Notices

...for me, at least. I followed the instructions in the wiki to the letter and the N900 attempts to open the media player, but just hangs on the "press play" screen (with the triangle press to start and the search forward reverse icons).

Is there something else I should know? Extra codecs or something to install? I'm on the latest firmware update and I've got OGG suport, etc installed. Thanks for any advice, I'm not a noob when it comes to video. I'm about ready to convert to Xvid and call it quits.

Can depend on your source. The profile makes an assumption that the source is will not produce an output of greater than 800x480, eg DVD. If you are using a HD source you will need to scale down the picture size.

N900 extra decoders will not handle anything over 800x480 very well.

Also I would reboot the device, I downloaded somebodies Ironman 2 trailer the other day and it played for 2 seconds and then said "codec not supported' something like that. Then all my good media and even my MP3's would not play.

After a reboot it rebuilt the internal index and all was well.

If you want to please upload the file your having problems with to sharebee.com or some other good download site and some of us can have a look at it for you.

Handbrake is a good tool but I always found it rather limiting in what it can do so I use a small array of tools instead each more specialized to increase compatiblity with the file types I may be working with.

As we speak I am encoding the full Wall-E movie from 1080P blueray into a format my N900 can play. May come in handy if I find myself waiting for a long time like at dinner or a doctors office with the kids around.

Thanks for the support. I too got the "Codec not supported" message for an ordinary MP3 after I tried to play (unsuccessfully) the Handbrake H264 mp4 file. A reboot solved that problem, but the file is still not playing.

Here is a sample, I encoded just Ch 1, six minutes of the film. It's not a splice, this is the output of Handbrake entirely for Ch 1 of the movie. Thanks, let me know what you think the problem might be.

http://sharebee.com/c2278b58

I had the same thing happen to me.


Did you have the extras codecs installed before you upgraded the firmware to latest? if so, uninstall the extra codecs and then try to play the clip. You should be able to re-install the extra codecs with no problems.

I'm having a major nightmare with video playback on the N900 - as reported by others. I've installed and uninstalled extra codecs and rebooted again and again. Sometimes videos play fine and other times they don't. After playing successfully, the same video will then result in error messages about servers or format; there doesn't seem to be any consistency or rationale. Even the vids that come on the device are occasionally met with these errors or a blank screen. Video was a major reason behind my choosing this baby and I hope there's a solution because this isn't fun. Otherwise the device is fantastic. Thanks for any help.

I figured out what my problem was. I did not realize that there was an actual FILE that needed to be downloaded from the video encoding wiki (it is a little unclear - I think the wiki needs editing to indicate that there is an actual profile setting that can/needs to be downloaded and imported, rather than just having that highlighted/linked bit of text right before what seems to be the main part of the page, the settings guide. Just a thought.)

Anyway, after I realized that and downloaded the import settings (also, IE default atempts to save it as an XML file, so users should also be instructed to change the file type to ALL and save it as a plist file - that is a potential source of confusion as well, I think. Perhaps I'll make these changes when I have a spare minute), the encode played on my N900.

So, I'm running the H264 encoded video on my N900 OK now.

One more thing worth mentioning, I did do a high-level XviD encode, just to get something on the machine that was usable, and I must say, it looked a mess - TONS of tiling, tearing between scenes, and general graininess. I think the N900 is not well-suited for playing XviD - perhaps that needs more research as well.

I have a number of high quality XViD files that play fine on the N900. I think you'll find that it dends as usual on the quality of the file encoding in the first place.

I've been having similar problems since the PR1.1 upgrade.
I use the wiki supplied handbrake profile to encode my vids and generally they play fine.
Occasionally, however, a video will stop midplay with just a blank screen.
A lot of my source material is series recorded off-air using Windows Media Center. I convert the output dvr-ms file to mpg using DVRTools and then edit the mpg using Womble MPEG editor, chop out all the adverts, etc. I save as mpg and then use this as the source for the Handbrake encode.
Recently one of these encoded files refused to play in exactly the manner described by Oldpmaguy. Paradoxically a second file encoded in the same batch, played fine. Comparing the encoded (.MP4) files using MediaInfo showed no differences.
I got the "duff" file to play by going back to the source MPG and trimming the first few seconds off (using Womble) then re-encoding.

This leads me to believe the issue with non-playing videos is problems with the header information and/or initial frames in the video.

That being said, I don't remember any such problems prior to the PR1.1 update so maybe it's down to an update of the media player or one of its dependent libraries?

BTW I am running Extra Decoders 3.4.1

It seems to me just by reading through the forums that the vast majority of people with issues are people that uses the extra decoders package.

I have had no issues and never installed it. I saw no reason to do so when you have to code most everything for the device in the first place you may as well code it to a format it supports out of the box. H264 & AAC are both already supported.

Also for the most part anything that does not play out of the box MPlayer will play without the need of the extra decoders.

All I can think of is that codec corruption has occurred for those that used the extra package and if installing it back again doesnt fix the problem then a flash back to factory firmware may be the only real fix.