I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I love this phone - truly - I mean, look at my stupid username. But the media player is crap.

Can a computer genius explain to me why the media player is so skittish?

When I'm listening to music, it seems as if the media player has gobbled all the RAM and when an email/SMS/phone call happens, it's like a mini-earthquake in the phone. The 'new email' tone is cut off in the beginning, the music stutters. It's all very sad. It feels like the entire operation is a delicate house of cards.

The 'Now Playing' interface is completely uninspiring.

My DivX and xVid videos never play completely smoothly - they always seem to be somewhere around 20fps.

And, as someone else pointed out, the media player doesn't pause the music when a phone call comes in - how stupid is that??

It sucks because I was excited to ditch my N810, Blackberry and Cowon S9 for one device. And yes, it does all work, but shouldn't it work well?

So, can someone explain, in layman's terms, why the media player is such a resource hog. And is it fixable? And, if not, where the heck is Canola to save us from this mess?

I

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Media Player will pause the music if you get a call and are using Bluetooth headphones.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I use wired earbuds. Why would it be specific only to bluetooth? That makes no sense.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

And, I'm serious, I'd love an explanation from a programmer as to why the media player is so weak compared to the other great functions of this device.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

And what would you have the "programmer" say. I am a programmer (though not for Nokia) I can offer you random excuse #23.

"We screwed up"

Happy?

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

The media player is only the visible top layer of the multimedia framework, there are multiple layers below building a complete, powerful and flexible solution. Therefore, the problem is not the mediaplayer (well, only in terms of limited functionality, but IMHO it's quite ok at what id does, at least for my needs).
The main problem might rather be that the multimedia framework and its components such as gstreamer and pulseaudio are not yet perfectly optimized for the power of such a mobile device. OTOH, it gives developers such as me endless possibilites, such as seen in recaller, to build feature rich media applications with very little effort.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I have to agree, i find the audio will jump when i'm browsing even the "lightest" of web pages, for such a powerful device it really is disappointing. Perhaps the next firmware will address the issue? I have installed other media players but they aren't much better.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

No - I'm serious when I said I'd be interested in an explanation - such as the cogent one that twaelti provided. No need to be defensive - I'm just trying to understand my deivce.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I love my n900, but the quality of audio from media player is rubbish compared to my n82 ( using same headphones) and also it stutters when i get a text and the phone trys to chrun out the text alert tone. Also it says its playing one song while im actually listening to another.. gets confusing! deffinitly needs some tweaking

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

That really made my day :D
Great answer!

BR

Thomas

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Anyone tried the "next track" button on bluetooth headphones?

I just did and in 2 seconds Id skipped al the way past 200 songs to the end!

Because the next track action auto repeats :eek:

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I guess I'll ask this here instead of making a new thread, but is there no way to loop/repeat videos like you can with audio? Every media player I've ever used at least has the option for video auto-repeat, with most of them implementing it by default, though I see no such option with the built in media player or KMplayer which I downloaded just to see if this option was available.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Stinks? I think you are giving the media player more credit than it deserves,

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

For me the media player need to be improved in several ways. Because it lacks some functions of my old iPod:

- Gapless Playback (this is so important for me)
- Much better performance for a less powerfull device (iPod is so good to search, and play songs faster)
- EQ

Also, a software for automatically sync songs, like iTunes, would be awesome. I've tried Songbird but didn't like it!

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Media Player isn't perfect and has its issues, but it generally fits all my needs. I would REALLY like to see it open sourced so that we can fix it.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Yeah, this would be good, instead of waiting Nokia to do it for us!

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I think that would help other parts of the system as well. The cause of the camera app not writing to anything but FAT filesystems would have been found faster.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

run top command while playing media player, see how much disk space is on rootfs. user is an issue not the player. lack of functionality yes, alot of things can be improved especially how it sorts music but i have a computer background and honestly its media player is a blast. Phone does pause music playback when call comes. If you are having resource hog issues, there are quite a few other things that can cause that. I so far have not had resource hog issues with the media player. couple of days ago, i played harry potter and the half blood prince movie divx format on it. Again very smooth, did take its time to load.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I can buy a better MP3 player for less than £5 off the bay. Even music on a memory stick work better in my car stereo than this "computer" lol

...and why make excuses for it? its crap. Whether its the fault of the OS/phone/media player, its crap.

Nokia should really get on with releasing a decent fix to cover this and some basic phone features. Oops been here before:D

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

That's because its not mean to be a music player - it DOES music playing, but I don't recall Nokia ever saying it would replace your ipod etc - or for that matter even hinting that it would.

I strongly suggest if you bought the device to replace an existing mp3 device then you should have done more research before forking over the cash.

And while we are on the subject can we please stop with the "Oh man it sucks" or "Cmon you gotta be kidding me" threads about subjects that have either

a) Been discussed to death in other threads
b) Are about functionality that if you had bothered to do even a small amount of research you would have realized was not the primary function of the device

When your ipod/mp3 player can VPN into my office VPN and allow me to remote admin my servers - come talk to me. Until then comparing the music playing functionality to a single use device like an iPod is both pointless and stupid.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

what??:confused:

Get real will you. My last 3 or 4 Nokias and Sonys over the last 5 yrs have been able to play tracks (the way an album looks) and end them properly (when a call is received). Why can't this " computer" ? I'm not asking for an iPod. Just something that works for £500.:rolleyes:

Taken straight from the Nokia www.:
Shuffle music and watch videos from the fast 32 GB storage - expandable up to 48 GB*
Fill and re-fill your device with a top USB mass storage transfer speed of up to 10 MB/s – get a DVD quality movie in a few minutes.
Enjoy music and videos with the extensive media support available, with the easy-to-use Maemo 5 Music & Video Player.
Be amazed by the stereo audio quality and the sharpness of the TV-out picture quality. Cable included.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

remember those sony walkman tape players? god, they were good! ;-)

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

What is the primary function of this device cos so far its not a phone and its music player is crap?? 2 fairly straight forward things to get right from a company that makes phones and plenty of music player phones I'd say.

oh and if the discussion is pointless and stupid, stay out of it.
This is a forum for godsake. New users will always have a view and there may be duplicated threads, but for people (like you) who seem to think its only purpose is to power the earth remotely - is quite frankly stupid and pointless to me. All I'm saying is what floats our boat don't float mine.:)

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

ummm....a tablet?!! duh :p

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

This is a strange answer and I'll assume you don't work for the Maemo team - correct me if I'm wrong.

So, if I am to understand you - the Maemo team essentially said, "let's just put some piece of **** media player on the N900 and call it a day. no one expects this to replace their PMP and they should be happy with what they get."

That doesn't seem right to me. I don't think they think that way - I have to believe they are less than pleased with the media player and want it to be better.

Hell, why didn't they just make incorporate Canola as the media player?

In any event, all they need to do is:

* better gui (look to the Zune HD UI for some inspiration)
* gapless playback
* pause music on phone call
* figure out a way to make the media player more robust when a txt/sms/phonecall interrupts the playback

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Ok i will attempt to answer some of the responses here then I am out.

This is not a PMP, was never advertised as one. The primary function of the device is and has always been as a personal computing device. Thats what Nokia have ALWAYS stated the device as being.

If you sole requirement for the device was as a phone and media player then you should have bought an iPhone. Though there is some question as to its effectiveness as a phone.

As far as the items taken from the website. I don't see one thing there that the device cant and doesn't do. Your complaint seems to be HOW it does them. Now God forbid you spend some time and check out the several other music/video players ALREADY available for the device. That would go against the standard "Its easier if I whine about it" mentality that seems to infect the greater majority of the populous today. Or better still - you could contribute to the ALREADY STARTED brainstorms for the media player. OR BETTER STILL you could suck up a few gray cells and write your own, thus solving your own issue and at the same time becoming less of a waste of bandwidth in the community as a whole. Thats what I and Fatal did when the pandora command line client needed a GUI.

Now I know some people are going to say, that's harsh etc etc, but quite honestly I am so tired of the whining I simply cannot summon the strength to try help these people any more.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

but it already does all that. I don't get what the problem is. Like i said before i think it has to do with the user, if you need help in setting up your music, i would be more than to happy to help anybody out.

sorting or how n900 sorts music is an issue with a lot of folks. if this is what you are referring to, there are quite a few threads that can help you. I think its fantastic how much power it gives to the user. Plug it anywhere and drag and drop files as you like. All the media player is asking you to be is stay organized.

again i think lack of functionality is an issue and that needs to be discussed. More methods of sorting, more tag options.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

That is an awful excuse for anything. Nokia included the media player with the device. I think it's safe to say media playback is something a lot of people use their "personal computing devices" for. Setting aside feature requests, the performance of the media player isn't acceptable.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

How is it a miserable excuse? By your logic if they hadn't included a media player at all then this wouldn't even be an issue.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

nokia claim they are the biggest maker of Media players in the world.
so saying this device is not meant to replace a media player is a bad excuse b/c nokia thinks there devices are replacements for them.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

for the record, i for one am quite satisfied with the media player. i don't experience lag when browsing and listening to music (even on heavier sites like derstandard.at).

i don't have a problem with the sorting or anything either, because i tend to keep my music organized in albums and hand-tagging them anyways. that's just the most efficient option when your music gets distributed over several devices, because usually none of them is consistent in the way they handle files...

i'd appreciate a decent EQ, but that's about it.

maybe the performance problems some people experience aren't due to the media player at all, but to other installed apps?

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

i am still baffled, how is the media player performance not acceptable? have u done any benchmark tests or u r just saying that.

i keep defending it because the audio quality is quite brilliant. There are other things like gsmarena pointed out. no eq, albumart has no fancy animation but how are they related to quality or output performance of the media player.

media player music playback / audio quality is very good. You might have issues due to some other reasons

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

I'[m quite unsatisfied with the media player as a music player goes. It's way too basic.
- No EQ, weird tag sorting and very confusing way of creating playlists and no folder browsing etc.
- Media player widget doesn't work half the time. (Does nothing when pressing Play)
- The fact that you have to edit the tracker config file manually to exclude or include some folders is rubbish also.

MediaBox app is definitely better although it does use more cpu and music gets interrupted even when locking the phone.
Make the media player either open source or at least make a better one. It is bad. No doubt about it.
All of my friends and family tried it out and they did not like it saying it's too weak. That's just shows how it is.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Has anyone mentioned the lack of a playlist editor, equalizer, sorting by date/artist/album/import date/genre/etc, integration of automatic album art updating & downloading, change view from grid to list, and the ability to delete or send a file (over bluetooth/e-mail/etc) directly from the player itself without leaving to go to the file manager?

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

Reference please. A link to a Nokia spokesman saying that will be fine.

As far as panning the media player for not being about to bluetooth files, isn't that a function of a file manager not a media player?

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

It's not amazing it's about average. It does what it does but it's like most of GUI softwares on linux: Half-done right waiting for someone to finish it. Bit like "look what I can do also". Hopefully it improves after couple of fw updates.

.edit
And when we are talking about performance issues we have to remember that there is different kind of people. Those who do not recognize difference between 25 and 50 fps and those who see difference. Addition to this i really want feedback and speed from this device as Steve Jobs puts it: "Boom". click and music starts to play/stop etc. No 1s pause just immediately like it does on other devices.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

It is not simply a question of staying organised. All my music is organised. When I got an ipod touch I spent like a month tagging my music and downloading album art from various websites (because the album art view on the ipod touch is so beautiful you just have to have album art). I also went through each and every one of my 4000 songs retagging album artist (before I got an ipod touch I only had song artist tags but I had to do album artist tags to make album cover art flow work better). So my music is so well organised.

I transfer my music to the N900 and everything falls apart. For some reason for many songs it shows album artist rather than song artist. It is totally random. I have tried synching with Windows Media Player, Media Monkey, Winamp, drag & drop. I have tried tagging with those three programmes plus mp3 tag. Nothing makes a difference.

Most of my music is compilation albums, R&B or Hip Hop. If a media player is showing album artist for any of those it might as well not show anything. For compilation albums it will just show Various Artist because it is showing the album artist not song artist. For a Hip Hop song it could have five featured artist and the device will just show the person who has the album.

That is just one of the many problems I have with the media player. None of these are problems I had with my Creative Player of 10 years ago. And believe it or not the media player is meant to be an important aspect of the N900. I am sure the device would not have 32gb internal plus sd card slot if it did not have a media player.

There is really no excuse for a £500 phone with 32gb not having as good a media player as a £40 mp3 player irrespective of whether the £500 device makes coffee for some people.

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

hm i don't use the tag album artist, but that does seem kind of strange.
although this bug i found suggests that it does work for others... maybe you could add something to that?

and there's another bug filed regarding the display of album artist / song artist. feel free to vote!

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

The issue with the album art has been addressed in at least 2 separate threads, the problem is how the songs have been tagged and solutions have been offered. Anything to do with iPhone is never going to be standard, iTunes is by definition a disaster.

And there us every excuse for a 500 pound device not being as good as playing music as a 40 pound mp3 player. ONE OF THEM IS AN MP3 PLAYER. That's all it does. It doesn't do anything else, the entirety of its existence is to play music. The N900's on the other hand is NOT solely to play music. As I said, when your 40 pound mp3 player can do ANYTHING else the N900 does I will be happy to listen to you compare the two devices.

I will now go back to trying to get my 3 year old mp3 player to play openarena. Its not working so well

Re: I'll Say It Again: The Media Player Stinks
 

The only conclusion reached in the threads on how the media player handles tags is that nobody has any idea how the media player handles tags.

I didn't buy my N900 just to replace my iPod Touch, I bought it to replace it in addition to the mobile computing aspects. If there is something that I know about every single PC that I have ever owned is that I could always find dozens of media players which did a better job that any dedicated PMP out there. There is just no good reason to excuse Nokia for releasing this half-assed media player, keeping it closed-sourced and without the ability to write plug-ins and giving no indication of wanting to improve it in the near future.

And frankly, you coming here and dismissing outright any sort of criticism is not helpful.