Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

Got an idea for an improvement? Post it here.
Forum rules
Use the topics below to discuss existing feature requests for PodTrapper.

Click here to add a new feature request, view the existing requested features, and vote for your favorites

Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby edzzik on Thu Dec 04, 2008 10:39 am

Just spent my first morning commute with this app, and I'm in love :-)

Some questions / suggestions:

1) When watching video podcasts, the screen goes to "sleep" mode and I
keep having to press a random button to wake up the screen and bring
the video back on the screen. Is there any way to set it so that if
I'm watching a video podcast, to keep the screen on?

2) What is the maximum file size that this application can handle? I
subscribed to a show called "The Countdown" from NBC, and it turned
out to be a 180meg file. Every time I tried to play it, the BB
crashed and reset itself

3) Is there any way to provide a link to any mp4 file, so that it can
be downloaded? Currently, the BB limit is 5 megs, and this app seems
to already have everything needed to download larger mp4 files.
edzzik
 
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:50 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:31 pm

Hi Ed,

So....
A) I didn't even know it would do video yet :) I planned to look into it later, but the blackberry doesn't support the most popular ipod video format (h.264), so only some (few?) video podcasts will do video on blackberry. (With the storm being a possible exception)
B) Since apparently it does work for some already, I'll just pretend it was intentional, take all the credit, and now make the screen stay lit while they're playing :)

In regards to the crashing thing, I run into that all the time with mine and the normal BB media player (which I use to watch TV episodes from my Tivo). Blackberry + video seems, at least to me, to be extremely flaky at the moment. There are a few formats it'll play very well, some it will play sometimes then crash, and others it just refuses to play. I suspect the crashing has to do with the video consuming so much of the CPU that it starves RIM's watchdog timers and they force a reset of the device. (This is total conjecture on my part, I'm not sure exactly what does it, and I'm not sure I could find out).

PodTrapper itself has no internal limit on file size (that's not to say there isn't one, just that I didn't put one in :) ). Internally it uses the blackberry media player to actually play stuff, so I'm limited to what it's capable of doing (which, sadly, isn't much).

Most podcasts I tried when researching whether to do video (originally I wanted it in the first version) wouldn't play at all on blackberry since they were H.264 encoded, which no blackberry is capable of playing (again, storm excluded). The ipod supports it, and it's currently one of the most file size efficient ways to encode video, so a lot of video podcasts use it since it saves them the most on bandwidth (I assume). With these the blackberry will only play the sound of the podcast, and display black for the videos.

What video podcast were you able to watch? I'd be interested to try it out myself.

For the download thing, I can look at adding a generic download manager, but you should be able to accomplish the same thing via the wifi browser, (I think), or one of the other browsers (Internet browser, t-zones or equivalent, etc). There's an internet browser for all of the download types that Podtrapper uses, so whichever method you're currently using with Podtrapper should also work in that BB browser.

-Marcus

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby edzzik on Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:51 pm

Marcus,

I have a Blackberry Bold, which is supposed to have a processor that's twice as fast, and I'm still having video problems. Go figure. :-)

For the videos, I was able to set it up for mp4 podcasts. All Major Media companies make these available (ABC, NBC, CNN, Discover Channel, just to name a few). It works great, but I did find some hiccups:

A) Sometimes, when I try to pause the video (by pressing space), it will get stuck, and continue to play. Then, I don't have any way of even exiting the software and am forced to do a hard reset. (I actually experienced this with an audio podcast as well).

B) During video playback, keyboard shortcuts to fast forward would be really useful. For now, I scroll to the fast forward button, and then hit space. If I want to fast forward, I just click the trackball.

For the large downloads question, when I use the internet browser to download a large file (over 5 megs), I get the infamous "HTTP Error 413: Request Entity Too Large". Have you been able to download large files from the internet?

Thanks,
Ed
edzzik
 
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:50 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby edzzik on Sat Dec 06, 2008 3:49 pm

Interestingly enough, I just tried the next episode of the same podcast with a file just as large, and it played without issue.

Strnge. Looks like BB still has some work to do :)
edzzik
 
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:50 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Thu Dec 11, 2008 4:09 am

Hi Ed,

I tried a couple of video podcasts on my Curve and couldn't get any of them to play. It may be that the Bold has enhanced video capabilities, but just to be sure can you give me a specific podcast and episode that you can get to play as a video?

If it does turn out to be my blackberry I'll see if the bold emulator lets me simulate what you're seeing and we can go from there.

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby edzzik on Thu Dec 11, 2008 6:48 am

Hey,

Any of the videos on this site work:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Podcasting/

I click on the RSS link, and then on the "View Feed XML" link. I subscribe to the URL that comes up. Here is an example of one that works for me:

http://feedproxy.google.com/abcnews_wor ... format=xml

I guess it's possible that it's just the new devices that can play it (Bold, Storm). Let me know if it works for you. If not, do you still think you can add this enhancement? It would be a HUGE improvement (for me at least) :D

Thanks,
Ed
edzzik
 
Posts: 39
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 9:50 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby herebaspoon on Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:14 pm

I have been trying a video podcast for diggnation http://revision3.com/diggnation/ and i've tried the .wmv and quicktime (h264.mp4) both of them start to play, but make it ~5-10sec into and loops back to the begining...it loops over and over. I find that I have to hold the end call (red button) down for about 10sec for it to abort and power off. The interesting thing is that it takes an additional 10sec to begin powering off, and during that time it continues on with the video (past the looping point) then powers off.

I am using a Curve 8330. Any hope for this to work in the near future?

Thanks for the great app!
herebaspoon
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:08 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby Guest on Wed Dec 31, 2008 11:24 am

More video podcast feedback (on a Bold):

Downloading and playing video podcasts works almost flawlessly. Here's the "almost" part:

When playing some videos, the video portion falls behind the audio portion, which leaves the audio and video out of synch. My guess is that the GPU on the Bold just can't handle higher-res/higher-bitrate videos, and, for some reason, this is exacerbated when playing videos within Podtrapper.

I haven't tried it yet, but maybe the Roxio/RIM media manager app transcodes videos to a lower bitrate when you load videos from your desktop.

Here are some example podcast feeds and how they behave:

1) http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downl ... st/rss.xml
This seems to be relatively low-bitrate. It plays fine in the built-in BB Media Player and in Podtrapper.

2) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/vipod.xml
This is higher-res. It plays fine in the BB Media Player, but video falls behind audio in Podtrapper.

3) http://podcast.nationalgeographic.com/ng-video-shorts/
This seems to be even higher-res. In both the BB Media Player and Podtrapper the video falls way behind the audio. If I play long enough in Podtrapper, my Bold acts as though it's CPU bound and won't let me pause or exit the video. I need to pull the battery to stop playing.
Guest
 

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby Guest on Wed Dec 31, 2008 4:01 pm

For me, this is a BIG issue. On my storm, if the screen blanks out while Podtrapper is playing a video, there appears to be no way for me to turn the screen back on except a battery pull.
Guest
 

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Wed Dec 31, 2008 6:16 pm

You storm guys with your fancy phones and your 3g are going to be the death of me :)

This is definitely high up there on the next set of features, look for big storm improvements this weekend.

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby ag5bpilot on Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:59 am

Marcus,

This is partially fixed in 1.5.5. However, that partial fix does lessen this problem from a major nuisance to a minor inconvenience. The BB Storm no longer completely locks up when the screen fades out -- clicking the screen now brings the picture back. No more battery pulls are needed!!!

The unfixed part is that the screen still is fading out after 30 seconds.

Thanks for the fix, even if it's not quite perfect yet. It's a major improvement.
Mike
ag5bpilot
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:39 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:23 pm

Hi Mike,

This weekend I'll be focusing on video, so hopefully we'll get a fully working solution (for most combinations of blackberry/podcasts).

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby NAL on Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:55 pm

Hi Marcus,
You continue to amaze me. Playing Video Podcasts in the BBMP works out great. No more screen dim to off. One thing I noticed is that when a video podcast is played in BBMP and it finishes and it reverts back to PodTrapper it's still marked "0% listenend". Just wanted to let you know. It's not a biggie.
Norm
NAL
 
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:44 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:30 pm

Hi Norm,

Yeah, downside of BBMP is that I don't have any visibility to it other than launching it. I can't see how far you've played, or even if you've closed it (other than seeing that podtrapper is now in the foreground). Hopefully this weekend I'll get proper video support in podtrapper and it won't be necessary to go out to BBMP anymore...

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby ag5bpilot on Thu Jan 08, 2009 4:05 pm

ag5bpilot wrote:Marcus,

This is partially fixed in 1.5.5.


I think I'm going to retract this statement. In 1.5.11, *sometimes* when the screen blanks out the screen-lockout problem occurs. Sometimes it doesn't. I'm not certain but the problem may have been fixed in 1.5.5 and is back in 1.5.11. Or it may have simply been inconsistent all along.

Either way, it's still a problem. Of course, a workaround is to watch videos in BBMP, but then Podtrapper doesn't track how much has been listened to.
Mike
ag5bpilot
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:39 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Thu Jan 08, 2009 6:05 pm

This weekend is my 'make it work with video' weekend, so hopefully we'll be good to go after that.

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:07 pm

Hey guys, with 1.6.0+ this should work properly, can you try it out and let me know?

It's currently only on the prerelease site:

http://ota.versatilemonkey.com/prerelease/

But will eventually make it to the live site.

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby NAL on Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:45 pm

Worked great for a 7+ minute video podcast. Screen blanked at the end but hitting the back button returned to the play screen. Good work. :!:
NAL
 
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:44 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby ag5bpilot on Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:16 am

On my Storm, the screen stayed on for the whole video, so that seems fixed.

The new graphics are confusing the heck out of me, however. I have no clue what the numbers mean. That's probably because I suspect the numbers are not working as intended.

For one thing there are no numbers displayed that are greater than 9 -- there seems to be a problem rendering numbers with more than one digit.

For another, the numbers just don't make sense... I was seeing numbers (on the grey, presumably 'undownloaded' icon) in a podcast that had no episodes at all (I had deleted all of them.)
Mike
ag5bpilot
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:39 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby ag5bpilot on Tue Jan 13, 2009 12:26 am

To elaborate a little more, on one podcast I see three numbers:

The orange speaker with a star has the number 1.

The orange speaker without a star has the number 1.

The blue arrows have the number 2.

The grey arrows have the number 5.

The podcast actually contains 17 downloaded episodes, 1 partially listened to episode, 2 scheduled for download episodes, and 32 not scheduled for download episodes.
Mike
ag5bpilot
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:39 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby ag5bpilot on Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:09 am

ag5bpilot wrote:The new graphics are confusing the heck out of me, however. I have no clue what the numbers mean. That's probably because I suspect the numbers are not working as intended.


Okay, I figured out what's happening. I think.

There's two bugs in the numbers that I can see:

1) Numbers with more than one digit don't display correctly.

2) The last number, which presumably is supposed to be the number of not scheduled un-downloaded episodes, is including the number of deleted episodes in the total. They're not downloaded, but probably shouldn't be included in this count!

Finally, there appears to be space for five icons/numbers: Downloaded, partially listened to, (blank), scheduled for download, and not scheduled for download. What's supposed to go in the blank space in the middle?
Mike
ag5bpilot
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:39 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:48 pm

You pretty much figured it all out :)

A font issue was preventing more than one digit on certain models (Storm, and probably bold). Though happily it worked fine on mine :)

All fixed in 1.6.2.

-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby ag5bpilot on Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:03 pm

1.6.2 is working pretty well for me.

I've noticed one oddity so far, and this is minor; there's a trivial workaround for it. When playing videos in Podtrapper's player, if I hit the mute/pause key, the screen goes all white. Hitting mute/pause again, instead of restarting playback, briefly flashes what looks like a single frame of video and then stops playback and shows the all white screen again.

The workaround is hitting the escape key, which brings you back to the normal podtrapper display, from which you can hit the play button.
Mike
ag5bpilot
 
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 10:39 am

Re: Video Podcasts - keep screen alive and other suggestions

New postby marwatk on Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:13 pm

Whoops, I missed a key for hiding that white screen (which is actually what needs to intercept the key presses, the video isn't an actual window).

Thanks for letting me know..
-Marcus
Versatile Monkey
For more/quicker help make sure to check out the user manuals
marwatk
Lead (and only) Monkey
 
Posts: 2596
Joined: Sun Nov 02, 2008 9:20 pm


Return to Feature requests

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 36 guests

cron