Hi, I was wondering if there are plans for other media player on wp7. I'm thinking about getting a new phone and also thinking about starting development on wp7 so I would need a wp7 device for that(yes a know i can just use the emulator), but media support is a requirement for me as my galaxy s will play pretty much everything without additional software. I have a lot a ogg, flac and mkvs in my collection and would like to avoid having to transcode everything. So.. what say you?
In short - this is between highly unlikely and impossible.
The thing is, you need access to native APIs to add support for codecs and even for adding new containers, you simply can't make that stuff in Silverlight. So, apart from a possible jailbreak solution and getting tools to make native stuff, there are only three possible sources for added media format support - Microsoft, operators and OEMs. Microsoft will never add support for FLAC, mkv or ogg. Operators have zero interest. OEMs theoretically can do it, but I haven't heard anything with regard to this, and it will only be on new handsets which won't appear until the end of the year (fall at the earliest).
On a somewhat positive note, you should be able to watch mkv videos on your phone without reencoding because in theory you only need remuxing (which is a much easier process and takes minutes, not hours). The codecs are mostly supported, it's just a container issue.
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Pro-Click Zone(tm)
http://www.storageserver.be/images/pocketdj_fftest.jpg
Well, sadly, thanks to a lack of certain XNA APIs, this is going to remain a concept for a while. But I still sketched something up in Photoshop to give people an idea what I had in mind.
Basically, it's a two-deck player (refresh button top-right would switch decks), with pitch shift (slider on the left), simple transports, crossfader (bottom right) and scrobbling by finger manipulation on the wave display.
The left hand dimmed side of the wave display is already played content and might act as surface for more potential controls (stuff like bass cut, if I ever figure out how to make an EQ work).
The mixer would output either a single stereo channel with the monitor signal mixed in, or dual mono mode, where one channel is the main and the other the monitor (in case you're trying to be leet on a party and mix using the phone). On top of that, there would be single deck stereo-out mode for freaks with two phones. I guess there may be demand for this, since I've seen evidence of Apple clowns doing something like this in the past with their crop of mobile DJing apps.
Filetype support would be MP3 only, there are no APIs to access the system codecs for frame level decoding, and the only thing I could dig up on the web is a C# MP3 decoder.
Right now I'm only waiting for the XNA's XACT APIs to hit Windows Phone 7, or at least something similar. Without raw audio output capabilities, like what that API allows, this project stays at concept stage.
Anyway, opinions?
Looks good.
Multi-touch will sure be usefull there
Pretty much similar project I submitted to the wp7req for device . But it failed because of lack of the access to the raw audio output. Also, not sure if WP7 allows access to media library...
In XNA, you there's a MediaPlayer class you can make use files from your Zune library, from how I understand it, but it still wouldn't give you straight file access.
WP7 doesn't exactly need XACT, but at least something to do simple stereo raw output. One wouldn't even expect low latency from a phone. And maybe APIs to leverage system codecs, but that'll probably stay a dream for a while.
Well, this project is definitely on ice for indeterminate time.
To continue, Microsoft needs to allow access to the phone's codecs. The only available MP3 decoder written completely in C# decodes at only 7x in the emulator, which is way faster than the actual phone.
Since there can be up to four decoding instances running (two decks playing, and up to two proxies for visualization being generated), making this application work is impossible without access to high-performance decoder (read: native ones).
So sad to hear.
I was pretty excited when I stumbled on your post. I had the same exact concept for an app in my mind when I heard that XNA has access to the media library.
effects aside though, how were you going to account for beat matching and bpm?
I wanted to decode the stuff and then interpolate it accordingly for pitch shift and use my FFT stuff from that other application to detect bass for counting. Automatic matching might have been workable in the long run.
The UI was supposed to get a pitch shifter, speed up and slow down and cue buttons, the ability to scrub/scratch. To have it handle like a real turntable.
But as long Microsoft doesn't supply an API to seek and decode specific blocks of audio files, ideally from the music library, there's no point. As I said, the MP3 decoder written in C# that I have here is slow as **** in the emulator already, the phone's considerably slower.
I would really something this: to 'mix' a playlist to share with my friends. It should be easy to use and have some nice effect, just for casual use
Youtube works on WP7, caught on video
check it out : 1800PocketPC
once you play a video its automatically added to your Music and Video Hub !!!!
works on the youtube mobile version, http://m.youtube.com
Honestly, did anyone expect it NOT to work in WP7?
with out flash , yes many of us did not think it would work initially.
forget youtube....XVID is a supported format out of the box. Now I can do less work at work and look at animes on my phone .
gom99 said:
XVID is a supported format out of the box. Now I can do less work at work and look at animes on my phone .
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Click to collapse
*Sigh*
It's not true, unfortunately, according to the official list of codecs supported in the RTM version of WP7. As you will see there, there's no xvid or divx in the list.
Luckily, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile is listed, and this means that most xvid/divx videos should work as both xvid and divx are variations of this spec.
However, this codec isn't supported in .avi container, the file should be an .mp4 or an m4v.
To add insult to injury, you will not hear any sound in those videos if they have a soundtrack encoded in mp3 or AC3. Only AAC-LC.
To summarize, there's just no way to view a real-life video in WP7 without messing with some sort of convertion. A bit of good news is that it shouldn't require hours, it should be enough to remux the video (put it into another container) and reencode audio (a bit lengthier), and it's better than what you get in Android or iOS, but still far from smooth hassle-free experience.
^ very funny.
I'll have you know that I don't need to convert videos for my phone. Have you seen the specs for new higher end Androids, they support most codecs out the box. The only codec I haven't seen work was for converted dvds or .vob.
vetvito said:
I'll have you know that I don't need to convert videos for my phone. Have you seen the specs for new higher end Androids, they support most codecs out the box.
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I know, that's brought by OEMs. Who can do the same for WP7 if they wish, although that will cost them less as the base things are covered by MS, both in terms of licensing and hardware acceleration built in. Supporting a container is should be much easier than supporting a codec. In this case all you need to do is a demultiplexer, the actual decoders are already there.
vangrieg said:
*Sigh*
It's not true, unfortunately, according to the official list of codecs supported in the RTM version of WP7. As you will see there, there's no xvid or divx in the list.
Luckily, MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile is listed, and this means that most xvid/divx videos should work as both xvid and divx are variations of this spec.
However, this codec isn't supported in .avi container, the file should be an .mp4 or an m4v.
To add insult to injury, you will not hear any sound in those videos if they have a soundtrack encoded in mp3 or AC3. Only AAC-LC.
To summarize, there's just no way to view a real-life video in WP7 without messing with some sort of convertion. A bit of good news is that it shouldn't require hours, it should be enough to remux the video (put it into another container) and reencode audio (a bit lengthier), and it's better than what you get in Android or iOS, but still far from smooth hassle-free experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bah, I should have look at that further instead of taking the article at face value.
My 2nd thought was hoping that wasn't final and that wp7 should play everything zune does as well. So I looked up the Zune specs and the avi container isn't there either . Although the xbox 360 has supported xvid in .avi since fall 2007 I believe, so that's a glimmer of hope.
Thanks for clearing that up though. Audio & Video Codecs are a pain in the neck.
Not only codecs are a pain for everyone, but also a very confusing topic, tech blogs mix up things all the time.
The most amazing thing in all this story for me is that .avi is Microsoft's format. Why they don't support it in their products is totally beyond my comprehension.
Oh, and of course this: mp4 is based on Apple's QuickTime video format, while m4v is totally developed by Apple. Go figure.
Hi,
I was under the assumption that the wp7 Emulator supported avi containers and xvid files. At least I was hoping for the Windows Phone 7 platform to be able to play these files without conversion.
I stumbled across a review of the Omnia 7 on gsmarena (cant post the link) and apparently these files get transcoded by the zune software into *.mp4
Would anyone with more knowledge shed some light on this. Maybe its an OEM specific feature? I would hate to see the potential of fast file transfer go to waste to transcoding
http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-7-audio-media-codecs
The list on wpcentral is wrong and outdated. The list of supported codecs changed twice since MIX, and the final one doesn't list avi as a supported container.
Things may be not too bad in that MPEG4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile is back in, and that's basically what xvid and divx are. So, in order to watch a real life movie on a WP7, you might just need to remux it (it takes a minute or so).
Thank you very much domineus and vangrieg!! Very informative.
I wonder if MS would bow down eventually and bring back the support for the avi container.
One can dream ;D but 1-2 mins remuxing doesn't sound too bad.
VonCrisp said:
I wonder if MS would bow down eventually and bring back the support for the avi container.
One can dream ;D but 1-2 mins remuxing doesn't sound too bad.
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It's just my guess about remuxing, so please dont get too disappointed if I'm wrong.
Re avi, the strangest thing in Earth is that this is Microsoft's own format, and instead they choose to support Apple's ones.
The AVI format is horribly broken by design. The only reason it's still around is the piracy scene and both its idiotic reluctance for change and their desire to maintain legacy support for all these cheap chinese knock-off DVD players that support XviD in AVI.
I was just wondering if anyone one is making a custom media player for windows phone 7. It would be nice to ba able to play avi and other video format like yxflash does for iphone and android.
becknise said:
I was just wondering if anyone one is making a custom media player for windows phone 7. It would be nice to ba able to play avi and other video format like yxflash does for iphone and android.
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Click to collapse
There's a few reasons this won't happen without an MS update:
1. No way of getting files onto the device
2. WP7 by default only supports this list of codecs, which afaik Zune copies directly onto the phone without encoding for playback anyway.
3. No native code, so pretty much no existing codec libraries can be used
Unless, of course the devs here can work out an unrestricted way of running native code!
It's not, actually, 100% true.
1. You can get files to the app's isolated storage file. Of course you need some additional desktop/web solution for that. Also, you can play streaming video in different formats: rtp, fragmented mp4, LiveStreaming etc.
2. Fortunately WP7 supports H.264 for video. For most cases it's enough (you just need a proper container parser).
3. Yes, it's a minus but the custom MediaStreamSource, 1 GHz CPU, lot of RAM and possibility to port java code to C# give you a good chances ;-)
P.S. 4 example, I can play a lot of containers including avi/mp4/mkv. But I can't share/publish code - it's not my own property...
sensboston said:
It's not, actually, 100% true.
1. You can get files to the app's isolated storage file. Of course you need some additional desktop/web solution for that. Also, you can play streaming video in different formats: rtp, fragmented mp4, LiveStreaming etc.
2. Fortunately WP7 supports H.264 for video. For most cases it's enough (you just need a proper container parser).
3. Yes, it's a minus but the custom MediaStreamSource, 1 GHz CPU, lot of RAM and possibility to port java code to C# give you a good chances ;-)
P.S. 4 example, I can play a lot of containers including avi/mp4/mkv. But I can't share/publish code - it's not my own property...
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Click to collapse
Of course with workarounds, anything is possible!
This won't happen though, because nobody is going to be able to port enough decoders to a MediaStreamSource implementation to make it a viable playback solution like,e.g. VLC
Plus I sure wouldn't want half my media going through a webserver for obvious reasons
And I would say that while h264 is quite prominent now, XviD playback would be the main codec
Probably, home based video streaming solution (using Apache + third party SmoothStreaming implementation, http://smoothstreaming.code-shop.com/trac/wiki) will be good. Not too hard to implement but very hard to sell
Hey guys, i don't know about you, but i have a TON of FLAC audio files which i would love to play on my phone. But, the issue is that Zune wont recognize it. I created a suggestion and if you feel the same way, you should vote for it to be implemented in future updates.
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions/suggestions/2304622-enable-flac-and-other-lossless-formats?ref=title
That's why I stopped using Zune.
I have no idea why Microsoft decided to not support FLAC in Zune but someone in the Zune camp needs a kick in the backside.
Anyone with a half descent sound system can here the difference between a mp3 and FLAC file.
This is a lost cause. There's no way Microsoft will ever support open source codec's such as FLAC or MKV. Not only are these codecs undermining their MPEG-LA licensing efforts but using them will look weird when they start suing people for infringing on Microsoft's patents using these free ones.
Use WMA lossless.
I highly doubt you have such great gear tied to your phone that a 320 MP3 won't do.
It's not so much about the quality through the phone...I don't care about it, but many people like me, have really big FLAC libraries. I have absolutely no intention to convert these huge libraries to a lossy format because I listen to them through high end sound systems in my home. So, I just want Zune to recognize any flac file I throw into it, like it was an mp3, and be able to manage these libraries through Zune, even if it has to convert the tracks I sync with it to mp3. I wonder why everybody thinks that it's only an issue about the quality through the phone...It's more of an organizing issue...I want to be able to browse my libraries like everyone else and sync the files I want through Zune...
I can certainly understand the wish and frustration. But it's not going to happen. So you better learn to live with it or choose another OS.
There is a chance that an OEM can do it though, so you may have better luck letting them know.
hard drive space is cheap, why not convert it all for Zune, while retaining the flac files for use with other devices
Sent from my T8788 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Actually, I can't imagine what other devices may support flac but not support aac/wma lossless.
Muvolt said:
It's not so much about the quality through the phone...I don't care about it, but many people like me, have really big FLAC libraries. I have absolutely no intention to convert these huge libraries to a lossy format because I listen to them through high end sound systems in my home. So, I just want Zune to recognize any flac file I throw into it, like it was an mp3, and be able to manage these libraries through Zune, even if it has to convert the tracks I sync with it to mp3. I wonder why everybody thinks that it's only an issue about the quality through the phone...It's more of an organizing issue...I want to be able to browse my libraries like everyone else and sync the files I want through Zune...
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Click to collapse
I Know how you feel I have over 2 TB of saved files that I spent days converting.
I will just keep using foobar or something similar.
For the record most of the music sold by HDtracks is FLAC.
frankly speaking I prefer FLAC than mp3 but as for now what I can hear is Lossless WMA