Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

(Please let the old thread die)

I have estabilished a proper project page for Extra Decoders Support (was: Decoders Support).

The purpose of the project is to get some specific missing multimedia formats indexed and supported by the built-in Media Player on the Nokia N900.

I need a couple of things from you now.

The project needs a new, transparent icon, because the one it's using now is just ugly and when I made it transparent it's almost invisible on the dark background ondevice.

I also need translations for the name and description in different languages, so please post your translations here.

XB-Maemo-Display-Name: Extra Decoders Support
XB-Description: Support for additional video and audio decoders in the Media Player

Note to translators: "Extra" doesn't mean "great" in this context, but "additional". And don't worry about moving words around, make it work for your language.

Example in Polish (note the added locale code pl_PL, be sure to include the one for your language):

XB-Maemo-Display-Name-pl_PL: Obsługa dodatkowych dekoderów
XB-Description-pl_PL: Obsługa dodatkowych dekoderów dźwięku i wideo dla wbudowanego Odtwarzacza

Apart from translations and the icon you can donate via PayPal (dominikowskipics@gmail.com) to support the project.

Oh, and I'm aware of the fact that Tracker sometimes dies during installation (no files available in Media Player). You have to wait for Tracker to re-index files, the best way to do this is to turn the phone off and on again (this is actually optional, but somehow makes me feel better ;) ), start the Media Player and wait... wait quite a bit, depending on how large your multimedia collection is. I'm not doing anything evil or unusual with tracker, so I'm not sure what the problem is, any help in this regard is very much appreciated, because it doesn't happen all the time.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

i do need something for .asf (linksys ip cam) iwas able to watch it with N810 using mplayer.. but the N900 media players tries to download the live video..

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Ditto. Would be great if it would support asf streaming for online radio.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

i can help translate it to Cambodian if you want. Hit me back a private message or something. Or contact me through email.

maxximuscool@gmail.com

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Here is fr_ca which will also work with fr_* (fr, be, ...)

Xb-maemo-display-name-fr_ca: Décodeurs A/V supplémentaires

(I find adding A/V (audio-video) clearer as decoder might be a bit abstract for mom&pop, ...)

xb-description-fr_ca: Support pour décoder davantage de formats audios et vidéos dans le lecteur de médias.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

I tested your newest version in extras testing (0.3) and I had problems with it needing to uninstall it in the end. On install I noticed you added a new package, ogg-support. I then loaded a few ogg files and tested it out. The media player recognized them properly and played them alright although it took a while for them to start playing. The problem began when I tried to seek within an ogg track, causing the media player to bug out. The media player tried to seek but just returns the marker back to time 0:00. As of result, no other media is able to be played including MP3's or Movies. You select a different track (mp3) but nothing happens. You press play/pause but it does not start the music.

After this I rebooted my N900 only to find it very sluggish. Sliding between desktops was VERY choppy. The whole system/ui seemed to stutter alot and it was very noticeable during UI transitions. Even playing games such as Bounce or SuperTux which ran perfectly before became choppy now. I checked top in xterm and in Conky to see if there was something eating up cpu cycles but everything seemed normal on idle. I went on and uninstalled decoders support, rebooted the device and all was fine. Because of this I am reluctant to give it a thumbs down on the extras page.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

jessi3k3: what did "tracker-status" say in x-term when your device was sluggish?

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

german:

XB-Maemo-Display-Name-de_DE: Zusätzliche Codec Unterstützung (personally I would like to stay with Extra Decoders Support in german...)
XB-Description-de_DE: Unterstützung für zusätzliche Video- und Audiocodecs im Media Player.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

I didnt check although I do remember seeing "tracker" something in top taking a good chunk during the sluggish startup but then the process disappeared. top showed the normal %1-4 of activity and even still it was sluggish everywhere. This prompted me to uninstall Extra Decoders Support after waiting for about 20 minutes to see if it went away.

Right now I'm trying to replicate the bug by attempting to go through the same steps (Ogg still bugs and locks media player when attempting to seek) but I cant seem to reproduce it. I'll let you know if it happens again.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Great work here. Just one question I can play Realplayer format files from filemanager but when I stream them from a site that says realplayer is needed it cannot read the file format and just hangs with a white page. This is the site
http://vip.tv-video.net/
My n800 used to play using a Realplayer plugin for Mplayer all be it a little bit jumpy.Any help would be appreciated.You can try it on the free videos.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

I am pretty sure the locale needs to be de_de not de_ger.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

I'll look into ASF and RealMedia streaming, but don't keep your hopes up, it's probably a limitation of the Media Player, adding the required decoders would most likely not change its behaviour.

Thanks for translations, I'll incorporate them in the new version after 0.3 gets into Extras. Keep them coming! :)


As for the error that makes your device sluggish and/or makes files disappear from the Media Player... sometimes the trackerd service does not restart after adding mimetypes. When you then start the Media Player, it triggers trackerd to wake up, but it will fail to re-index files in my experience. You need to turn your device off and on again, start Media Player and wait for a long while, the device may become sluggish while indexing/thumbnailing videos. Maybe it's because I'm using PR1.1 and tracker is more stable here than in PR1.0, but I'm running a 0.3.1 test version with absolutely no issues.

In any case, if anything unusual happens, please, please run tracker-status as a normal user (not root) in the terminal and let me know of the output. There's also a log file under /home/user/.local/share/tracker/trackerd.log that might have interesting information.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Why did suddenly "Decoders" become "Codec" in German? :)

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Joe would be more familiar with something like this, don't you think?

XB-Maemo-Display-Name-de_DE: Erweiterte A/V Formatunterstützung
XB-Description-de_DE: Unterstützung zusätzlicher Video- und Audioformate im Media Player.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

thanks, edited...

you're right, that's better...

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Alright, German and French translations are in the source code repository. As I've previously mentioned, I won't be releasing anything new until the 0.3 version lands in Extras. Keep those translations coming :)

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Double ditto on .asf. I've been waiting years to be able to listen to XM Radio online...thought I was there with flash support on the 900, but no joy.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Flac files aren't being picked up by my media player at all. They play when I open them with File Manager but aren't picked up in media player. Also no tag information (Flac IDV3) is being read and seek is disabled. Is there something I'm missing or are these limitations of the plugin?

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

This is sort-of being talked about in another thread:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...028#post478028

It appears that after the Pr1.1 update, extras decoders support v0.3 with ogg support v1.05 no longer recognizes flac tags but can still play the files ok. this has been confirmed by another user MrThunderfield.

I will try installing the separate ogg support v1.6rc1 when the servers are online.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Italian translation

XB-Maemo-Display-Name: Supporto per decoder supplementari
XB-Description: Supporto per decoder audio e video aggiuntivi per il lettore multimediale

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Slovak Translation:

XB-Maemo-Display-Name_SK: Podpora pridavných dekóderov
XB-Description: Podpora prídavných audio a video dekóderov pre vstavaný Media Player.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

man after I　instal your app, my n900 got some problems.

1.sometimes mp4 files are not working and they are all working before.
2. after I did about 10 times swtiching from one video to another, the whole media player is dead. it wont play any videos; Plus even the music player is not working.

3. the previous decoder works fine. after i found this problem i have uninstal your app. but it stil **** up my device.

Man what have you done!!!!! please give me some solutions!

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

plus rmvb will not be reconised

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

more detail:
the media play will stop play anything after i click on some files that is not supported.
i have to reboot my n900 to make it work again

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

What did "he" do? nothing, your the one that installed it. There seems to be some hazardous side effects on the .3 package so I have not installed it, but I think the .1 is stable.

For now I would recommend trying to install .1 and see if it fixes the issue, also make sure you reboot your device.

In a worst case scenario you will maybe need to flash your device back to factory defaults.

Edit: dongzhe look down at the bottom of your post, there is an edit button :D

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

can you please tell me how to shut down the media player ? so i don't ned to reboot my device everytime.. just for now

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

BTW, how many more votes are needed to get it promoted?

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

I;d love rm(vb) files to be supported :D

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

It's broken alright in PR 1.1. Videos that played before will not do so after upgrade.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

@ndi: same problem here. Two video clips I made worked just fine before the FW update but no longer work, even with this additional codec support.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

dongzhe,

I had the same problem as you did. Here is what i did to resolve it without re-flashing the device. First, I uninstalled the Extras decoder support v0.3, and uninstall the ogg support (i think that came with it). Then I switched power off and then power on. Then I switched power off again, and took battery out of phone for 1 min. Then put the battery back in and power on device. Now it was back to (normal) before I installed the Extras Decoder Support v0.3. Some how the Extras Decoder Support v0.3 had adverse affect on my n900, so I am not going to use it on my N900 anymore.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

I read some issues with .3 before the PR update, but now with the update it seems even worse.

If you install MPlayer it will play a lot of formats and files that the standard Gstreamer does not and it has not seem to made any negative impact on my device. I recommend SIS for a frontend.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Oh dear. I've used statistical data from the video list on my PC trying to transcode failed videos.

It just hit me that all the videos that don't play in the 1.1 update all fall into two categories:

a) XVid
b) MPEG

Wasn't xvid native to Nokia's player (e.g. - not an extra decoder)?

Also, who's responsible for MPEG?

Nice touch is - my MPEG files still have icons from the 1.01. Pushing them shows a ding and a yellow notification. MPlayer plays them just fine from Morton.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

hi guys, iv been using my phone from few weeks, i installed the extradecoder patch...all videos workd...almost all, i added 133 music videos...of various formates...like flv..mpeg1, mpeg2., avi, mp4... and i dont know like all i had.... 120 of them worked. no only 2 of the are working after i updadet to extradecoder 0.3..(it gave me a notifacation to update) i also updated the latest nokia maemo update...i dont know its the seond update since i got the phone.. so my point here....wat happen to all my videos..??? did this update screw up my phone? even when i uninstall it... i cant find the old package,....please let me know what i should do, or which other players are avalible that i can download..and not to mention... im not a pro or anything... so keep the language english here !!! lol !

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

a) Leave the phone reindex in peace. Takes a while.

b) There's a bug on bugs.maemo.org about the indexer stuck on one broken video.

c) Clear the cache and rescan. there's a post here, search forum for "rescan media"

d) There's at least an issue on xvid (chapters) and one on MPEG (mine, unknown yet).

e) Clear cache, reboot, let it index an hour. Check back.

Also, using caps and the enter key makes the post easier to read and more likely to get help.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

My xvids seem to play fine still after the update. Only broke the tag reading of Flacs which is now working with an update of the Ogg support to 1.06-rc1.

A bit off topic but tried streaming xvids via the upnp from my windows pc and the video won't play just audio. Is this an issue with the N900 or windows?

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

XVID works for me too, just did the newest update and tried to play an xvid encoded episode of metalocalypse and all was well.

Man the scrolling is way looser/faster now after the new update, seems my media files load faster too.

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Russian

XB-Maemo-Display-Name: Поддержка дополнительных кодеков
XB-Description: Поддержка дополнительных аудио и видео кодеков для Медиа Плеера

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

Does this package help me to play this media format in this link http://www.mbc.net/radio/fm/ ?

Re: Extra Decoders Support for the N900
 

If anyone is having problems after the upgrade to the newest firmware (2.2009.51-1) and Extra Decoders Support 0.3, try this solution:

Install the rootsh package using the Application Manager if you haven't already.

Open the X Terminal and execute these four commands:
We now have admin rights. Be careful. :)
When asked, choose "Y" (yes) and hit Enter. We have removed a long list of additional decoders and meta-packages. This is just one command, so pay attention.
Apt-cache is now clean. You can stop here if you want a pristine device, without any multimedia add-ons. There is really no need to re-flash if your device starts acting up.
This command installs Extra Decoders Support 0.3 and pulls in everything you've just removed back from the repository. Give it time.