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o2 xda Orbit II.....AAC Files

Please could someone help or explain.I purchased the orbit II last week,I am still getting used to its power and capabilities.
In the manual it says it can play AAC files.I have downloaded some onto the storage card and the touch flo player hasnt recognised them, nor has the windows media player.
It recognises and plays MP3 files.The aac files are not protected they are ones that I downloaded myself from my own cds.
Also why can I not see photos that I have just taken that are saved to my storage card,in the photo viewer on Touch flo.
Thank you in advance for any help,
Peter

pocketmusic can play aac

Thansk for that,but I was looking to find out what the situation was with the phone rather than get a programme that will do something that the manufacturers are saying the phone should do.
I have noticed that the windows media player does add the tunes to its catalogue but files them under ARTIST "UNKNOWN" (as though the tags arent working).The touch flo or HTC player however doesnt even do this.
Does anybody know of a solution to this other than spending money on a progamme to do something that the phone should do already,
many thanks
Peter15965

It's really wierd. I have the same problem and also had this problem with my previous phone which was an O2 XDA Orbit 1 (i.e. rebranded HTC Artemis).
I'm afraid that I never found a solution that didn't involve third party software. I think the problem is that, although HTC have included the decoder to play AAC and AAC+ files, neither of the built in players seem to be able to read the tags from the m4a container format so, although they can play the contents, they can't incorporate the tracks in a meaningful way into the library (I also saw Windows Media Player putting everything as unknown).
I know it's not what you were hoping to hear, and I'd love for someone to prove me wrong, but right now I think you're stuck with going the third-party route.
If you don't want to spend money then I initially used TCPMP. It doesn't have any library browser built in but I found that by intelligent choice of the directory tree structure I used to store my files (My Music/<Artist>/<Album>/<Tracks>) then I could use the file browser in TCPMP to browse my collection in a fairly convenient manner. I now use Conduits PocketPlayer because that has a fantastic library browser and reads the m4a tags perfectly; the program is pretty resource hungry but for now I'm keeping the faith in the hope that they'll address that at some point in the future (their support is good).
- Julian

Thanks Julian at least I know its a common problem(does 2 handsets constitute common).
I will look into pocketplayer as a solution for the timebeing.I was hoping I wouldnt have to put other apps on that would slow the phone down.
Thanks again
Peter15965

peter15965 said:
Thanks Julian at least I know its a common problem(does 2 handsets constitute common).
I will look into pocketplayer as a solution for the timebeing.I was hoping I wouldnt have to put other apps on that would slow the phone down.
Thanks again
Peter15965
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Click to collapse
You're welcome.
In most cases putting other apps on shouldn't slow down the phone. The reason apps can slow down the phone (and/or drain battery) can be because they have a Today plugin which, if not well written or if it needs to keep accessing the network, can slow things down. If an app does have a Today plugin (as PocketPlayer does) then you can often disable it (as you can for PocketPlayer).
The other reason for third party apps to slow down the phone is because Windows Mobile default behaviour when you click the top-right "x" button is to minimise the app (i.e. leave it running in the background) rather than close it down completely. Again, in this case an app that does anything significant when it is running in the background can slow down the phone. Clearly a music player needs to keep running while it is playing music but, once finished, you can make sure it is out of memory completely by selecting Exit from the application's menu.
In short, if you're careful to fully close apps when you don't need them, then you shouldn't slow down your phone at all (except so far as having a music player running in the background, whether built in or third party, will always put a drain on the CPU and make other apps run more slowly while the music is playing).
- Julian

Oops. One big thing I forgot to mention. If you do look at PocketPlayer then don't download the latest version (3.51) from their web site. There is a nasty problem in that build specifically related to playing AAC files on HTC devices that I reported to them and has been fixed in an internal beta for 3.52 which, as the reporter of the bug, I have been given to test. You should email [email protected] and say that you want to use it for AAC on an HTC device and hopefully they (Carrie) will let you try out a beta build with the issue fixed.
The issue by the way is that 3.51 doesn't correctly detect end-of-stream when an AAC track has finished so (a) it doesn't auto-advance to the next track in the playlist because it thinks the current track hasn't finished yet and (b) even worse, if you forget to explicitly turn off your device after you've finished listening then PocketPlayer thinks it is still playing your last track and so the device will not put itself into standby and can drain the battery. The issue is fixed in the latest beta build and as an added bonus it also parses m4a tags natively (in 3.51 you could tag your collection by using an option in PocketPlayer to infer the tags from the filenames used in your folder structure but it now reads the real tags in the latest beta).
There is also one other more obscure problem I'm trying to help them diagnose related to AAC on HTC devices but I've been a bit busy recently so am due to give them some feedback and check status on that today or tomorrow. This may or may not be fixed at this stage, I can probably give more feedback in a couple of days so personally I would hold off until I give you an update. If you definitely want to go ahead with a beta build then I can give you a workaround that works most of the time.
- Julian

Thanks again Julian, a fantastic answer by all accounts.I will hold off until you get an answer back about the problems you mention.
Thanks again for a most comprehensive answer.How will we know when the fix is through?
Peter15965

peter15965 said:
Thanks again Julian, a fantastic answer by all accounts.I will hold off until you get an answer back about the problems you mention.
Thanks again for a most comprehensive answer.How will we know when the fix is through?
Peter15965
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Click to collapse
I emailed them this afternoon and got the answer. They've fixed the problem and I'm about to install a new beta to check it's OK. Apparently it was a Windows Mobile bug that they've managed to work around. I'll play with this new update pretty extensively tomorrow so you should get an answer from me in about 24 hours.
- Julian

peter15965 said:
I have downloaded some onto the storage card and the touch flo player hasnt recognised them, nor has the windows media player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found out some interesting thing: Some files are playing correctly but others refuse to work. I think that has to do with the bitrate of the files. All my m4a-files are bought from Apple Music Store. Most times my files are the unprotected ones with higher bitrate, but I have a few files which were protected (unfortunately I must have lost the copy protection somewhere, I'm really sorry for that ). The protected ones were encoded in a lower bitrate. What I found out is, that all my former protected files are played correctly. So maybe Windows Media Player can only handle files up to certain bitrate which obviously should be lower than 256kbps.
Further test: I created a playlist within windows mobile, but the Audio Manager (Touch Flo) wasn't able to read it. I managed that the playlist was recognized by the program, but it couldn't find any files.
So it is possible to play aac files (up to a certain bitrate) and to create playlists in Windows Media Player without any issues (yet). But I couldn't get it working in TouchFlo.
So, ok, I made half the way. Now it's up to you to make it fully functional.

have the same issue, I see the AAC file in the explorer and can play them from there but they are not loaded in the catalogue. anybody any other idea how to make the visible there? is buying pocket player the only solution?
thanks for the help in advance to everybody

JulianL said:
I emailed them this afternoon and got the answer. They've fixed the problem and I'm about to install a new beta to check it's OK. Apparently it was a Windows Mobile bug that they've managed to work around. I'll play with this new update pretty extensively tomorrow so you should get an answer from me in about 24 hours.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The news isn't as positive as I'd hoped. The latest build has improved the problem (so at least they've identified it and found the right area to make changes) but it hasn't fixed it completely.
The player is still usable with AAC files but there is one glitch. After it's been playing for a while, say about 2 hours, then something seems to get corrupted in the image or via a bug in Windows Mobile itself such that thumbnails of the artwork for the album covers no longer display properly when browsing your music library. With the previous build the device would lock up at this point and require a soft reset so at least they've fixed that problem but there is still some sort of issue unresolved.
The workaround seems to be to just fully exit PocketPlayer every couple of hours and then re-launch it again so it's not too arduous and shouldn't prevent you playing with the trial version (although this partially-fixed beta isn't publicly available so you will need to contact support to see if they'll give it to you and given that it still has a known issue they might just ask you to wait a bit).
I'm obviously still working with them to try and 100% nail this issue.
- Julian

TF3D Music Library - Finding Tracks

It seems to be the music library in TF3D is missing a vital component - with 16gb cards now available it is possible to store a large number of tracks (I have > 2500). Scolling through all songs/ albums/ artists etc in the library just doesn't cut it when you have that many tracks.
What is required is something like the alphabet bar to the right of the screen in Contacts (and where you add cities in the Weather tab), so you can quickly go to tracks starting with the right letter, and then scroll from there.
Is something like this possible? If not, it seems like a silly ommission by HTC as they have implemented the same kind of thing in other areas of the phone.
Any ideas?

Seriously - no-one else has a problem with this?

Mine won't even find the tracks on the memory card let alone require the need to search through hundreds of them!
All I have are the four HTC demo ones... even tho I've got loads of tracks on the memory card, the only way I can play them is by using WMP rather than the TF3D Library

Works fine for me here.
Have HTC spanish 1.90 official ROM, and an Sandisk SD 6Gb Class4 microSD card.
I have around 250-300 files in MP3/WMA format inside SD\MY Documents\Musica and have no problem using from TF3D.
I have some files in SD\Seleccion\Ringtones in MP3/WAV/WMA format and this files appear in TF3D Music too.
I'm waiting for my new 16Gb microSD card, so probably i put thousands music files into the SD and report back here what's going.
Cheers

do you have to have album art for the tunes to show in the TF3D music app or does it have a placeholder for mp3's without album art attached?

FrederickUK said:
do you have to have album art for the tunes to show in the TF3D music app or does it have a placeholder for mp3's without album art attached?
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both, some folders without picture, and other ones with picture, but all working.

argh, so why the hell isn't mine working!!!

FrederickUK said:
argh, so why the hell isn't mine working!!!
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Click to collapse
I don't have a solution to this problem, but I got the problem as well...

Right, so this thread seems to have moved on to people who can't get the TF3D player to recognise their music. There are plently of other threads about that - please check them out.
I have no problems using the player whatsoever - all 2500+ tracks are showing in TF3D, and I even got all the album art sorted out. If I only had a couple of hundred tracks there would be no issue at all. The problem is that with so many tracks TF3D is a pain to navigate through - if you want to find a track that starts with the letter Z it takes forever to scroll to it in the library.
I was hoping some enterprising soul with a bit of programming knowledge could develop something similar to the alphabet bar in Contacts (and where you add cities in the Weather tab), so you can quickly get close to where you want to be, and then scroll from there.
Does that make sense? Anyone know whether that might be possible?

FrederickUK said:
Mine won't even find the tracks on the memory card let alone require the need to search through hundreds of them!
All I have are the four HTC demo ones... even tho I've got loads of tracks on the memory card, the only way I can play them is by using WMP rather than the TF3D Library
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ey, i have no say this before, but MP3/WMA files needs to be labeled with ID3 information to be used by AudioManager...
Cheers

jcespi2005 said:
ey, i have no say this before, but MP3/WMA files needs to be labeled with ID3 information to be used by AudioManager...
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, I think you're just not understanding what I'm saying. I have no problem at all with files and album art etc being recognised by the AudioManager. The problem I have is that when there are thousands of tracks, then navigating through them is a right pain, and I was hoping someone could come up with a better way of doing it.

Rabangus said:
Sorry, I think you're just not understanding what I'm saying. I have no problem at all with files and album art etc being recognised by the AudioManager. The problem I have is that when there are thousands of tracks, then navigating through them is a right pain, and I was hoping someone could come up with a better way of doing it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ops, sorry for my bad quote, i have corrected my post i was not talking about your problem finding traks...
Did you test Pocket Player 3.7?
Cheers

Rabangus said:
What is required is something like the alphabet bar to the right of the screen in Contacts (and where you add cities in the Weather tab), so you can quickly go to tracks starting with the right letter, and then scroll from there....
.....Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been wondering this as well. I know that HTC produced the Random Access addon for Contacts. Does anyone know - or anyone able - to see if this could be made available for the audio manager?

Yes, I'm frustrated by this too. It would be nice to have the music in the tab, but it would be better to have a great little media player. Any reccomendations?

ya im frustrated by it too. i basically just use that tf3d player for random/shuffle playing.
if i want a specific song ill just navigate to it through file explorer.
kind of a PIA but oh well. maybe they will update it later on.

Audio manager long list issue
I am having same issue. With about 400 albums in my music audio manager there seems no way to scroll thru the list quickly. Hope someone tries and comes up with some kind of solution.

Browser mp4 streaming issues

On a website that I frequent when in the car to watch random junk (tech and other news) often times the videos are upwards of 100+ megs. rather than watch the annoying talking and summary of the videos i like to skip ahead and just see what all the stories have.
often times when doing this i will get a FC on Movies.apk and if i try to start it again it will show the first frame of the file and then do nothing. The bar moves like the object is playing but there is often no sound and never any video once this happens.
I have found that if i let the film completely download first and then play it i dont get these problems, but if I try to move around, either forwards or backwards thats when the problems happen.
FWIW, i am on enom 1.8.1 and it has been doing this since 1.7.1
no theme and no browser mods.

i hate to do this, but its killing me as to why it wont stream properly... especially when the G1 has no problem doing so.

Attempt at a "Play Most Anything" media player

I admit I've been out of the loop on everything now for at least half a year, but I attempted to write a video player for Android utilizing libavcodec/avformat/etc. and get it to an at least workable state a while back and figured it might be of some fun or use to others. It has no real controls (you select a video, it plays, no pause/seek/etc.) but does allow you to do a multi-touch zoom on the video while it's playing - and that's worth something, right?
Although this should run on any modern Android handset, I'm pretty sure I hard coded the screen resolution for the Evo in there somewhere.
There were slight alterations to avcodec to get everything up and running, and obviously I've linked directly to a good bit of code - so if you'd like a copy of the source for the entire program, just ask. For now I'm putting the upload off since it's quite a large amount to upload
You can find the apk for it here: http://cjmovie.net/MediaPlayerX.apk
It starts out with the directory listing of /sdcard. Use the .. at the top to navigate to a parent directory, not the back button. You can pan the video around by using two fingers and not moving your fingers relative to each other. Scale similarly, although if you don't move your fingers apart fast enough it'll assume you don't want scaling and you'll have to try again.
Also opens still-frames (so jpg, png, etc.) and lets you multi-touch zoom around on them.
It's very crash happy, but I've never had it cause any problems other than needing to re-open the app. YMMV

VPLAYER
Thanks for all the hard work your putting into an app as development is essential to this community. I do believe though that there is an app on the market that is similar to what your working towards/looking for. It's called VPLAYER and it's free on the MarketPlace and i've yet to find a file type that it will not play. I use AndTorrent a lot and it has been able to play every download i've ever had. Anyways, hope this is what your looking for and if not sorry for wasting space on your post. PEACE

would like to see this in a finish product.

like someone else said above, vplayer in the market already plays most any file type (admittedly without the panning or zooming features). I don't know if it's possible, but what would really make your app stand out is if you could get it to see and play media files on a shared drive over a home network. Just a thought.
Kudos though - it must have been a pita to develop.

And subtitles in an MKV file for us anime nerds.

subcypher said:
And subtitles in an MKV file for us anime nerds.
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Click to collapse
+1 on this.
I was hyped for Rockplayer and then realized it wouldn't do subs for the anime I watch.

[Q] Any possible way to disable the "TV Queue" (YouTube)?

(skip to second paragraph if you're not interested in a mild rant)
In one of the recent updates for the YouTube app while streaming to the Chromecast it'll automatically add every video you've watched to the TV queue. That's fine as I don't mind having a list of the recent videos I've watched, but the part that bothers me (enough to create a thread, which I can't remember the last time I started one) is that the video is added to the top of the queue. This makes every video that you just F***ING watched play all over again! Again, I'd be fine with this if there was any type of preferences within the YouTube app to disable such an asinine "feature" that I'm pretty sure was solely created to boost the number of views of their videos (as I see no other purpose). It really feels like Google is going the way of taking away many options within their apps and it's bugging the s**t outta me to no end. The Chrome browser within Android use to have a plethora of options such as choosing user agents and things of that sort but that option is no longer available either. [/rant]
Is there any way to disable the autoplay "feature" of the TV queue while using the Chromecast, or the TV queue altogether if needed? My current version of the YouTube app is 5.7.41 and I'm not sure when this bug was introduced exactly.
Let me know if there's more information needed, I've been out of the modding scene for awhile (I'm actually pleased with stock Android on my Nexus devices).
Thank you for any assistance that can be provided, even if it's the version number that I can roll back to before the TV queue.

Just to say that i also think its fu..in anoying! I was searching for some kind of solution and found this thread. Only thing left is to hope that youtube will change that in the upcoming update...

Well, I appreciate seeing that I'm not the only one being bothered by this. I had forgot about this thread do to the (seemingly) lack of interest and I was reading comments on my tablet while a video played on my Chromecast, when the video ended it changed to the next video on my tablet and gave no ****s as to what I was doing. Android/Google used to be the king in my book as they gave options for everything, but they seem to be following in the same footsteps as Apple nowadays and it is sorely disappointing.

Ok, this has got to be affecting more people now. I thought my newest mishap was just a glitch, but even after reboots the bug (feature) exists now anytime I stream anything from my laptop as well! The goddamn problem is also WORSE than the tablet issue because at least the tablet takes you to the video it is streaming so you can stop it an remove it from the queue. Apparently that wasn't a big enough F*** UP(!) for Google so now if you play a youtube video from a laptop that is part of a playlist, then play a different video that's not within that isn't within a playlist, when the non-playlist video is over the previous playlist will start playing again. ARE YOU ****TING ME!?!?! Now I have a playlist playing on my Chromecast that the ONLY ****ing way I can get it to stop is to start playing another video and then stop it!. Please inform me that the lead developer/designer setting the path for Chromecast has autism or some other disorder they have a legitimate reason for being this ****ing stupid.

I totally agree with you guys, it doesn't make any sense why it behave that way!!

bumping this, as i'm bothered by this as well
wonder why it doesn't affect more people though... it's probably not a widely used feature

I am also very pissed off with this! Every now and then, in the middle of the video, it pops up.
It stays there for hours (at the minimum) and it lowers that brightness and has the annoying symbol for it covering the content of the video!!!
This is extremely disappointing!

Bothered by the same thing. The problem was fixed a while ago, but now it seems it's back. As soon as I want to play/cast a video, the TV queue is populated with all other videos in that playlist. I would like it to play THAT video, then stop. :/ I can removed one and one video, but that sucks when it's maybe 60 videoes in that list.