Video playback... Don't get it
 

Hi,

Complete newbie here. I'm concious there is a newbie forum, but I need expereinced Media Player users to give their feedback. Hence this forum.

So... I became a proud owner of N800 2 weeks ago and bought it predominatly for browsing and controlling my Home Automation system. That's all working well.

I would also like to occasionally use it for Video Playback. I've read umpteen threads about Canola2, Mediabox, Kagu and others. Obviously, everyone has their preferences.

My questions are :

1. Is the N800/N810 intended to be used for Video playback ? Video on most format seems very jerky. Certanly my HTC phone along with CorePlayer seems to handle video alot better. The impression I get is that most people are down-scaling SD footage to allow the tablet to handle the video better. Correct me if I'm wrong.
   
2. Are all of the Video Apps I've mentioned above 'wrapper' applications to MPlayer ? For example, I've read Canola2 uses Mplayer, but how comes I can't see MPlayer in my application library ? It only eems to have installed with Mediabox.
   
3. There seems to be a high emphasis on playback from uPnP shares, but how about bog standard nework shares ? Obviously the file manager hs the abiliity to see shares. My experience has been : On Canola2 - No network share can be used (Only seems to see internal mem and cards) and Mediabox v0.95 crashes when attempting to define a watched network share.
   
4. I've read somewhere about an MPlayer v2. Should I be using this as my baseline Player to improve playback ? If yes, will the 'wrapper' applications (Canola, Mediabox etc..) be able to harness it's enhanced abilities ?

Any advice or answers would be much appreciated!

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

Nope. It's okay at it, but it clearly wasn't a priority in the design of the hardware or software.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

In response to point 4: You can install MPlayer rc2 (not version 2), and it will improve performance and fix some bugs. It will also help with Canola2's performance. However, I have noticed some cases in Canola2 where the program will get stuck in fullscreen mode and I will have to reboot, and I suspect that this problem is due to my mucking about with rc2, so I usually just stick to the basic MPlayer GUI to play videos. YMMV

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

I usually use tablet-encode to convert my videos before copying them to tablet. I have had success with watching small xvid videos (tekzilla's small xvid podcast) with mplayer though.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

Thanks for the responses.... But it's weird about Canola2 installing without Mplayer. I assume it's been designed to work both with or without it ?

I'll try out the mplayer rc2 install... Thanks.

Could anyone help with my q3? Just trying to figure out how to use network shares with Canola and find out if mediabox crashing during network share set up is an acknowleged bug.

Many Thanks.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

Hi dark :

Indeed. It works out of the box with the default media player as playback engine. This gives you the best compatibility with videos generated with the tablet converter. but is not as good as mplayer can be (but Mplayer embedded...like canola uses is not full speed as the standalone) so mplayer in canola is better for more formats.

Youtube plugin doesn't live without mplayer, so if you install youtube plugin it install mplayer.


We are only supporting by now UPNP shares. Samba share are in the queue to be implemented.

Br



Many Thanks.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

Yes, this is a known bug. This is going to be fixed in the next release.

The current version (0.95) of MediaBox only supports local files.
UPnP shares (audio/video/images) will be supported in the next release.
Windows SMB shares (as well as browsing phones over Bluetooth) are in the queue to be implemented in the near future.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

vid on n800 is fine. use mplayer and it'll play loads of stuff, everything I get from torrents, films, tv etc works fine. just use mplayer. a long trip takes on a different dimension!

it's one of the big "wows" of the NIT's that should be publicised more.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

Just to chip in.
I use canola2 + mplayer - which work perfectly.
I recode everything to Xvid, 400 pixel width (height variable), 128 mp3 stereo, 1000 kbps bitrate.

Re: Video playback... Don't get it
 

Many thanks for the responses. I'll keep playing around until I find my perfect set up.

Cheers :D