Notices

After playing around with the phone for a bit i've come across some points that could really be improved in the media player.

Aside from the obvious, like better codec support, here are some of the things i've found:

-No folder view for music playing: Say you have a large directory of MP3's cobbled together from various CD's, there's no way to just start playing that directory.
The Music player has a couple of views like albums but if you have a large pile of various MP3's they just clog up all the possible views.
The only way around would be to make playlists, and that has it's own problems.
A folder view would really help out.

-UPNP support is very twitchy: After a fresh reboot, my upnp server (thecus NAS) mostly shows up fine, but it can dissapear without notice. If it does the only way to get it back it to give the phone a reboot.
It keeps on showing up fine on the other devices, but not the phone.
Have tried 4 different UPNP servers like gmediaserver, mediatomb, built in upnp server on thecus, and ushare on different machines but it's the same on all of them. They show up fine and then all dissapear without any particular reason.
Having some control would be nice, like a "scan" button in the context menu. (if anyone knows a workaround, that'd be great)
Ofcourse if it just keeps showing up that'd be even better

-No scolling in movies played from UPNP: Pretty much what it says on the box. Watching a 3 hour movie without the ability to restart in the middle for whatever reason is a real pain.

-Black bars aren't black: On playing most DIVX or XVID files (the ones that do play ofcourse) the black bars on top and bottom aren't actually black, they're dark grey. Switching from the media player to something else and back (CTRL + Backspace) fixes it.
Looks like the UI isn't redrawn correctly.

-After adding new media it doesn't refresh properly: Happened a couple of times now. You add a couple of movies, or some music, and you disconnect and start up the media player to find out the stuff you added is not listed. Shutting down the app and starting it back up usually starts it refreshing.
Would be nice if this were more consistent.

-No keyscrolling in lists: Would be nice. I like to scroll with the up and down arrow while looking for a file to play, but they don't work.

That's everything that bothers me (so far ).
I'll try and keep this updated with what i find, and maybe add a couple of bugreports when i find/make 'em.

I tried some UPNP server :
-Windows media player on windows 7 : I can play all audio files but only some video files.
-XBMC : I can play all audio and video files but it lags so much when playing video files.
-ORB : it works perfectly for audio and video files.
And I can see all my UPNP server when it's on , no problem .
But I can't see pictures on any UPNP server I tried

I would add extreme difficulty moving backward or forward a few seconds on clips longer than a few minutes. This seems to be common in media players lately, but that doesn't make it any less stupid. The scroll button is just too fiddly for clips longer than 20 minutes.

Buttons should be added to go back or forward 10 seconds. Ont the keyboard, the left and right arrows should do this and the up and down arrows change clips. Actually, I would prefer the mplayer interface that uses up and down arrows to change 1 minute forward or back.

A somewhat small point, but just as video component is labeled "Video", the audio component should be labeled "Audio", not "Music" and the clips, "clips', not "songs".

As to workaround for lack of directories, what is wrong with playlists?

For each directory:
And you are done.

What we need (and what all media players need) is Gridsearch. Would work great with a touchscreen.....

Moving backwards and forwards in the stream. Have you tried holding down the I< >I buttons ?

I would like the option for customized video categories. Only having film and videos recorded on the device is quite poor. I would like to create my own categories like music videos, football, athletics, tv shows, etc. Instead I have to go through the file manager to get my videos in sensible groupings.

The music player is just quite poor and I won't bother going into it.

No, I had not. Thanks.

But that does seem backwards to me. I would think a short tap would be to skip a small amount and a long press would go into fast forward or rewind.

It should be easy to skip a short time. Skipping longer intervals is worth investing a little more effort.

I just tried the arrow keys on the slide out keyboad. Same deal. Holding the key down scans through the stream and a quick press and release skips to the next track as I had noticed before. But it was far too easy for an intended long press to end up being a press and release.

Is this some kind of standard, and the world is locked into doing things the hard way?

One thing I find inconsistent about the N900 is the search mechanism. For example, in Contacts, if I type "greg", it returns all contacts that contain "greg" anywhere in the contact name, "Greg Jones" and "Bill Gregory" would both be found (which I like). However, in Media Player, how do I find all song titles that contain "love"?

Cheers!

Brad

another thing that is an issue is podcasts. while the majority of the ones i listen to work fine, certain ones do not play at all. i believe because they put pictures of the singles when they change songs within the podcast. additionally, they allow skipping in tracks versus one long audio file. for example: a state of trance podcast, galen behr's podcast, and tiesto's podcast do not work at all on the player as it resets every time i try to play those files.

it would be nice to have those play again. should i post something like this into the bug forum?

I would like to add to what I think cripples the media player.
note I have experienced may of the problems listed above.

-Pause and resume: when listing to an audio book or a pod-cast and you pause the player, once it restarts the player does not remember where you were, and starts playing the file from the beginning. this is frustrating considering I don't own or lien to music so it make the player almost useless when listening to other content. You could also use the term "audio" not "music"

- Big shuffle button: I don't think the fact that I have no need for a shuffle button on the home screen (given I like to listen to audio-books from chapter 1 to 12 doesn't make me biased ), but it implies shuffle is as important as the content, I think shuffle should be relegated to an option beside the play button.

-Browsing the microSD: I might be a bit slow but the content on my microSD doesn't show up and I cant seem to brows it through the player, i have to launch it through the "File manager"

- Media not supported: I get this message way more than I should when I brows 90% of the video content from my Twonkymedia server or from may websites, the player tells me "Media not Supported" eg. I download a streaming mp4 (or m4v not sure) from "CBC the National" and the player tells me it is not sported. But if i download it I can play it no problem. Why docent it buffer and play the content if it can, instead of buffering it and telling me it is not sported when it plays if I download it first!