playing .m4v

jnev · 12-14-05, 01:11 AM

i'm subriscribed to a podcast (diggnation by rev3) whose content is in .m4v form. is there any media player that can play this? tcpmp doesn't seem to have a plug-in for it. i searched but coudn't find anything. also while we're on the subject, is there anything that plays .php?

thanks

12-14-05, 04:18 AM

What specific error are you getting with TCPMP? Some encodings within TCPMP are supported with plugins that you have to download separately. AAC encodings are not officially supported yet, but are available from unofficial places. Some encodings (such as QDesign/Sorensen) are not supported at all. M4V generally use XviD or H.264 video encoding and AAC audio encoding. TCPMP is the only program that I am aware of that comes close to playing H.264 encoded video, but TCPMP uses an ffmpeg library that has not yet been optimized.

A "php" file is not a media file, it is a server-side script that apparently is serving the media file that you want. This is one of the difficulties for playing a podcast outside of a Pocket PC-based aggregator like FeederReader.

When played within FeederReader, the "php" file is played based on the MIME type given by the podcast feed.

I think it would be very difficult to play a PHP file outside of FeederReader because the MIME type is not available.

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - Pocket PC *direct* RSS text, audio, video, podcasts
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road

jnev · 12-14-05, 09:19 AM

it says that t cannot play the h.264 file, but i can hear the audio. how can i get feederreader to play the .php?

12-14-05, 10:04 AM

Which feed are you talking about? Is it this one? http://revision3.com/diggnation/feed/small.mov.xml

I tried that one and downloaded the December 8 show. Looks like it is encoded with H.264 (video) and AAC (audio). If you want to try to play it, you will need to find the AAC plugin and install that and the ffmpeg plugin.

The problem is that it doesn't work very well yet. The video skips badly, playing only a small fraction of the frames. The audio plays fine, though. If there is a DivX or Xvid version of the show, that would very likely be playable using TCPMP.

The developer of TCPMP has stated that the FFMPEG library that he uses is not yet optimized. I think there is some opportunity for improvement, but there is no time schedule for this to happen. The author stated on November 14, 2005: "Can't do much about ffmpeg h264 decoding speed. Probably I will write a new ARM optimized h264 decoder, but not anytime soon.". This was in a direct response to diggnation videos: http://www.corecodec.com/index.php?o...0&topic=2136.0

It's possible that voicing your opinion in the TCPMP forums may help: http://www.corecodec.com/index.php?o...v=0&board=24.0

I've written before about H.264. Many people seem to think it's great because it gets a smaller file size. I disagree. I think we've reached the point where decoding battery life/performance is more important than absolute file size. I've written about that here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videob.../message/28339

I don't know of any other applications for the Pocket PC that can play H.264 (also, see http://www.feederreader.com/mediachart.html )

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - Pocket PC *direct* RSS text, audio, video, podcasts
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road

jnev · 12-14-05, 05:57 PM

yep, that's the feed i'm trying to get. i already have the aac plugin (guess that explains why i was able to hear the audio). i'll get the ffmeg plugin and try it out.

my personal opinion about video codecs is that there are already too many different ones, and each person uses their personal favorite, making sharing video/audio on things like podcasts difficult, to say the least. i think file size and the cpu time it takes to decode the video do matter, but for now i think that the main concern should be finding a standard. same thing goes for media cards. hell, i've seen 15-1 card readers, VERY overkill.

thanks for your help.

12-15-05, 08:16 PM

And of course, TCPMP version 0.71b has just been released. It's marked very beta, but it makes AVC (also known as H.264) playable. I tested it briefly with diggnation December 8 episode and both audio and video appear to work great. I installed all available files in the TCPMP release (6 files in all), so I'm not quite sure exactly which ones are required.

The "beta" version of TCPMP 0.71b is available at http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/

If you are risk averse, download anything AFTER 0.71b (this does NOT include V0.71 dated November 23, 2005!!) for best h.264 playback here: http://corecodec.org/projects/tcpmp

Greg Smith
Author, FeederReader - Pocket PC *direct* RSS text, audio, video, podcasts
www.FeederReader.com - Download on the Road

jnev · 12-17-05, 02:28 PM

thanks! i decided to unsubscribe to that rss though. it took up way too much space and i realized that i usually listen to the feeds while driving, so i dont have much use for the video playback.

thanks for the help.