Betaplayer is a great piece of soft, but it still lacks one feature that keeps me from using it exclusively: an alarm/snooze function! Yes, I love to fall asleep to music, even if the sound comes from my tiny X50v speaker. I also enjoy waking up to music, as opposed to a beep, bling, or whatever other funky sound is included in the OS.
I currently use Mortplayer for this reason alone. If Betaplayer could include this feature, I would never touch another movie/music player again. I swear!! ;)
this is the option i was talking about... not really sure what it means...
edit*** well, i was going to post a screen capture of the option page but the forums won't let me post anything larger than 450x450 and i can't figure out how to shrink it anymore without losing the legibility... i'll try to figure it out tommorrow i guess...
Get a freeware program called IrfanView. It will shrink it down to the required size and it's easy to use.
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Don't Panic!
Bobby
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Last edited by Don't Panic!; 01-25-05 at 09:23 AM.
Everyone talks about settings to maximize performance with BetaPlayer, but what about maximizing battery life? I don't mind a few dropped frames here and there if it extends my battery... I notice that there are different options like "Slow video memory" and the like... which ones would maximize battery life on my X50v?
We found that one of the problem here is that Betaplayer does not release the 2700G video hardware when it becomes de-activated (i.e. Minimized or hidden in the background).
This is an extract from the PocketTV release notes:
Quote:
PocketTV automatically powers off the 2700G video hardware accelerator chip when the application is Minimized (i.e. de-activated in the background). So you have no risk of draining your battery faster just for having PocketTV sleeping in the background. Note that Betaplayer does not power off the 2700G when it is in the background.
Note that if you also use Betaplayer, you should first Exit Betaplayer (using the Exit command in the menu) before starting PocketTV. That's because Betaplayer does not release the 2700G hardware when it is Minimized. So if you have Betaplayer running in the background (i.e. Minimized and invisible), you need to Stop it completely (Exit) before starting any other application using the 2700G (e.g. PocketTV). On the other hand, PocketTV does release the 2700G hardware when it is Minimized. So it does not prevent you to start Betaplayer. Hopefully the Betaplayer people will correct this problem so that they can co-exist better with other applications using the 2700G.
Naturally this does not affects the battery life while playing video, but it certainely affects it after you tap the (x) button or start another app.
When playing video with the 2700G (with Betaplayer or PocketTV), you can set the CPU speed to "Normal" to save power. "Power Saving" will save more power but is marginally sufficient to play full framerate video.
Last edited by PocketTV Team; 02-07-05 at 01:54 AM.
Is there a reason for thee not being any MPEG2 support for Pocket PC's yet? Is it that MPEG 2 is far to hard to build a player for? Why hasn't anyone done this yet? Very surprising!
I've been experiencing occasional crashes with Betaplayer running with 2700g plugin.. Not just the latest unstable release, but every release since the first 2700g version.. It only occurs when pausing the video, by tapping the screen.. usually if I'm watching and I want to pause the video, I'll tap the screen and the full user interface is restored and video is paused. But occasionally, betaplayer will lock up and stay in fullscreen landscape mode with the image replaced with a blank image.. Screen and buttons then are locked and have no response, necessitating a soft reset..
I haven't posted about this, since it is minor and only happens occasionally, but was wondering why nobody else has mentioned it.. Has this happened to anyone else? or is it just me..
I can confirm those issues, we have observed the same in PocketTV, and in most cases we have found workarounds.
Apparently those are mostly caused by race-condition problems in the 2700G driver from Intel and Dell.
For example, I noticed that pressing the POWER button while Betaplayer is playing (on the x50v with the 2700G) often locks-up the device, and a soft-reset is necessary to turn it back ON.
Help him find the bugs and you'll get support for your precious format. Seems like a good deal to me. No bugs?He needs to know that too.
I noticed a bug with the "benchmark" feature of Betaplayer:
Sometimes it skips B-frames, leading to totally incorrect (very high) benchmark results. Picard acknowledged this one, but the bug is apparently still randomly there.
We found that one of the problem here is that Betaplayer does not release the 2700G video hardware when it becomes de-activated (i.e. Minimized or hidden in the background).
In fact both PocketTV and Betaplayer still have the problem with the ATI hardware, which we don't release when we are de-activated.
This appears to be a problem with several devices that have a camera: The camera does not work when the ATI driver is being used (probably because it requires all the available ATI memory ?). And people get puzzled by the camera error, which goes away after a soft reset.
The problem is that many people think that by de-activating/minimizing the app using the X button in the nav bar, it closes the app - it makes it go away, so in people's mind, it's not there therefore it is closed!
That's why in general it's a good idea to release as many resources as possible that are not used when the application in is the background (e.g. close any opened file not actively used, etc). For example, we close the video file when de-activated, this way people don't get bizare errors when trying to copy or erase the file. Of course this add complexity since the app must gracefully deal with possible errors when trying to re-grab all the resources they have closed, when they get re-activated.
So I think we should also do the same and release all the ATI resources when we de-activate.
What do you think ?
Last edited by PocketTV Team; 02-07-05 at 04:19 AM.
So I think we should also do the same and release all the ATI resources when we de-activate.
What do you think ?
I agree. I know you mentioned it way back about the waveout device release, but BetaPlayer still doesn't release it in the background. I will add that too.
Yes, file closing is a nice feature too (not done by BetaPlayer yet)
ps: for few weeks I won't have any time developing the player...
> I agree. I know you mentioned it way back about the waveout device release, but BetaPlayer still doesn't release it in the background. I will add that too.
Correct.
> ps: for few weeks I won't have any time developing the player...
Is there a reason for thee not being any MPEG2 support for Pocket PC's yet? Is it that MPEG 2 is far to hard to build a player for? Why hasn't anyone done this yet? Very surprising!
I believe there is some royality problem with mpeg2, you have to pay to use the format i think..
It won't stream from the desktop. Since video playback is so cpu intensive, it impacts the network bandwidth available to Betaplayer.
Most probably, you will have to transfer it to SD/CF card to get it to work. Still, it's better than having to re-encode files.
Anyway, I wish PPCs would start using 802.11g or something, or at least get the processor speed/bus speed fast enough to fully utilize 802.11b speed, and not just 1-2mbps of it :(
Hmm i tried a few divx movies from my download folder, i was even pretty far away from the AP and the files played att 300% on benchmark over 802.11b..
And BTW, thanx picard for such a lovely program, i would donate some $ if i had any =/
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