Develop Bugs

Video playback on the Orbit

anyone know of anywhere to grab pre configured videos that will playback on the orbit? if its not allowed to be posted can anyone pm me ?
I have TCMP player installed on the phone which is brill, played back an mpg that I had on my comp in 352x240 and its was very smooth, not tried an avi's, tried a wmv but the res was 653x something or other ?!? this was very jerky on the phone
if there isnt anywhere to get files set up for playback on the orbit is there any good software to edit properties of the existing videos I have

I think, though I am often wrong, that if you download a copy of a movie you already own, even from some bittorrent site with something like bitcomet, that I would not be breaking the law.

thats right i think, only its hard to find stuff in 320x240 unless theres someway of changing avi's or finding media in PPC format

Any xvid a friend of mine has tried works in TCPMP even across his network. Usually at least VGA. But if you need card space.

ok well I had a go at encoding a normal film with pocketdivxencoder, it comes out smooth but a little pixelated. any optimum settings ?? it encodes at 320x132...why not 320x240?

uniqueboy said:
I think, though I am often wrong, that if you download a copy of a movie you already own, even from some bittorrent site with something like bitcomet, that I would not be breaking the law.
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Click to collapse
Depends on where you live.
In the US, there is a fair use clause I think. In the UK there is no such thing as fair use - it is in fact illegal to rip mp3s from a CD that you own and put them on your own mp3 player (unless it's written into a license clause), although it's obviously not enforced. Part of the European Copyright Directive so probably applies to the rest of Europe too.
Having said that, I think there is some legislation that is currently in the process of going through that will allow you to make copies for your own use, as I everyone knows that the law is daft as it stands.

try pocketdivxencoder, i got me a copy of tenacious D in AVI format and converted it. Picture was DVD quality and filesize was only around 300-400mb

Yeah I only got pocketdivxencoder last night and had a go with the same file but using different setting, all play smooth but look pretty pixelated and a bit blurry if im being honest, I think it may be down to never using the program before
can you remember the parameters you used to encode the file? ie the audio/video quality slide bar resolution set to and advanced video options ?!? I just accepted the default settings that it gave when I selected the "PDA" from device list.
thanks

cant actually remember to be honest, think i just used default for a quick test when got it and the result was pretty good.

Artist's picture in Zune livetile?

Hi folks,
in videos I've seen phones that have artist pictures on their Zune livetile and in the music hub.
I have my phone for a week now and listening to music every day but the live-tile always stays the standard zune-logo and the hub background is only black.
Is this because I have no Zune pass and just listening to music I transferred via Zune? Or is it because Zune doesn't want to show faces of Death Metal bands? What am I doing wrong? Data connection is always on, location services are allowed...I don't know what else I could try.

It's because you're in a country where Zune Pass isn't supported, basically if you want it you have to hard reset the phone and use an account with US/UK details

You don't need the Zune Pass.
I don't have it and the Music Live Tile works fine.
At least does Zune display the artist in the background?

arturobandini said:
You don't need the Zune Pass.
I don't have it and the Music Live Tile works fine.
At least does Zune display the artist in the background?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, not even a artist's photo in the music hub. Nothing.
But all my music is perfectly tagged (with Windows7 Media Center) and has album cover pictures. Zune is allowed to add missing information, so everything should be fine.
Maybe I should try to set to "overwrite all song information" but I fear that my whole music database will get wrong genre information (or worse) then.

Seems to be hit and miss this. Will work for me with some artists and not others.
Couple of things that may help. Make sure under settings/applications/music & Video the connect to Zune is switched on and also doing the find album info on Zune on the PC while phone is connected.

dov74 said:
Seems to be hit and miss this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems to be
I tried very commercial music now (Linkin Park), updated the whole album online via Zune and I still don't get pictures.
It doesn't matter much, I was just wondering. Maybe the pictures are coming anytime

I haven't tested this. Here is how my library started and maybe why my tile has artist pictures..
I switched from itunes to zune in advance of WP7s launch. When I did that I realized Zune went out and grabbed all the artist artwork and images, which I thought rocked! I have looked at my files and I don't see where they store this extra artwork, must be in c:\program files\zune or something.
Now when I transferred these albums / songs over to my Focus, all that extra artwork came with. So maybe look at the music in Zune on a PC and see if you can tag / download the artist info from the net (through the software) then copy it over.
I have not tested this with a song that didn't come from my PC first.

I think it just varies.
Works for some bands and not for others.
For instance, Nightwish will show up, but Dream Theater doesn't, even though they're more well known.
What annoys me though is when they use a low-resolution image for the Zune player background, it ends up looking very pixely. Funeral For A Friend for instance.

I posted this in the other thread ages ago, but I worked out how to get this to work.
1) Play your song
2) Click on the artist while it's playing
3) Press the double down arrow under Marketplace
IF your artist is tagged with the right name AND the artist has a picture (and most do) then this process will store the image to the associated artist and the picture will display anytime you listen to a song by the artist.

brummiesteven said:
I posted this in the other thread ages ago, but I worked out how to get this to work.
1) Play your song
2) Click on the artist while it's playing
3) Press the double down arrow under Marketplace
IF your artist is tagged with the right name AND the artist has a picture (and most do) then this process will store the image to the associated artist and the picture will display anytime you listen to a song by the artist.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again, I've found this to be hit and miss.
It's strange, this method worked for me updating Zero 7 but Ocean Colour Scene, James and Groove Armada, who are more well known won't play ball!!
OCS and James, who have tons of albums available for download through Zune, don't have a pic under "artist" in the marketplace tho...I wonder if thats the problem. (edit - just re-read your post and this could be the problem..although these artists are very well known!)
Groove armada does and shows when I'm streaming Zune marketplace but I can't get it to show when playing Groove Armada from "my collection"??

dov74 said:
Again, I've found this to be hit and miss.
It's strange, this method worked for me updating Zero 7 but Ocean Colour Scene, James and Groove Armada, who are more well known won't play ball!!
OCS and James, who have tons of albums available for download through Zune, don't have a pic under "artist" in the marketplace tho...I wonder if thats the problem. (edit - just re-read your post and this could be the problem..although these artists are very well known!)
Groove armada does and shows when I'm streaming Zune marketplace but I can't get it to show when playing Groove Armada from "my collection"??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That could be the problem for OCS and James, for Groove Armada it might be because of your tagging. It is a bit strange the artists the do and don't have... here's a list of artists on my device that DON'T have bg images:
- B.o.B (because the Marketplace tags it as BoB)
- Beyonce (because I'm missing the accent on the e)
- Bobby Brown
- Cheryl Cole (No image available, which is strange because she was artist of the week in the marketplace... with a marketplace bg image)
- Chris Brown (no image avaliable)
- Eazy-E (no image avaliable)
- Far East Movement (no image avaliable)
- Gwen Stefani (no image avaliable)
- Ice Cube (No idea why this doesn't work)
- M.I.A. (again probably something to do with the .'s)
- MArio (no image avaliable)
- Mario Winans (no image avaliable)
- Stromae (no image avaliable)

dov74 said:
It's strange, this method worked for me updating Zero 7 but Ocean Colour Scene, James and Groove Armada, who are more well known won't play ball!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dov74 said:
Groove armada does and shows when I'm streaming Zune marketplace but I can't get it to show when playing Groove Armada from "my collection"??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed the same, with the same exact bands.
Also I can't have any picture of Sparklehorse, even if this band is also well known. What happens?
Regarding The Clientele, it's weird: I can see the artist picture in the background when I click on the Artist name. But the artist picture disappears when the track is played.
Also I stopped trying to update my album infos with the ones suggested by Zune, because often they were wrong, and it messed up everything in my library. For instance Zune replaced all my "(smog)" albums by "Bill Callahan". Sorry, but Smog is Smog and Bill Callahan is Bill Callahan.
Anyway, Zune really need to be improved. The display ot the artists in the background is really erratic and random. Totally not reliable.

Okay, I know found out something new. Since I am not having a Zune pass I never used it to search music. But the point is, I can't even search for music -the option simply isn't there.
If I press the search button inside the music hub, I just can search the marketplace for apps -not music.
Then I tried at my desktop computer. It's the same thing, I just can search and download apps and movies -no music possible, there isn't even an option for this.
So I think it's regarding the country I'm living in (Austria) that there is no such option or it could be because I don't have a credit card added to Zune so the option to search for music simply is blanked?

skycamefalling said:
Okay, I know found out something new. Since I am not having a Zune pass I never used it to search music. But the point is, I can't even search for music -the option simply isn't there.
If I press the search button inside the music hub, I just can search the marketplace for apps -not music.
Then I tried at my desktop computer. It's the same thing, I just can search and download apps and movies -no music possible, there isn't even an option for this.
So I think it's regarding the country I'm living in (Austria) that there is no such option or it could be because I don't have a credit card added to Zune so the option to search for music simply is blanked?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you even read my reply which was the first post?

darkmurder said:
Did you even read my reply which was the first post?
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Click to collapse
Yeah, I've read it...but I wasn't aware that this means that I don't even have the possibility to search for music.
It's strange that I cannot use the basic functions of Zune because I am living in Austria and my neighbors in Germany, with the same language and all, can use it
It's okay for me, if that is the reason I'm sure MS will get things straight in future. Now that Zune becomes popular they will set it up for Austria too anytime

For NOISIA it is showing RBL Posse..any help plz...Im happy with NO picture, but WRONG picture...NOOOO..plz help me...i tried deleting the song and then pasting it again...no use..

Look for a program called "Zune Social Tagger", there's a thread here with a link but Google might be easier.
It will scan your library and match songs with their equivalent on the marketplace. That should give you most of the artist backgrounds available on Zune.

skycamefalling said:
Yeah, I've read it...but I wasn't aware that this means that I don't even have the possibility to search for music.
It's strange that I cannot use the basic functions of Zune because I am living in Austria and my neighbors in Germany, with the same language and all, can use it
It's okay for me, if that is the reason I'm sure MS will get things straight in future. Now that Zune becomes popular they will set it up for Austria too anytime
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We've been waiting for the same thing since the launch of Zune. Don't think it's coming anytime soon.

Deactivate Zune live-tile?
Hello, I have the exact opposite problem:
I was happy with the Zune-tile showing nothing but the Zune logo.
But now I made the "mistake" of downloading my first song over Marketplace directly on the phone, a song from Simon + Garfunkel. I never downloaded music on marketplace before, I use iTunes as a Macbook user.
Now the F***ING Windows Phone shows ALWAYS the faces of Simon + Garfunkel on the Zune live tile! Doesn't matter, which band I listen to, even podcasts... always the Zune live tile & the Zune main menu has this arrogant looking faces on them.... it drives me nuts!!
I do not want to replace it with another artist picture. I listen to a lot of German local bands about which Zune doesn't even know and thus has no artist picture of them and I don't want it to show only the pictures of the "famous" bands in my playlists. Either all bands or none of them, which in my case means: none of them. Thus I want only the Zune logo on the tile, please, just how it was before I made the mistake of downloading a song from marketplace!
I even de-activitaded the "connect with Zune" in the Settings. No change at all!
How can I delete it and make it show NO Live tile, but only the good old Zune logo again?
Please help, I got a Mac, is there any chance to do this without Windows?
Is there really no other way than a clean install?

Its becouse zune isent suported in your region, as it was reporter above here..
I live in Norway and i did used to use my phone with this region(norway) and it never displayed anny picture anly the album art! not the backround! so i did reset it and used the US region and now all my suported artist from zune displayes the backround image =)

Put.io WP7

For anyone using the file service Put.io, this app lets you stream and locally store MP4 converted videos.
This was my 1st WP7 app, learning the ropes etc - however I will not work on it in its current state (a redesign is required)
However, until the day I get my act together feel free to try this version for free and watch those videos easily
More dev updates will be found at X-Volt.com
P.s this can only run videos on a device that is not connected to the computer!

thx workshop2

I forgot to say, tap and hold items for the context menu (the only working options are stream/open video and download a video - if the file is local then it can also be deleted)

A few bugs?
Great app if I could get it to work. When I sign in an error pops up saying:
Error converting value "2558511245" to type 'System.Int32'.
I press ok and it continues to connect. I go to my files folder but I havent been able to get it to download. I get another error saying theres a problem with mediaplayer....Then it signs back in with your user key and api secret. So I start all over and try to stream the movie. That worked.....almost :/ I had picture, but no audio. I checked the movie from my laptop and the movie does have sound. It just doesnt have sound while streaming to my WP7 HTC. Another thing is there anyway that our user key and api secret can be saved so we dont have to sign in every time we open the program or it crashes? That's also happened a few times. It crashes and I get a black error screen with a lot of writing.
So I have been driving myself crazy trying to get it to work. Do you think you could fix these issues in your next update?
Thanks so much!

Oops, I forgot I had my API key being saved (bit of a security issue there...)
To stream video you can't have the phone connected to the comp, but it runs fine on my phone (Omnia 7) however sometimes put.io conversions arn't always perfect.
If you can give me some more of the error message (converting number to int) so I can fix that for you, but as I said im not planning on doing much with this application as im going to rebuild it once im less busy. You can only download/steam films that have been converted, and to download you hold down on the item to bring up the context menu, then click download.
You can find the settings saving error fixed in the latest attachment at the top of the screen.
Thanks

Reply to Post 5
Thank you for fixing the save settings. I've been filling my put.io account up with converted .mp4 movies. I bought a subscription to put.io so that I can use the app you developed. However when I open the app on my phone, the movie list shows up, but I'm not ablt to do anything with them. They wont open at all for streaming or downloading and I don't have my phone plugged into the computer when using the app. I cant hardly wait until you have the time to rebuild this app. When all the bugs ahve been worked out I think this app will be amazing. Until then I wait in frustration.........

Well I will say it could be months until I am able to do anything as this was just a research application into WP7 development (I learned many lessons )
For the moment, if you could give me more details about the movies not working - does an error appear? What does it say? Have you double checked Put.io to see if the videos are converted? All this information can help me see if I can fix anything...
I know the Mango update brings more video streaming capabilites in the near future, maybe that will help.
P.s I hope you lying about buying a sub to use this app

Workshop2 said:
Well I will say it could be months until I am able to do anything as this was just a research application into WP7 development (I learned many lessons )
For the moment, if you could give me more details about the movies not working - does an error appear? What does it say? Have you double checked Put.io to see if the videos are converted? All this information can help me see if I can fix anything...
I know the Mango update brings more video streaming capabilites in the near future, maybe that will help.
P.s I hope you lying about buying a sub to use this app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, Im not kidding. I paid for a sub to put.io I've been adding .mp4 files to put.io from mobilism.org. The files are in .mp4 format. If I add them from my computer through Zune, they work on my phone, just not through the put.io app. At this time I am not getting any errors popping up because Im not able to do anything at all as I mentioned before.
Out of curiosity, I added an .avi movie to put.io and then from the site, converted it to .mp4. I wasnt able to view it from the app so I reinstalled your previous app and signed in. The .avi movie file showed in my list and I was able to stream it. However it buffered a LOT. I tried to download the file and eventually the app crashed. So I added the latest updated app back to my phone. Which puts me where I am now, still not able to download or stream my .mp4 files. Am I doing something wrong??

No, it sounds like the application isn't working. Dont hold your breath for a quick fix as im extremely busy at the moment. Thanks for the interest though, makes me want to do it even more (btw, what device are you using?)

Workshop2 said:
No, it sounds like the application isn't working. Dont hold your breath for a quick fix as im extremely busy at the moment. Thanks for the interest though, makes me want to do it even more (btw, what device are you using?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the HTC Surround. Ok, I'll just just check back now and then as I am very interested in using your app

After a lot of trial and error, I figured out how to get the movies to stream to my phone. I have to upload torrent .avi files to put.io and then convert them to .mp4 from the site. Uploaded .mp4 files wont work for some reason. However, I also found an app ~ yomomedia. With yomomedia I can rss my put.io files and stream them to my phone. The stream player lets me rewind or fast forward through the movie and also saves my place if I need to leave the screen. With the put.io wm7 stream player, I can only pause the movie. If I leave the screen I loose the movie all together.
Just thought I'd let you know

FRX07/ Android/ or player issue? Playing .mp4/.mkv movies

I have dl/ed Soul Player and Mvideo player to attempt to watch some of my movies, the movies play just fine in WinMo. I notice the movies (those that will load) will just do nothing, they do not give an error that the file can not play but they also do not play at all However the time does countdown on the file as though it is playing the file (like it will say 5 seconds into the movie). If I move the scroll bar the screen will show that particular frame then be stuck on that frame.
am i missing something, there doesn't appear to be a stock movie player with android.
this affects multiple movies btw and the quality is fine in winmo..

There isn't a 'stock' movie player that I know of.
This is expected behavior (if you will). The codecs in Android do not make full use of the hardware for whatever reason - hyc has pushed the libs a little farther than they are capable of currently, but he was never able to match WinMo... We're still missing something on the Android side of things.
HQ YouTube has this same issue - seems videos above a certain resolution do not play nice. I'll have to do some searching to find hyc's posts on this topic, something you should've already done...

I got a large number of hits on it when I searched the issue but nothing providing an explanation similar to what you have stated, I suppose I will just continue viewing videos in winmo then.
Thanks for the assistance!

MDavisiw said:
I got a large number of hits on it when I searched the issue but nothing providing an explanation similar to what you have stated, I suppose I will just continue viewing videos in winmo then.
Thanks for the assistance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Found hyc's post after a couple minutes of searching.
Searching and reading isn't easy or simple, I don't pretend that it is. Just an essential part of working with any open source project.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=13834432&postcount=28
That post basically summarizes the conundrum we have with video playback in Android.

Is it an android limitation that videos cant run in background?

i hate to bring up old windows mobile but i actually liked that i was able to have a video running in the background. i notice any video app whether its youtube, slingplayer, or the gallery and i go into another app or home the video stops.

I don't understand why you would need a video playing in the background when you're not actively on that app unless you want it to buffer in the background. Which is a good idea and kind of disappointed that Android hasn't implemented this in yet.

i am about to post and say that it's technically possible, an app developer would just have to correctly code the onPause and onStop function to continue the video when the app loses foreground focus. but i dont know for sure if some type of video api is limited within the OS. i doubt that, and i bet it's possible. just nobody coded their apps in such a manner.
it is useful, lets say you are watching a video and you need to switch away for a few minutes but you want to keep listening to the audio while you write an email etc.

I'd say about 3/4 of the time I have a video/TV show on I'm not really watching but enjoy having it in the background. This would be great.

Is this a phone or a PC with a 23 inch monitor? We can't window apps, so audio aside I don't see the allure.

RogerPodacter said:
i am about to post and say that it's technically possible, an app developer would just have to correctly code the onPause and onStop function to continue the video when the app loses foreground focus. but i dont know for sure if some type of video api is limited within the OS. i doubt that, and i bet it's possible. just nobody coded their apps in such a manner.
it is useful, lets say you are watching a video and you need to switch away for a few minutes but you want to keep listening to the audio while you write an email etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. It's PROBABLY technically possible but it just hasn't been done.

I'm not seeing the allure of it either.
This is my phone after all. I would hate for video sound to be playing in the background when I get a phonecall.

bowsersoulstar said:
I'm not seeing the allure of it either.
This is my phone after all. I would hate for video sound to be playing in the background when I get a phonecall.
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Click to collapse
That happened to me once. I was watching a....questionable flash video and an important call came in. It kept playing during the call and the caller could hear it.
Awkward....

Bahaha, that's hilarious. And yeah, I meant only audio. When I'm working at home I would rather have a TV show on in the background then music, regardless of whether or not I can see it. Hearing Hank Hill call someone a jackass helps me work more than music. I just wish we were actually allowed to bring phone's with camera's into work, and this would be doubly useful.

ok thanks for the info guys. for those who dont like it simply stop the video before u hit home. i used to do it all the time on wimo and it worked great. sometimes im watching a game and a text comes in and i dont want to wait till commercials to answer it.

The act 1 video player allows this , though you have to say 'play in background' every time you want it to happen. It's also not the greatest video player ever

This would be very useful for youtube. A lot of times I "listen" to youtube videos only for the music.

Awesome app for having video running along other apps.
Stick it!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.myboyfriendisageek.stickit

B1ny said:
Awesome app for having video running along other apps.
Stick it!
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.myboyfriendisageek.stickit
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I confirm it's now possible with Stick it!, works with YouTube too
QR Code :

Stick it is awesome.. I've had it for a few weeks.