Podtrapper thinks Video Podcasts are audio only

[tmdublin]

Hello,

I purchased this program over the weekend and it has been great, but I have noticed one issue. I'm using a Blackberry Storm and when I play video podcasts that are longer than 5 minutes (5 mins is a guess, but problem only happens on longer podcasts), the display dims as if I'm playing an audio podcast and the sound continues. When this happens the picture will sometimes come back when I hit the back key. I can even put the Blackberry in my holster and the sound will continue. The same thing happens if I choose play from BBMP. While this happens, I cannot get the podcast to stop playing and take me back to the menu unless I do a battery pull. I'm using the 1.8.6 version and I had this same problem with the previous version. I searched the forum and saw someone else had a similar problem earlier and the response was the file may be too large, but this same podcast plays fine if I copy it from itunes and play it in BBMP. Even with this problem this is a great program.

Thanks,
Tim

[marwatk]

Hi Tim,

So if PodTrapper downloads it itself, that's where you see the issue? But if you copy it from your PC and play it you don't see the issue?

Do you see identical behavior between PodTrapper and BBMP for both types of episodes?

-Marcus

[tmdublin]

Hi Marcus,

As a test, I downloaded the same podcast with podtrapper and directly to my pc. I could use podtrapper and play the one I downloaded directly to my pc and it played perfectly. When I try to play the one podtrapper downloaded, the screen dims after a minute which is what it should do if I was not watching a video.

Thanks,
Tim

[marwatk]

Hi Tim,

Can I have you try to download it again, verify that the dim thing still happens, then send me your logs indicating which episode it is? Something must be happening during the download to corrupt the file, the logs will help me see what it is.

-Marcus

[tmdublin]

Hi Marcus,

I went into options and changed my screen timeout value from 1 minute to 2 minutes which is the highest it could go. Once I did this, the problem went away. I then lowered my timeout value back to 1 minute and the problem is still gone. Looks like it was just something hung up in my settings. Thanks for your responses and like I said before, this is my favorite program on my Blackberry.

Thanks,
Tim

[marwatk]

Ok, definitely let me know if it happens again...

-Marcus

[Schnitty]

i think i'm seeing the same thing. i had a podcast (cnet's loaded) that i didn't realize was video. it downloaded overnight, when i went to play it today, as soon as i started playing, the screen goes black. the audio works fine. i can't remember the format - mk4? m4v? i can re-subscribe to the podcast if you want to know the file name, i forget it now.

stupid question - should PT be able to play video podcasts correctly? i just assumed no, so i unsubscribed to that podcast. maybe i'm missing out on even more features.

[arkolbus]

i think i'm seeing the same thing. i had a podcast (cnet's loaded) that i didn't realize was video. it downloaded overnight, when i went to play it today, as soon as i started playing, the screen goes black. the audio works fine.

That's a different issue. The problem in this thread is the video starts playing, then stops due to the screen going dark. In your case, the video never plays to begin with.

The problem with your case is that BBMP (what PT uses to play media files) does not have broad support for video. There are too many different encoding schemes for video with no broad industry standard, so each vodcast uses the encoding scheme of its choice. BBMP doesn't know how to decode the video, so you get no video.

The audio plays fine because the audio is stored as a separate stream from the video, and generally audio is well-supported on devices.

[marwatk]

Basically what arkolbus said, with the addition that it's also very BB model dependent.

Any still having the dimming thing?

-Marcus

[marc_wood]

I have a storm and when I had it for the 30 day grace it worked fine, but now when watching video it dims and goes into sleep mode. Everything stops. I tried moving the time to hibernate to the max, but still didn't work. Any suggestions?

-Barry

[marc_wood]

I changed the timeout to 1 min rather than 2 and now it works. Still doesn't work at 30 seconds, but who cares.

Great program! Love it!

-Barry

[marwatk]

Thanks, Barry.

There's also an update that fixes this regardless of backlight settings available here if you prefer.

-Marcus