Support for iPhone app - 8Player

[RMerlin]

I spent some time testing things tonight using an SVN build of ffmpeg - no luck with either 8player or iMediaSuite. I could get ffmpeg to start transcoding (adding "--strict experimental" to enable aac encoding), but whenever trying to feed the iPod with the transcoded file, it would either hang (8player) or return to the folder content (iMediaSuite). Whether this is due to ffmpeg generating garbage or either player having trouble talking with Mezzmo (they work fine for audio however), I can't say.

I couldn't try with m-connect, as I didn't pay to get the additional video support (the audio-only version wasn't stable for me).

For reference, this is where I get my ffmpeg builds:

http://ffmpeg.arrozcru.org/autobuilds/

Let me know if you can make any progress on your side techpatriot, I'm curious about this...

[JohnM]

I have been playing with iphone/ipad/ipod apps for a while. I do have 8player and can watch videos that I manually transcode to the proper format. If you are *really* interested in doing this I will post a link to the apps. They are good, cheap and regularly updated.

However I would not recommend doing it this way. The idea as I see it is to have the highest resolution video on-line and only transcode it down if needed the iPhone can handle 720p. Right now I am playing with the app PlugPlayer. It seems like a much more capable solution. It will let you select a
media renderer as well as a media server. Most importantly (for me) is that you can manually add a device, or specify a base url override. What that means is that you can access your server across the internet (like with 3g). Now I need to work out a profile for it. And to figure out the override.

BTW I am able to use it to access the win media server. But if I use the PersonaSoftware MediaConnect profile I can see and browse the Mezzmo server. I can select things to play but it freezes at the movie cover art as it starts transcoding. Note that file doesn't require it.

[Paul]

If Mezzmo freezes when delivering the thumbnails, maybe it needs the latest patch available here. If you wish, send a message to support to try it (or wait for the next official release due out soon). It's also possible that it freezes because AAC encoding support was dropped from FFmpeg recently and it will fail to convert your files to MP4/AAC, as expected by the iPhone.

[RMerlin]

I have been playing with iphone/ipad/ipod apps for a while. I do have 8player and can watch videos that I manually transcode to the proper format. If you are *really* interested in doing this I will post a link to the apps. They are good, cheap and regularly updated.

Thanks for the offer, but I already use MediaCoder for all my file conversion needs. Since my primary media player is my WDTV Live, I'd rather keep all my video in their current format. My interest in playing videos back on my iPod is more for the pleasure of tinkering with gadgets than any real need, to be honest

I will have a look at PlugPlayer, as I am not satisfied with any of the players I tried so far:

- m-connect requires you to pay again to get full video support, and the audio version would occasionally crash
- 8player seems to not buffer audio aggressively enough as I get frequent dropouts, and the UI, while nice, makes it hard to navigate due to the limited screen width.
- iMediaSuite was quirky when I tried to use it (trouble navigating, long delay before playing a simple audio file)

For the transcoding, are you using the ffmpeg build that comes with Mezzmo, or another build that has AAC support in it?

[JohnM]

The files that I transcoded I used a standalone app for. It does use ffmpeg and also supports aac. It is not built for on-the-fly transcoding, but may very well be usable for it. I will play with it once I get everything else going. The only interest that I have in it is my wife is starting to play with air video for her iPad. While it works (and does transcode) it is not upnp/dlna it uses upnp to set up a port forward then goes back to bonjour. I can not run bonjour on my win7 x64 machine as it causes all kinds of problems. I refuse to set up a different media server. We have several terabytes of data and I don't want to duplicate it.

The reason for my standalone transcoding was to allow me to put the kids movies onto an ipod. That way they can play them without messing up the disks. They can also take them into the truck for trips.

[techpatriot]

Sorry I haven't chimed in in awhile RMerlin - I've had a busy week. And it looks like I'm late for the game as you guys are way ahead of me.

I too would like the iPod Touch to work, mainly just for the heck of it. My main DLNA playback device is a WD Live TV along with a PS3. My 480p movies are 1500Kbps MP4s and my 1080p movies are 5000Kbps MP4s. Interestingly, I also have an older Buffalo Linkstation Live hs-dh500gl DLNA server appliance. With it I was able to stream the 480p movies to my iPod Touch with no problems (using Media Link Player Lite). My HD movies never played, but I'm thinking the bitrate is too high.

With Mezzmo I feel I should be able to at least stream the 480p movies as is since I don't believe the Buffalo was doing any transcoding. It's just a matter of settings - and I'm gonna get this working sooner or later. The other day I had the iPod showing thumbnails with orange exclamation marks instead of red circles with white minus lines using Mezzmo. I was able to "tap" into starting a movie, but after about 10 seconds it would come back and say "the file was not found". At least it was different than the typical "this media format is not supported" error. Progress! Maybe...

Thanks,
John

[Paul]

If you can post your file's FFmpeg information, I could check how it fits within the profile.

[techpatriot]

Sure thing, thanks. Here's an example 480p file FFmpeg information:

FFmpeg version SVN-r23438, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jun 3 2010 11:03:31 with gcc 4.4.0
configuration: --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-memalign-hack --enable-libmp3lame --extra-cflags=-I/c/msys/local/include --extra-ldflags=-L/c/msys/local/lib --enable-zlib --enable-w32threads --extra-cflags=-fno-common --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --disable-ffplay --disable-ffprobe --disable-ffserver
libavutil 50.16. 0 / 50.16. 0
libavcodec 52.73. 0 / 52.73. 0
libavformat 52.67. 0 / 52.67. 0
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libavfilter 1.20. 0 / 1.20. 0
libswscale 0.11. 0 / 0.11. 0

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 59.94 (2454373/40950) -> 29.97 (30000/1001)
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'D:\480p-movie.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : mp42
minor_version : 0
compatible_brands: mp42isomavc1
encoder : HandBrake 0.9.4 2009112300
Duration: 01:34:17.36, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1534 kb/s
Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 710x480 [PAR 32:27 DAR 142:81], 1399 kb/s, PAR 13456:9585 DAR 841:405, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc
Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 129 kb/s
At least one output file must be specified

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++

And here is the FFmpeg info for a 1080p movie:

FFmpeg version SVN-r23438, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
built on Jun 3 2010 11:03:31 with gcc 4.4.0
configuration: --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-memalign-hack --enable-libmp3lame --extra-cflags=-I/c/msys/local/include --extra-ldflags=-L/c/msys/local/lib --enable-zlib --enable-w32threads --extra-cflags=-fno-common --enable-gpl --enable-libx264 --disable-ffplay --disable-ffprobe --disable-ffserver
libavutil 50.16. 0 / 50.16. 0
libavcodec 52.73. 0 / 52.73. 0
libavformat 52.67. 0 / 52.67. 0
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libavfilter 1.20. 0 / 1.20. 0
libswscale 0.11. 0 / 0.11. 0
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'D:\1080p-movie.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 1
compatible_brands: isomavc1
Duration: 02:37:05.54, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1613 kb/s
Chapter #0.0: start 0.000000, end 226.560000
Metadata:
title :
Chapter #0.1: start 226.560000, end 369.369000
Metadata:
title :
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Chapter #0.27: start 8258.083000, end 8628.620000
Metadata:
title :
Chapter #0.28: start 8628.620000, end 9425.541125
Metadata:
title :
Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264, yuv420p, 1920x1080 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 4995 kb/s, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 24k tbn, 47.95 tbc
Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 259 kb/s
At least one output file must be specified

Thanks Dennis,

John

[Paul]

Thanks John,

Are you trying to play them on the WD TV Live or the PS3 (or something else)? The WD TV Live and PS3 should both support such files and I've just tried playing one here with same codecs and it works. If you're using the iPod, which player are you using?

[techpatriot]

Hi,

Playback works fine for the WD TV Live and PS3. The iPod Touch is the only thing I'm having trouble with. On it, I'm using a totally free DLNA app called Media Link Player Lite. Their website is here:

http://www.alpha.co.jp/biz/products/.../index_en.html

Using this app I can stream 480p movies just fine to the iPod using the Buffalo server, just not Mezzmo at the moment.

Thanks,
John