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[Manger-Fan]

Hi,

I am the problem in Gismo if a title is over It will stop Gismo! It shows "Resume playback" Only when I press it comes the next Title. There's music on a NAS device.

Thanks and Greetings

[Manger-Fan]

Hello moderators, not a solution for me?

Thanks and Greetings

[JimH]

What phone is it?

[Manger-Fan]

Hello,

HTC Desire mit 2.2


Greetings

[dildaly]

I have kept updating MC - now on 16.0.60 - and still gismo wont play video files. It will stream audio, and the audio from the video files, but as for visuals, only the video thumbnail is displayed.
Android is Orange San Francisco android 2.1 system

[JimH]

Video conversion on Android is working pretty well for me. 

Try renaming this directory. 
C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 16\Plugins\mmx264

Then shut down and restart.

[roolark]

Video streaming is not working on my gizmo app either. The screen shown is just "server is preparing file" endlessly.

Setup:
1. Latest gizmo app on android market
2. Motorola Droid (1), 2.2 froyo
3. MC 16.0.60
4. Files encoded as mp4/m4v with aac audio
5. Connecting to library server over wifi, at home. Server and gizmo are then on the same network, so bandwidth/speed should not be an issue..?
6. Sever is 6GB ram, Core 2 Quad... so its a fairly fast machine.

Steps I've tried:
1. Uninstall/reinstall MC 16.0.49 - 16.0.60... no difference in versions/symptoms
2. Renamed/deleted plugins/mm264, then restarted computer

The first time 1 deleted the mm264 folder on 16.0.60, and tried to play an mp4, I finally got some audio for 5 seconds. That was the best I've managed to date.

The plugins/mm264 folder seems to be re-created when I delete and then try playing a different video. I've tried every mp4/m4v in my collection now, and none of them work.

[marko]

Jim, what are realistic expectations of Gizmo video streaming at the moment?

For example, (all testing performed using Gizmo bld .59 + MC16 latest beta, and 3g data connection):

AVI files shot on my camera (sub-100 Mb) begin playback in less than 30 seconds.
A 6 gig mkv file takes almost 30 minutes to 'prepare' and begin playback.
A 700 Mb AVI file takes around 5 minutes to begin playback.

My media server PC returns a JR Benchmark score of 3501

The menu button does nothing while video plays, tapping the screen pauses.

One of the things that no-one seems to report when saying that Gizmo video streaming is not working is the size of the source files. Perhaps, people are not expecting a 30 minute wait for the stream to come online, give up after a few minutes assuming it is not working?

Has a cache been considered for transcoded Gizmo video files? Seems like a good idea to me...

-marko.

[dildaly]

I've tried deleting the directory indicated by JimH - but no change sadly.
I have been testing it with quite small video files (3 minute music videos) so that they are completed fairly quickly (to answer marko's suggestion) - but still just get audio, no video.

Really hope you guys can solve this one as I love the concept of video streaming and the audio stream works really well.

[JimH]

I've tried deleting the directory indicated by JimH - but no change sadly.
I have been testing it with quite small video files (3 minute music videos) so that they are completed fairly quickly (to answer marko's suggestion) - but still just get audio, no video.

Really hope you guys can solve this one as I love the concept of video streaming and the audio stream works really well.

If you're using build 60, then the problem may be with the default video player on your phone.

[JimH]

Marko,
This is the area of our focus right now.  The system already caches and stacks the video files.  A 6GB file will take a long time to convert and begin playback, but the next time it should begin playback immediately.

There are a lot of moving parts to this, but we think it's important.

Jim

[JimH]

Video streaming is not working on my gizmo app either. The screen shown is just "server is preparing file" endlessly.

Try small files to test.  A movie might take an hour (the first time).  More above.

[dildaly]

Jim - what video player do you suggest please?

[JimH]

I don't know.  Sorry.

[roolark]

Thanks for the response. The biggest file I've tried so far has been 900MB. I'll try to find a smaller one this afternoon and post the results.

Did you mean that it would take awhile the first time for each individual movie, or just for 1 movie and all others should be faster?

Initially I had in Options > Media Network > Video conversion set to None, and that did no good, currently it's set to convert to MPEG4 medium bandwidth, which still hasn't worked.

If I try a smaller file <900MB, and still no luck, is there a different conversion setting I should be using?

[roolark]

Update:

I tried playing an 86MB mp4 file on gizmo, and it never made it past "server is preparing".

So then I tried a 5MB avi file. I got about 1sec of sound, no video, and I was then dumped back to a list of my video files.

Prior to both of those attempts, I had renamed the mm264 folder, and restarted my PC.

[JimH]

Make sure you have the most recent build (60).

[roolark]

OK, so the last response I received was to try 16.0.60. In my initial problem report, I'd indicated that I was in fact already using 16.0.60 (which I was). I haven't responded the last couple days because there has been no change. Today I upgraded to 16.0.63... and my videos still won't play on Gizmo.

My setup:
1. Gizmo (latest from the market store, as of today 04/05)
2. MC 16.0.63
3. Motorola Droid 1, android 2.2
4. Core2Quad, 4GB ram PC
5. Files encoded as MP4 with aac audio in Handbrake

What I've done:
1. Uninstalled MC 16.0.x many times with registry clean etc. Re-installed as many times.
2. Removed the mm264 directory after each video play attempt, restart computer

What I've noticed:

So, today I noticed a folder called "J River Conersion Cache", after I tried playing a video today, I watched the folder. When my gizmo failed to play the video and dropped me back to the video list, I saw my converted video in the J River Conversion Cache folder. It was an MP4 file in the conversion folder. I opened it in VLC to see if it would play and it did (the audio was out of sync, though). It played to the very end, so the video was not truncated.

In MC > Options > Media Network > Client Options > Video Conversion, there are many choices to pick. Initially I tried all of them, without any working. This last time, however, I had Video Conversion set to WMV, but in that cache folder, the file created was still an MP4.

So:
1. Changed setting from WMV to MPEG2/DVD-Stream, rebooted computer. Deleted the mm264 folder again, rebooted the computer. Launched MC 16 and verified setting was still convert to MPEG2/DVD-Stream... it was. Tried to play on Gizmo, it did not. Looked in the cache folder above... MP4.

Basically, I cannot play movies still, and I'm not sure whether changing the video conversion options in Media Network is supposed to make a Gizmo difference, but it does not appear to make a "Cache" difference.

* roolark = Frustrated

[bil1010105]

roolark, I have the exact same problem. Same phone and Android version. 

[JimH]

We're still working on video conversion, so it may be our problem. 

[roolark]

I'm just wondering if there's been any development progress on this? .65 or new gizmo release maybe?

[JimH]

Yes.   You should see it soon.

[JohnT]

Hey guys, what resolution is the phone you're using?  We found a problem here with a G1 which we were producing videos with too high a resolution so it played audio but no video.  That's been fixed for the next build.

If that's not it, have you try copying one of the "stacked" mp4 files to the phone's sd-card and see if it plays directly on the device using any native video player.  If not, then we're producing non-compatible video files for that device and if you've got a small example you could email it to me (johnt at jriver dot com).

Thanks for helping out with this issue!

[roolark]

I copied one of my mp4's to my SD card and tried to play it directly on my phone. It did NOT work.

I can speculate, then, that the problem (at least in my case) is not really Gizmo.

Apparently Android's stock movie player is incapable of playing certain mp4 files that use H. 264 containers that aren't standard or are higher end. I had used handbrake to create all of my mp4's and m4v's, and used the "normal" preset and changed the audio from aac 160 bit to 256. I'm not sure what part of that process made my mp4's incompatible, but they are.

Over at the Handbrake forums, they recommend downloading from the market Rockplayer, which can play additional codecs. I did download it, and it works. So, with Rockplayer on my android, I can play mp4's.

My question now is, how does Gizmo determine which video player to use on the android? Is it possible to tell Gizmo to use something like Rockplayer rather than the stock movie player?

If not, do you have any video conversion settings in Options > Media Network > Client > Video conversions that may work? My phone is simply a moto droid 1 (doesn't get any more standard than that).

Thank you for all your help, too.

[JohnT]

... If not, do you have any video conversion settings in Options > Media Network > Client > Video conversions that may work? My phone is simply a moto droid 1 (doesn't get any more standard than that)....

I'm sure we can get this fixed so that the conversion will work for you, I just need to figure out what the droid doesn't like about the files we're producing.  We have G1, Nexus 1, and Nexus S phones for testing, but not a Droid.

If you have a really small video for testing, you could send me two files:
1. the original file in your Media Center library
2. the converted file that fails to play on your phone

You can send them to johnt at jriver dot com.

Thanks.

[roolark]

Solved (sorta):

1. In my MC library, all of my dvd's were stored as mp4/m4v. I had done those conversions from ISO's, using handbrake. Not sure why, but MC was not ever able to successfully convert my mp4/m4v's to a format that worked on my phone.

2. I used MC to 'rip' my ISO's into their respective ts folders. Now, when I attempt to stream a movie to my phone, MC converts the movie from ts to mp4 and my phone plays it perfectly.

From my perspective, the biggest problem now is storage. If I could afford the extra tera's, I would buy sufficient storage. As things stand now, I've backed up all my movies as perfect ISO's on an external drive, and smaller mp4's in my library. Now it looks like I will need to re-think how I've done this. Gizmo is a good product, and I'm happy it is working for video streaming.

[JohnT]

Thanks for reporting back roolark.  I'm glad the videos are playing on the Gizmo when you convert from the TS files, but it sounds like we need to get smarter about recognizing when an existing mp4 format file is indeed playable on the Droid so we don't do unnecessary conversions.

My question now is, how does Gizmo determine which video player to use on the android? Is it possible to tell Gizmo to use something like Rockplayer rather than the stock movie player?

I'll look into this.

I had used handbrake to create all of my mp4's and m4v's, and used the "normal" preset and changed the audio from aac 160 bit to 256.

You should try using the "low" preset and leave the sound at 160kb.