 standard, where some players would play and some wouldnt.
IIRC mixzing player might be able to play flac (free version can be downloaded from market)
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Click to collapse
Thanks for your response. Are you using the default Samsung Music Player?
I initially thought that my FLAC files were to blame but I have run into the same playback issue with every single FLAC I've tried so far while playback of the same files is absolutely fine on the HTPC. I'll try to play these files directly from the microSD card when I get home. Another thing is that my friend was playing his own FLAC on his Galaxy S and we still run into the same issue on different phones. I think it's a bit unlikely that we both have corrupted FLAC that would otherwise play without issues elsewhere. As for andLess and Meridian Player, they simply won't work at all so the primary suspect would appear to be the Hong Kong ROM that we both have. As far as I know, andLess and Meridian don't require rooting, no (my phone isn't rooted)?
Anyway, I'll bring the phone to the service center and see what do they have to say about this.
No problems playing FLACs here with standard Samsung Music-player, on XXJF3.
Except, it doesn't read the ID3-tags, so they all appear as unknown artist - which is quite bothersome.
yes, using default samsung player.
Like I said, I think there are some free players which can play flac, like mixzing if i remember correctly. You should try them
You said they all freeze at the same spot right... what spot is that?
Are you getting all your flacs from the same source/software? Are all the files the same length? Surely if say.. they all freeze at 1min mark, can you try a 59second song cut?
I'm a little skeptical I guess... it sounds more like software problem than a hardware issue.
I'd flash to a newer firmware if I was you, but I understand if you don't want to flash (the risks + data loss etc).
..been playing FLAC on my unit from when it was on stock firmware and now JG1.. no issues whatsoever.. yup, using the default player.
..weird that you are having issues on playing flac files.. it might be the case that the file is corrupted during transfer.. but i might be wrong.
..providing the details of the flac file here would help other experienced users assist you with your case.. just a friendly advise.
Many thanks for the replies. I was at the Samsung service center earlier & their suggestion to me was use MP3 instead as FLAC takes up too much space & requires too much processing power! I don't buy that bs and I wouldn't think that's an ideal solution. The dude then "hinted" at installing a custom ROM or wait for the 2.2 update. Wow...
I've installed Mixzing which has FLAC support but unfortunately same issue as before. My FLAC collection consists of *cough* d/l'ed stuff and a few EAC rip of my CDs. What kind of FLAC info can I post? Anyway, I'll try to rip a few more CDs when I get the chance. Btw, does Android have native FAT32 support for microSD?
I know I need to make sure the FLACs aren't corrupted but I'm inclined to think this is an issue with the Hong Kong ROM which me and my friend has. And it seems like no one else is experiencing this issue! I know a third person who has this phone so perhaps I can try to verify with him also.
Thanks once again and I shall report back with any new findings.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
edit: the playback would crap out at the different points for different track but always the same point for the same track. So I suppose that would indicate that something is wrong with the FLACs themselves.
What happens if you put the flac files wich are on the phone back on the pc and play them with an other device? That way you can at least determin if the fault may lie in the transfer of the files? I had some avi's corrupting while putting them on the phone, reinstalling the usb drivers (and kies) fixed that for me
Ok, I took the microSD card out and played the FLACs directly from my HTPC with foobar2000. Just to make sure, I'm also playing the FLACs now directly from the microSD card on my work laptop with Winamp as the player. I didn't encounter any problem when playing these FLACs from the HTPC and the laptop with two different players so I am quite confident that the files and the microSD card are fine. I think I've also mentioned before that I have already tried to play the same FLACs on the microSD card with CorePlayer on my HTC HD2 w/o any issues.
During the encounter with a certain "individual" yesterday, he has suggested that the Samsung Music Player was poorly written and was maxing out the CPU when I try to play a FLAC on the phone. That was contrary to my knowledge as I don't think FLAC decoding is something that the Hummingbird with 512MB of RAM can't handle. So I loaded TaskManager which seems to indicate that the Music Player was at most using 3% of the CPU while playing a FLAC.
So, from what I have gathered so far:
1. AFAIK, this FLAC playback issue has only appeared on 3 phones (mine, my friend's, and the Samsung tech's) all with stock Hong Kong ROM. No one else with other ROMs seem to have this issue I'm currently experiencing.
2. The same issue shows up on 3 different players I've tried on the Galaxy S.
3. I have used the same microSD card and successfully played the same FLACs on my HTPC, laptop and HTC HD2 with no issue at all.
4. The Sammy tech seems to have acknowledged that there's an issue with FLAC playback on our phones, but doesn't seem to be in a position to do anything to fix this.
Do you guys reckon this issue is caused by the HK ROM? I'm ready to flash to a different ROM (preferably with Chinese handwriting input as I occasionally use that). If flashing is indeed necessary, where can I get some step-by-step guide and more info on ROM selection?
ps. As a thing that's somewhat unrelated to my problem, I want to say that there is massive difference in sound quality between the different players. I was at my friend's place testing the Galaxy S with his two monoblock tube amps hooked up to a pair of B&W 804s. We tried the default Sammy Music Player, Mixzing and some Chinese music player app which the certain "individual" advised me to try. It turns out that the Sammy player sounded the best while there was a very noticeable drop in sound quality with Mixzing. Now how that difference in SQ translates into earphone application is I guess an entirely different story.
After the test, my friend concluded that the SQ of the Sammy player was so close to his HTPC (his main audio source equipped with an X-Fi XtremeMusic) that he is now seriously considering a Wavelength USB DAC to replace the X-Fi...
EDIT: Just found this thread on ROM flashing. Now I gotta find a ROM that fits my requirements.
No idea if a ROM flash would fix it, but since it doesnt seem to be hardware related AND the only correspondence in ROM's wich give this problem are the HK ones, I would say its at least worth considering.
Well, I ended up flashing to a South East Asian DXJF4 ROM and guess what? I've gone through 4 or 5 FLACs with no problem! So the problem is definitely caused by something on the HK ROM. I guess I should report this finding to Samsung so that they won't screw up the 2.2 HK ROM.
I went with a SEA ROM hoping I can get decent Chinese handwriting input with it. Unfortunately, it uses a different Chinese input from the HK ROM and I'm having a tough time to even write my own name lol. Another thing is I still can't get the Music Player to recognize WAV files
Oh well, at least I've got FLAC playback sorted out and that's the more important thing...
I also have a HK SGS and am having problems with flac files, sometimes they stop, sometimes they skip to the next song.
I have a UK SGS which started out on JF3 and is now on JG3. I've got one particular FLAC track that stops a couple of minutes in and i have to bump it forward 30 seconds or so and it then caries on. Other than that i've not noticed a problem with FLAC playback on the stock music player.
I'm a bit late to this thread but I've had the same problem as the OP when on ZSJF7 firmware. Had to revert to DXJF4.
paul_73_uk said:
I have a UK SGS which started out on JF3 and is now on JG3. I've got one particular FLAC track that stops a couple of minutes in and i have to bump it forward 30 seconds or so and it then caries on. Other than that i've not noticed a problem with FLAC playback on the stock music player.
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I have several tracks that do this as well - doesn't matter which firmware the phone's running on (haven't tried JG5 yet). There's no problem with MP3 playback.
Westone 3's??? Nice OP
btw i saw on another forum a similar issue of FLAC tags not being read. Has anybody found a solution to that, cuz that sucks big time, having hundreds of files in "UNKNOWN" is a real pain. I'll keep looking.
Will.1 said:
Westone 3's??? Nice OP
btw i saw on another forum a similar issue of FLAC tags not being read. Has anybody found a solution to that, cuz that sucks big time, having hundreds of files in "UNKNOWN" is a real pain. I'll keep looking.
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I have a problem with the FLAC tags, I have the Korean Galaxy S SHW-m110s I haven't tried to reupload since getting to firmware updates. I did dl flac tag conversion software that mostly improved this, but for whatever reason the last letter cut off and now I've just thought of also adding a space after the last letter...hmm...anyways...I'll put new FLAC on the phone and hope there is a better answer to this.
alovell83 said:
I did dl flac tag conversion software that mostly improved this, but for whatever reason the last letter cut off and now I've just thought of also adding a space after the last letter...hmm...anyways...I'll put new FLAC on the phone and hope there is a better answer to this.
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Where'd you download the conversion software from? Even if the last letter's cut off it's better than nothing
The FLAC problem seems fixed in the latest offical ZSJG4 firmware from Kies. I already listened for 8 flac songs without stop or program crash.
Search has been down all day, so sorry if this is addressed somewhere else...
After the 3.1 update, MoboPlayer doesn't play anything for me and just force closes. Thankfully, RockPlayer still works. Anyone else encountering this?
I'm using the stock 3.1 OTA, but I am rooted. Everything else seems to be working fine so far.
I'm having problems with mobo being slow, and playing files then after sometime saying hardware decode isn't available, and refusing to play the same code until reboot, but this seems to be with stock layer too. I will try rockplayer tonight... on the plus side mkvs can play with hardware decode, but still no sound unless software decode.
Yea moboplayer worked great on my 3.0.1 but since I installed 3.1 its crashing etc
I'm using vplayer now which seems to work fine
Have you guys tried a reboot? A couple of my programs (including my go-to, JJcomics) were being force closey after the OTA, but a restart sorted them out.
I uninstalled and reinstalled, and I reboot my A500 at least daily (after shutting it off for the night). I can now get further and actually play a video, but it's nowhere near as smooth of an experience as it used to be. When I change the settings back to what they used to be before the reinstall, it just immediately force-closes again.
I notified the developer and will report back if/when they reply.
Have any of you guys tried just using the stock android video player app? I can now play xvid avi files using either the Gallery app or by launching the video player from within ES File Explorer thus negating the need to use mobo player or whatever (which does seem to run like crap since the 3.1 update) ? I'm fairly certain this did not work previously. However i may be wrong.....
Strange... My Moboplayer is working just fine, and in fact seems more stable than before the update to 3.1
Out of curiosity, what is your current build? (I know there are multiple build numbers out there, not sure why, but could that perhaps be a factor??)
I'm on build number Acer_A500_4.010.22_COM_GEN1
My mobo had the same types of issues... I rebooted and it was better... then I resorted to clearing data for the program and it's at least better... I will say that some files don't play and one I have will lock it up now and go black... can't blame mobo on this one but I'm sure that it'll have to mobo to fix it as long as updates take from acer =P)
edit: uninstalled mobo and the codec, tried divx, wmv, mpg, mp4, 3gp... and all of them fc'd the gallery. I forced closed the gallery and cleared the data now everyone of the file types I try works perfectly.
edit: on further review I loaded a divx and watched it for awhile shut it down and when I went to view it again it asked if I wanted to start at where I left off... yes... gallery fc'd on me... tried the whole proccess again after force closing and it would start the file and when resuming the gallery locks up again. I need to mention that I'm plugging my fat32 formatted wd 1tb drive (usb 2/3) drive (which btw, takes forever to load and if the screen sleeps the drive shuts down and has to reload (70+ seconds) again... not a great experience thus far... back to moboplayer.
I'm on Acer_A500_4.010.08_COM_GEN2.
I think it has a lot to do with what you're trying to play. I'm trying to play Divx/Xvid, which Mobo used to play great but not anymore. Now, suspiciously, the stock player didn't used to be able to play these, but now it does.
I think that points to a codec issue.
Anyone know what codec set I should download for the A500 from the Mobo site? I was never offered one during the initial or re-install, but I suspect I now need one since it doesn't like what it's getting from the stock 3.1 rom.
The only problem with the stock player is subs and not the greatest UI for automatically finding movies on the external SD or USB drives.
IMHO the stock player should be used for everything that it can actually play and use Moboplayer only in soft-decoding mode because its necessary. Better on your battery too.
Hello guys,
I'm new to the Android World, I was user of a Xperia X8 (that I just used for SMS and calls) and one iPod Touch 4. Both were very slow and I just decided to change to only one device, and I find out that the N4 was the best option for me, due to it's cost and performance.
I'm really loving this device, its smooth, fast, beautiful design, everything you guys already now But, something is annoying me... I watch a lot of movies and videos on my devices, and I noticed that in my Nexus 4 I get some frame drops while watching it, most frequently in HD movies, but also happens in SD videos. I've noticied this on YouTube (that recently had an update, I'm not really sure if that's the problem) and in MX Player (if the decoder is setted to S/W the frame drops is almost 0, and in H/W is the same thing as in YouTube).
I don't believe that this should happen Anyone knows what can I do to fix that? The device is running stock kernel and rom in the 4.2.2 version, just like it's out of the box, and I didn't did any reset. And, I saw that 4.3 is faster, but, I can't update to it, when I check for updates under the setting menu, it says that it's already up to date, how can I do to update it?
Thanks guys!
wondered if anyone else suffered from this - not sure if its an "Android" or Note 3 issue
basically if watching streamed video - in particular Netflix and Youtube - I can't get smooth playback
the phone seems to drop frames (noticeable by either causing judder or a sudden slow down/speed up as it catches up)
this is via 3G or via Wifi - makes no difference
same content on IPAD is silky smooth
I've tried forcing 2D acceleration in dev settings to no avail
it seems like the hardware or OS can't keep up with the video at all times
local content plays back completely smoothly, be it podcasts via Pocketcasts or local video files via MX Player - perfectly smooth - even at 1080p
any ideas please ?
Buckster76 said:
wondered if anyone else suffered from this - not sure if its an "Android" or Note 3 issue
basically if watching streamed video - in particular Netflix and Youtube - I can't get smooth playback
the phone seems to drop frames (noticeable by either causing judder or a sudden slow down/speed up as it catches up)
this is via 3G or via Wifi - makes no difference
same content on IPAD is silky smooth
I've tried forcing 2D acceleration in dev settings to no avail
it seems like the hardware or OS can't keep up with the video at all times
local content plays back completely smoothly, be it podcasts via Pocketcasts or local video files via MX Player - perfectly smooth - even at 1080p
any ideas please ?
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Click to collapse
I would love to say that my n9005 at 4.3 is stuttering as well. I don't know why.
eakkypoo said:
I would love to say that my n9005 at 4.3 is stuttering as well. I don't know why.
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Click to collapse
I noticed something interesting this week -although maybe Placebo (pretty sure not though)
I've always had laggy/stuttering Netflix vs smooth on IOS
yet smooth local 1080p content - perfect really
I was trying Sky Go earlier in week and was lovely and smooth in fact I'd noted how smooth the video playback seemed vs Netflix, tonight I noticed stutter on Sky Go was beginning to think if I was running something in background or something - but then figured the difference - tonight was streamed via Wifi, earlier in week was same/similar content but downloaded first
so is there something odd with chipset that it doesn't like Wifi + Video decoding at same time ?
Buckster76 said:
I noticed something interesting this week -although maybe Placebo (pretty sure not though)
I've always had laggy/stuttering Netflix vs smooth on IOS
yet smooth local 1080p content - perfect really
I was trying Sky Go earlier in week and was lovely and smooth in fact I'd noted how smooth the video playback seemed vs Netflix, tonight I noticed stutter on Sky Go was beginning to think if I was running something in background or something - but then figured the difference - tonight was streamed via Wifi, earlier in week was same/similar content but downloaded first
so is there something odd with chipset that it doesn't like Wifi + Video decoding at same time ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MX Player (and others) might use hardware decoding, Netflix and the sorts might not.
You could go to Dev-settings and check on "Show CPU usage", so you can see whats happening. (But you'ld have to google what it all means as i dont know.
But what i do know is that the procces list shouldnt be too long, like 20 items in my list when idling (for 5 minutes) after usage.
Hi all,
I've had this phone for over 6 months now, my first (and last) samsung device - great phone, but terrible build quality and it seemingly won't perform some of the basics my old Xperia Z used to do. Such as playing any of my music or videos! I've had no problem playing them on countless Sony Ericsson or Xperia phones over the last 15 years, or any apple device. For some reason nothing will play on the standard music or video player on the note 3. I've tried the standard players, along with poweramp, cubed, mx player, vlc player, plus a few more. The music and videos play fine on my laptop too, I've done a transfer via kids, via media go, I've dragged and dropped straight onto the memory card, I've taken the card out of the phone and done the same. I've also tried re ripping one of my dvds, using the special 'samsung' option in case it's an encoding issue.......nothing works at all. I'm at a loss, just wondered if anyone else has hit this issue and how they fixed it?
It's a rooted UK phone, but running the standard samsung rom so nothing very fancy there that could cause a problem I would imagine.....
How do they not play? Do you get an error? Have you tried a factory reset?
The Note 3 line itself isn't at fault, I use mine all day as a music player and 4 hours a day as a videoplayer with everything from avi to mkv. The only issues I've encountered are copyright related, because there are a few codecs that were removed from most players.
Sent From My Samsung Galaxy Note 3 N9005 Using Tapatalk