The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

It sort of drives me nuts with how picky the N9 can be on video playback. It doesn't help that Flash playback is already pretty crummy, so trying to view any video media on here has been a bit of a headache. Whenever I try to download MP4s or FLVs of videos I want to watch, they grab a thumbnail and will play about 10 seconds of the video. Then it stops and says "You can't play these type of files on this device." What's more strange is it plays some MP4s and FLVs just fine(like the one my personal band has posted on our Youtube page and I've downloaded for offline access and everything). Mov videos- Forget about it.I've had friends shoot me videos from the iPhone's camcorder and it doesn't even try playing it. I've tried Open Video Player but it seems essentially tit-for-tat with it the Stock Player. If it plays on one, it plays on the other.

Does anyone have any advice or alternate video players that fix the kind of crummy experience I'm having? I could have swore the codec support was much better than this. I know I had much better luck on my N900, but that was probably partially because of VLC as a backup if the stock one didn't work(which it most did).

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

mplayer and kmplayer. :)

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Viewing videos is actually much better with the N900 than the N9, in my opinion. However, I read that video playback of the N9 was fine before PR 1.2, unfortunately I don't know how to downgrade the video player (if possible, but I don't htink so). I think that your best option is to install Mplayer and Kmplayer (and VLC, but I did not succeed in installing it since PR 1.3).

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Thanks for the quick feedback guys. I'm not seeing either app in the Store unfortunately. I tried a search of TMO and I couldn't find any announce threads. I remember these programs from the N900, are they compatible with the N9?

And just to be clear, I don't think this problem started with PR 1.3, I believe it's been this way since I got the phone.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=42
works fine on my pr1.3

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

difference between kmplayer & mplayer ??

do i need to install both or just one ?? - if yes, which one ??

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Kmplayer uses Gstreamer or Mplayer to render videos, it's just the GUI. If you install Mplayer, you can select either Gstreamer or Mplayer when using Kmplayer.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Ok getting somewhere! With Gstreamer, some videos are starting to play PERFECTLY(namely the MOV iPhone videos), others are just giving audio and like snapshots of what the video should be. With MPlayer everything players but the video lags WAY WAY behind the audio(music videos and movie clips are way out of sync). Any ideas there?

For those who are behind like me, here's the link to KMPlayer.

Here's the link to a DEB of MPlayer to allow you to select between MPlayer and GStreamer in KMPlayer.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Please use mplayer_1.0svn20120427-1, which performs better.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

I prefer Open Video Player to kmplayer. Only there sometimes is a problem when you close it so it will just turn invisible and prevent you from opening it or playing videos but a simple "killall openvideoplayer" in terminal will fix it.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

I have simple .avi files that nor Mplayer nor Gstreamer read here. I only have sound with both players on these files. With VLC (which I finally successfully installed, my problem had nothing to do with PR 1.3), they are correctly played and it is smooth enough. Subtitles work fine too. The only problem is that I don't know how to switch from fullscreen back to windowed mode, a double tap won't do anything. Any idea welcome here.

The combination of KMplayer (although I hate this GUI) and VLC is thus useful, but I'd like a better GUI for Mplayer to be honest, like SMplayer (which existed on the N900, perhaps a port would be possible).

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

i seconded open video player as well,i had the same problem as as thread starter, but once I switched to OVP, I no longer face the same prob.
Edit : just tries out kmplayer, wow the resolution is much better !!! Now I realized OVP display bad resolution for clips around 480p.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

I wonder why are you sharing this information, or lack thereof. Could you not just give your nr 1 reason of for your hate feeling? As such, waste of bandwidth IMO.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

no one can do a codec pack like the n900 "extra decoders"?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Well, that's just a matter of taste, I just speak for myself. I don't like the KMplayer GUI because I find it to lack too much features (I'd like a regular menu button somewhere to access more mplayer functions, such as subtitles delays and so on), it also lacks a play/pause button, and I don't like the fact that I have to go back to the previous screen (with entries like Current file, Favorites, WorldTV99 and Most recent files displayed in front of the video) to access the progress bar. A progress bar showing up in the bottom of the video with a simple tap, like in OVP, would be simpler and more handy, in my opinion. But again, that's just my opinion and that's already what I said in my previous post. Everybody won't think the same, but it would still be better if we had more choices for the players, like we had with the N900.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Thanks for the recommendation, but I've had OVP for a long time now and I haven't been able to find a single video it will play that the Stock Video Player doesn't. OVP doesn't play any of the videos I was referring to before, but it does play the audio strangely enough(even stranger is it says "Video format not suitable: Skipping" but it continues to play the audio anyway). KMPlayer at least gives me some glimpse of hope with the choppy video it displays.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

And I absolutely agree with you, KMPlayer can be a bit of a pain to use, but it works. The GUI is definitely confusing at first glimpse and just understanding their paradigm on searching and selecting videos takes a while to understand. The landing screen seems pointless because you just jump into lists of folders and doesn't really make good use of the screen real estate. Like you said, it's a matter of taste and clearly the Dev went "Function over Form" which is fine because the software does work.

PS: Any advice on getting that VLC installation to work correctly on PR 1.3, Kabouik?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Sure. I don't remember exactly what prevented me to install VLC but I do remember I felt like a dumb when I realized why it was not working. Just try this first and report here the error you have, if any (but it may just install correctly), perhaps it will help me to remember.

Don't expect VLC to be very useable though. I find it less choppy than KMplayer, but when you're in fullscreen, I think you're stuck in it with no possibility to pause or return in windowed-glitchy-mode (unless you have a N950 with keyboards to use shortcuts).

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Interesting, because only yesterday I was about to pull my eyes out when I realised that (despite PR1.3) still can not play videos well in the stock player. I have a whole bunch of .avi movies that I downloaded (but never watched) for my N900. Those that I did watch played, well, perfectly, as one would expect. These very same vids play badly on my N9, freezing very breifly every 5 frames or so.

So I did a bit of research and googling and installed OVP and it plays all of those vids I couldn't play before, and without stuttering. SWEET.

I'll be honest and say I didn't read enough about mplayer, kmplayer etc, but once I get my head round what is needed for that I'll give it a go as well.

Does anyone know of a step-by-step for mplayer etc? For those of us not too familiar/comfortable with having to input lines of code in terminal just to watch a film or tv show.

Thanks

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

If you just want to play the video without subtitles or anything particular, I think it's something quite simple like "mplayer /path/to/file.avi". You'll find the commands easily on the Internet, including perhaps how to control the playback using the terminal.

By the way, I think it's smoother when using only mplayer like that than when using KMplayer. Anyone could confirm?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

If OVP fixed you're problem, then you're good to go, but I'm not here to stop you from using KMPlayer. I've personally had better luck with KMPlayer. I guess it's all on a "per video" basis so your mileage may vary.

For the install, you can absolutely use a terminal method but I personally preferred not to enable Dev Mode on my N9. It's an easy option if you like to do it that way, but I just feel safer(and lazier) using trusted deb packages. I'd say the simpler way is this:

1) Allow installations from non-Store sources on device.
2) Download the MPlayer and KMPlayer packages from here. You'll probably want to opt for the most up to date packages ("kmplayer_0.10.9.910-1_armel.deb" and "mplayer_1.0svn20120427-1_armel.deb")
3) Select those packages from the transfers list and install both individually. If you're uber paranoid, feel free to restart your device after each install. I got into a habit of it from the N900 days. It's a time waster, but it doesn't do any harm, it can only help.

That's really it! Let me know if anything wasn't clear. Best of luck!

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

I'll try to find this out tomorrow, but it seems to me that the winning combination of players is KMplayer (from the above link) and mplayer from sheeplauncher.net. The file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ shows;

deb http://sheeplauncher.net/debs/ ./ #Packrat

I added that through MeeCatalog.

Strangely SMplayer plays the same test video like crap that plays perfectly smoothly with KMplayer using mplayer 2:2.0 package.

The video that I'm using is one that was ripped from a DVD, Nautilus shows it as Dimensions 712x462, Codec H264, 24 frames per second, bitrate 18kbps.

Audio is Dolby Digital (AC-3) Stereo with 192 kbps.

This basically is 720p, and works a treat with this combination!

slaapliedje

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Can you detail what exactly you filled in the MeeCatalog fields for adding this repository? I added the line you mentioned and updated, but still no mplayer found when searching by keyword. I'm currently using the mplayer that was packaged for KMplayer (but I use UMplayer as GUI).

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

I put;
Name of the catalog: Packrat
URI to the catalog: http://sheeplauncher.net/debs/
Distribution: ./

That last line is a period and / in case you can't see it for whatever reason.

MeeCatalog is odd though, it doesn't show everything in the repositories I've added through it. I think there has to be a specific 'packages' like file for it, anyone know this for sure?

For example, I also have rzr's repositories in there, but p-uae doesn't show up under MeeCatalog, but other things do.

slaapliedje

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

tried to add the repository to meecatalog but it don't see the mplayer :/

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Not sure why that doesn't work sometimes, but I would just verify there is a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ that has that repository line in it, then 'apt-get install mplayer2' as root.

slaapliedje

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Thanks for your reply Slaapliedje, and sorry that I haven't seen it before.

I've done what you explained but still no mplayer2 found, either in MeeCatalog or by using the Terminal. There is a meecatalog.list file with the corresponding Packrat repository line, but still no mplayer2 found after apt-get update.

Would there be another way of getting the deb file? Have you saved it somewhere, just in case?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

In /etc/apt/sources.list.d/meecatolog.list, I have an entry like this;

Oops, my bad, the package name is NOT mplayer2, it's just mplayer.

As an 'apt-cache search mplayer' shows;

This shows that the package version is 2:2.0.

dpkg -l|grep mplayer shows this;

Hope this all helps.

slaapliedje

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

It helped:) thank you.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Great, thanks. I thought the package was mplayer2, hence the issue. I finally managed to update mplayer to the 2.2.0 version. Let's see now if it makes the rendering of videos of higher resolution smoother. :)

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Where did you find it?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

I just did what Slaapliedje indicated, i.e. using the Sheeplauncher/Packrat repository, then updating/upgrading mplayer.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Any .deb file of the new mplayer for the noobs (like me :D)?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

You can just go to the web URL and download it there.... but really, to become less experienced, the proper way is to install the repository, since it'll grab all the proper dependencies.

But here is a list of all the .deb files in it.

http://sheeplauncher.net/debs/

slaapliedje

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Ok, got it with the apt-get thing! Thanks. Can we maybe update the kmplayer also to a newer version?

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

But is that version newer? Can you paste here the version line that mplayer prints when executed as the package version shows only whatever the person doing the packaging decided put there.

http://sheeplauncher.net/debs/ lists modifying date for mplayer_2.0_armel.deb as 2011-Aug-24 04:57:44.

MPlayer 2:1.0svn20120427-1 is dated 24.07.2012. Version is UNKNOWN-4.4.1.

I just compiled svn snapshot from today for my laptop and it shows version as SVN-r35708-snapshot-4.6

There also exists a fork of mplayer which is called mplayer2, but I think that's not what we are talking about here.

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Hey guys,


I might be asking a stupid question here but I have PR1.3 and installed OVP 0.0.4. Installed ok and lists videos ok. But will not play anything? The time is stuck on 59.59 and the circle keeps spinning even on the stock videos the N9 comes with?

any ideas? or is it not supported on PR1.3?

Cheers

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

Grazy,

OVP is almost broken for PR1.3...

Re: The N9 is really picky for video playback. Any good 3rd Party apps?
 

thanks for that! i sort of thought that might be the case. shame! got some videos that just will not play!!