Develop Bugs

New to Android - Why can't I play MPG videos?

So I love the EVO, and so far I love Android, except I can't seem to figure out how to play videos on it. Sure I can view Youtube, youporn etc , but I can't seem to find a player that will play simple MPEGs. I have downloaded and tried at least 5 different video/media players from the Market, and none of them will play MPEGs correctly. Some of them will give me sound, but none will give me video. I have tried a couple of different video files that I know work on my desktop.
Am I doing something wrong? I am coming from Windows Mobile with Windows Media Player that played just about anything I threw at it. I can't imagine such a wonderful piece of hardware coupled with what seems to be an awesome OS can't do MPG/AVI.
Note: I am currently rooted+nand+bugless beast 0.3 Although I was having this trouble before I had the custom rom or NAND unlocked.

sterlinron said:
So I love the EVO, and so far I love Android, except I can't seem to figure out how to play videos on it. Sure I can view Youtube, youporn etc , but I can't seem to find a player that will play simple MPEGs. I have downloaded and tried at least 5 different video/media players from the Market, and none of them will play MPEGs correctly. Some of them will give me sound, but none will give me video. I have tried a couple of different video files that I know work on my desktop.
Am I doing something wrong? I am coming from Windows Mobile with Windows Media Player that played just about anything I threw at it. I can't imagine such a wonderful piece of hardware coupled with what seems to be an awesome OS can't do MPG/AVI.
Note: I am currently rooted+nand+bugless beast 0.3 Although I was having this trouble before I had the custom rom or NAND unlocked.
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Curious, have you tried Meridian? I don't really play a lot of videos on my phone, but Meridian has come through on everything so far for me. YMMV

Rock player is the best video player I have ever used on Android. I can play all my divx format movies without conversion and always get 25-30 fps.
The player is in private beta now and should be released soon.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=698451

KCarpenter - yes, I downloaded Meridian last night. Just tried it again, and still no luck. Thanks for the reply.
Danknee - Thanks!

Considering that the Evo has hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding, why bother playing other formats that will destroy your CPU and battery?
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gbm85 said:
Considering that the Evo has hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding, why bother playing other formats that will destroy your CPU and battery?
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It's just that I received an e-mail MPG of my nephew riding his bike without training wheels and would like to see it that's all. Not sure what H.264 decoding is or if it has my nephew riding his bike without training wheels or not. I should go search for that thanks.
I just figure I should be able to view most any file attachment that comes into me these days.

H.264 is the video encoder for MP4's. Basically, if you used a program to convert your videos to MP4 videos, you would be able to play them without a problem. The phone has hardware acceleration for H.264, so it doesn't use as much processor/battery to play vs. other formats that have to be software decoded. Handbrake works good for me, though I can't remember what file types you can put into it.

sterlinron said:
It's just that I received an e-mail MPG of my nephew riding his bike without training wheels and would like to see it that's all. Not sure what H.264 decoding is or if it has my nephew riding his bike without training wheels or not. I should go search for that thanks.
I just figure I should be able to view most any file attachment that comes into me these days.
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The reason why you cannot play those mpg files is simple. Android doesn't support them out of the box. You need to turn to third-party video players which can do it.
Rock Demo Player is one (only one?) such video player.

You can try to use the third-party video player, I read an article is about the top 5 video player apps in Android Market. Maybe it is helpful to you.

Brucew0617 said:
You can try to use the third-party video player, I read an article is about the top 5 video player apps in Android Market. Maybe it is helpful to you.
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This thread is over a year old. I think the OP figured it out.

Thanks for your remind, I hope it can also be useful to other guys.

I use MX Player. I've only had a problem with AVI files that encode the audio with AAC.
Sent from my carrier pigeon.

Mobo player so far for me has played anything I asked it to.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

MakeMeFibonacci said:
I use MX Player. I've only had a problem with AVI files that encode the audio with AAC.
Sent from my carrier pigeon.
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I used Moboplayer most of time, it seems that MX Player also have so much supporter. Maybe I should try it later.

[Q] terrible MKV playback?

So I've been searching for about a day now for a solution to this problem. I've been trying to play MKV files on my phone, but every single player i've tried (mobo, mx, rock, vlc nightly, bs, dice, and vplayer) have been really stuttery and the audio desyncs massively.
It seems that most people are able to play MKVs but for some reason I can not get it to play smoothly at all.
Has anyone come across this and know a solution?
(the file I'm trying to play is a 720p h264 mkv with aac audio. I would put up all the file information if I knew how, so I can if someone shows me)
I'm really sorry if there is an answer to this somewhere, but I tried a search here and only got a thread talking about how everyone can play MKVs smoothly

Are you running a stock Rom or one of the aokp or cm roms? With stock I haven't had an issue with any mkv even on my previous sgs and sgs2. Are all mkvs having problems or is it just the one ?
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda app-developers app

dude i can stream mkvs without problem
mx player by turning the software decoding on in settings
or vlc player beta

It seems like it only happens on 10bit MKVs. MX Player is the best with software decoding but there are still some dropped frames. I saw a video of someone playing 10bit perfectly fine and a thread saying the S3 can handle 10bit so I'm not exactly sure whats wrong.
I'm running TuchMi 5.0 so I might try to go back to full stock just to see if that helps.
I would try the VLC beta but US can't get it from the play store and the nightly crashes constantly for me.
EDIT: full wipe didn't help

make sure you got the 1.7 update, for me the audio would get out of sync on any anime but with H/W+ that is now solved and i got back DTS thanks to custom codecs.
Software is horrible for me it plays fine, but everything gets artifacts and colored blocks etc. At first i though it was the device that god it wasn't

I have 1.7. H/W+ works for you? it keeps telling me that I can't play the video with it. Can you give an example of and episode that works for you?

Actually I'm curious about this too. Just tried to stream Planet Earth from my PC and I had huge lag because if you are streaming on MKV it uses software decoding...
To be fair I might have to push up my VSEL values...but I really doubt that's the case. Another thing I'm going to try is PS3media server which TRANSCODES (meaning your computer does the coding) for all media files...so it is streaming everything converted for your phone. The annoying thing about it though is that it won't automatically start with my computer
A third alternative is to setup a vlc media player server.

To reencode or not to reencode videos?

Do you reencode HD video for the Note 2? If so, what have you found to be an ideal format and resolution? I mentioned in another thread that the native player and MX Player will play the video for my .MKV's but not the DTS soundtrack. I've fiddled with the settings on both players, but I'm not getting any sound at all for any of my blu-ray rips.

Generally I just grab the 720p version and leave it as is. The native player had an issue with one of my mkv files, but MX played it fine, no audio issues.
I generally download straight on the device, so to re-encode it would require transferring the file twice, plus the encoding time. Not worth it to me.
Sent from my Note II

Solved.
quarlow said:
Generally I just grab the 720p version and leave it as is. The native player had an issue with one of my mkv files, but MX played it fine, no audio issues.
I generally download straight on the device, so to re-encode it would require transferring the file twice, plus the encoding time. Not worth it to me.
Sent from my Note II
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Look at Randles' two posts on this page.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1831111&page=7

I tried running a 720p video using mx player (good quality video I think) from a plugged in usb flash key drive and kept getting frozen frames every few seconds though the sound was ok. I was considering asking the same question about how it should be encoded to play without stuttering. Then I played with the player and discovered I could pinch to zoom in or out of the image while it was playing and if I reduced the display a minimal amount it would play correctly. I changed it to 99% of normal size and no more playback problems. I don't know why this is but hope it helps someone...
Sent from my ATT SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using xda app-developers app

Good to know.
Dumbo53 said:
I tried running a 720p video using mx player (good quality video I think) from a plugged in usb flash key drive and kept getting frozen frames every few seconds though the sound was ok. I was considering asking the same question about how it should be encoded to play without stuttering. Then I played with the player and discovered I could pinch to zoom in or out of the image while it was playing and if I reduced the display a minimal amount it would play correctly. I changed it to 99% of normal size and no more playback problems. I don't know why this is but hope it helps someone...
Sent from my ATT SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using xda app-developers app
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Thanks. Most of my videos are 720P MKV's with DTS sound. After installing the codec above, I haven't had any issues, but if I do, I will keep your suggestion in mind.

Video stuttering

Hello everyone. At first I have to say that english isn't my first language so please be understanding.
I've just bought new Note 3 and was pleased with it, until I've found that something is wrong with playing videos. When I try to watch some videos(for example anime) online, it is stuttering. Audio is ok but video lags like hell. Lets take videos from www*auby*no/files/video_tests/ (sorry I had to change "." with "*" because I was unable to post link to another site )as an examples.First I tried playing them online using official player and MX Player(using hardware decoding and software decoding). Then I downloaded them and tried playing again. While playing online using official player, every movie except Shrinkage and Shrinkage 2 was choppy. Playing them with use of MX Player with H/W resulted int the same thing(video lags), but when I changed to S/W everything run smoothly(except first two movies). Next I downloaded them and again tried to play them with official player, and guess what? Everything was ok. The same was with MX Player with H/W and of course S/W.
I also tried to play movies online with worse resolution (480p) and they were ok but other videos with 720p were stuttering. I also tried to play video in 720p using mobile-friendly online player and had lags, but when I played THE SAME video using not mobile-friendly online player(with usage of Flash Player) it was ok...
So dear friends I don't know what to do so I am counting on your help, because I really want to be able to watch movies online on this badass screen.

Try DicePlayer. Still one of the best players IMO, and one of the few that can play videos directly off of Windows network shares (though I use ES File Explorer to browse and Dice to play)
No stutter here playing even 10+Mbps 1080p h264 over wireless from samba shares on my NAS. (Haven't tried 20Mbps yet)

Well, I've tried this DicePlayer and it is really nice but only with playing videos where I can choose which player to use. If I, for example want to watch a movie on dailymotion I can't choose if I want to use MxPlayer or DicePlayer or something else. I have to watch it using dailymotion player (right?) and using these kind of players make videos stutter. That's my problem.

Note 3 has a problem. Verizon and ATT versions also show stuttering when streaming video. I have it in YouTube and other videos that streamed from a website.
We shouldn't have to use third party players, especially when it's not even an option (can't choose one) or in the case of youtube it's an app. This is nonsense. Samsung needs to address this issue. How can we contact them? I've been trying to figure that out.

Techweed said:
Note 3 has a problem. Verizon and ATT versions also show stuttering when streaming video. I have it in YouTube and other videos that streamed from a website.
We shouldn't have to use third party players, especially when it's not even an option (can't choose one) or in the case of youtube it's an app. This is nonsense. Samsung needs to address this issue. How can we contact them? I've been trying to figure that out.
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huh i havn't run into this problem myself, can you give me a youtube video that does it for sure so i can see it too?

systoxity said:
huh i havn't run into this problem myself, can you give me a youtube video that does it for sure so i can see it too?
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I never said it was every handset. But I've seen complaints regarding this issue on t mobile, verizon, att and the international version. I haven't checked others.
Try any hd video. They show it the most. But if you don't have the issue I don't expect you to see symptoms.

Try another browser with java support like maxthon
Sent from my SGH-T889 using xda app-developers app

Ok. I've noticed another thing. Stuttering happens only with films in HD. For example I've played some film from vimeo in (probably) 480p and it was fine, but after playing it in 720p lags occurred. Also I've tried maxthon but it didn't help.
So, to sum up everything for now, stuttering occurs when I try to play HD films online, where I can't choose players like DicePlayer or MxPlayer and have to use "built-in" online players (for example on Dailymotion or Vimeo) and also when I try to play films online (which I can play using players on my note) using official player or MxPlayer with H/W or H/W+.

I talked to Samsung via Chat and the guy said he's never heard of this issue. I find that amazing since I've seen the complaints all versions of the Note 3.
We shouldn't have to watch videos in 480p and we shouldn't have to switch browsers. All this does is try to avoid running into a problem that shouldn't be there to begin with.
It's a high end device with a low end problem. Something is wrong. I suggest you all that are having issues to tell Samsung about it. Call or chat or do some type of communication.

I've talked with someone from samsung via live chat and he said that if phone doesn't have problem with playing films on sd card it isn't problem with phone itself. He also said that he will pass it to proper department. Also doesn't this problem seem like this one? Maybe it's not problem with note 3 but with JB 4.3?

Yeah you're right, can't stream some HD videos, especially on vimeo. Youtube is fine for me on full hd. Anything downloaded plays perfectly though.

I've had this issue on two different T-Mobile notes. HD videos in any browser for me stutter. I'm hoping its software related and can get patched soon.
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

I'm hoping its software related and can get patched soon.
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I hope that it will come out soon if it's software related, because if it was hardware related I would have to change it and it restrains me for now from rooting it.

Confused about video playback - Tab 3 10.1

Hi.
I've recently got the Tab 3 and love it. Only problem at the moment is MP4 playback. I have MP4 files that plays on my PC (VLC) and plays on my S4 (VLC) but it does not play on my Tab (also VLC)... I've tried about 8 movie players and all have the same problem. All my other MP4 files work on all my devices.
Out of ideas.

I have been using mobo player by mobo team for a long time. So far I think I've run into one file extention that did not play right away, and all I had to do is add the extention type to the player through it's options and viola it played. I even play my audiobooks through it as it saves position on exit and allows screen off while continuing to play. Good luck.

AEVAREX said:
I have been using mobo player by mobo team for a long time. So far I think I've run into one file extention that did not play right away, and all I had to do is add the extention type to the player through it's options and viola it played. I even play my audiobooks through it as it saves position on exit and allows screen off while continuing to play. Good luck.
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I'll give that a quick go, thanks.
Nope - still not playing those files

Solved!
It's my sd card that corrupts the files... Just transfered the same files to the internal storage and it plays just fine. Weird that only some files gets corrupted