Podtrapper error message on only GDGT podcasts

[DanVM]

Today I downloaded the newest version of Podtrapper. I subscribe to four podcasts. 3 work fine with this new version but I am having trouble listening to any of the GDGT Weekly podcasts (GDGT played fine on the old versions of Podtrapper.) I get two error messages:

First:
"Error playing this episode (ox2): (0) javax.microedition.media.MediaException/unsupported content type - audio/mp4a-latm"

Second (this is the error message I get on a partially played podcast - I had been listening to this GDGT podcast when the old version of Podtrapper was installed but never finished listening to it):
"Error playing this episode (ox2): 90) net.rim.device.api.io.file.FileIOException/File system out of resources

Just wondering what I should do.

Thanks,
Dan

[arkolbus]

Not sure what your previous version of PT was, so it's hard to tell what might have changed. Marcus may have a better answer, but in the meantime you might try toggling "Buffer Playback" (Settings->Playback Settings). If it says "No", change it to "Yes". If it says "Yes", change it to "No".

[DanLongman]

I have gotten the same error message on GDGT since upgrading to 2.6.7 as well
since it was the only podcast that it has happend to, I assumed it was a encoding issue on gdgts side

[DanVM]

That fixed it, thanks!

[arkolbus]

Glad to hear that worked. I didn't think GDGT was bad (I'm a subscriber and haven't had any problems). It may have triggered issues for you because it's a longer podcast. The buffering seems to consume more resources.

Do you subscribe to the mp3 or aac version of the podcast?

[DanVM]

I believe my old version of Podtrapper was 2.5. The format is .m4a.

I was able to get the error message to occur again by opening the menu while the podcast was playing and choosing "fix player". Once I exited the app and restarted the error message disappeared.

What is buffering? Should I turn it off for good?

[arkolbus]

Buffering was introduced in 2.5.5 as a workaround for flaky SD card connections (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=824). My assumption is that it copies parts of the media file into the device memory (rather than the media player reading off the SD card). I'm also assuming that the file is kept small because device memory is limited. PT periodically refreshes the buffer throughout playback of the episode.

When buffering works, you don't really notice it. You've probably seen it before when trying to stream videos online over a slow or flaky connection (playback starts and stops while the video downloads, since the video plays at a faster rate than it can download)

If you don't have any issues with the standard playback, I'd keep buffering off. If your device memory is pretty full (older device, lots of apps, loading large web pages, lots of messages, etc), it causes more problems than it solves. I have an overloaded 8330, and I noticed that if I was doing too much with it, my podcasts would only play a few seconds at a time (fill the buffer, run through the buffer, wait for pt to refill the buffer, run through the buffer). I turned off buffering, and now playback doesn't get interrupted.

[marwatk]

It turns out that some decoders (built into the BB OS) handle meta data differently when using a buffer, and some of them are super buggy. I've now got repeatable issues with both AAC (m4a) and MP3 files that contain certain stuff in their meta data. For those phones the buffering will work fine usually, unless you hit this case, and if you do it totally craps out (the OS actually starts requesting parts of the file before the beginning, good times).

I silently re-published a modified 2.6.7 yesterday that disables buffered playback by default in all cases. Not sure what I'm going to do long term, maybe keep a list of the broken OS versions?

Anyway, I was hoping to catch stuff like this with the update throttling, but the Crackberry post put the kibosh on that (Not that I'm complaining)

So, just to summarize: If you have issues playing any media, first check your 'Buffer Playback' setting in "Settings -> Playback Settings". If that's set to 'Yes' turn it to 'No'.

If you still have problems, definitely let me know. These kinds of issues are best handled with logs via the 'Email Developer' menu item, but feel free to post here to let everyone know there's an issue.

-Marcus