Announcing first beta of PocketTV - MPEG video player

[Guest Simon Desser]

I've just tried the clip "Mikes New Car SPL" and it looks great! This is the best playback I've seen on PocketTV, everything else I've tried goes a bit "blocky".

Would it be possible to list the settings for the "SPL" so we can save it as an ".mcf" like you did before?

By the way, I have a Hauppauge Digital TV Card in my PC, which records in mpeg2 format. Is there a way to convert straight from this to Smartphone in one go? My (old) version of TMPGEnc doesn't support it?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Simon.

[Guest terminater2_uk]

Just had a quick play with the button mapping and all seems fine.

[Guest spacecowboy6982]

EDIT : I now have BETA-12 version of pocket tv. Downloaded that welcome to pocket tv clip and it didnt work - file association command didnt help it - my mp3's are listed with the windows media plyr icon but the video file not...im going :x here !!!

Cheers

spacecowboy

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

EDIT : I now have BETA-12 version of pocket tv. Downloaded that welcome to pocket tv clip and it didnt work - file association command didnt help it - my mp3's are listed with the windows media plyr icon but the video file not...im going  :x  here !!!

We cannot reproduce that. AS soon as we run PocketTV (BETA-12 or later), it fixes the file association. Note: you may need to exit and restart the file explorer in order to see the MPEG files with the PocketTV icon. Or just cycle through power off / power on.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

I've just had a play with the button mapping. All seems to work fine, pretty easy to use. Would be nice to be able to scroll down to a particular button and just change that, but other wise....top program

We've done that (BETA-13). Mapping functions on buttons is just very easy now.

PocketTV Menu > Options > Buttons

[Guest drblow]

I have just spent the last few hours reading my way through the entirety of this huge thread - to be honest, I lost concentration after about page 10!!

I have DL'ed the most recent cab file, and I would like to install it - but I thought I would check - do I still need to install smartexplorer in IPSM?

If so, can I just remove the old one, reinstall & tell it to install on the phone?

Is that the only change I need to make? I have read all about the registry problems, and the thread is so long and confused, that it is hard to tell now what is what?!?

Can I get just a short, definitive answer from someone here??

P.S. To the pocket TV team - if all the problems in this thread have been overcome, could I suggest starting a new thread with the up to date instructions, files etc - just to make it a bit easier for thickos like myself!?

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

Everything should be working fine in PTV now. All you need is the .cab and a file explorer.

[Guest mattat]

Anyone else having problems with the fast forward function - the video goes forward but the audio doesn't go (or doesn't go as fast) so that they become out of synch and the only way to fix is to restart the clip from the beginning - sort of defeating the point.

It has happened with both Matrix and Mike's new car.

Button mapping works fine though.

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

> I have just spent the last few hours reading my way through the entirety of this huge thread - to be honest, I lost concentration after about page 10!!

There is only ONE page to read for installation instructions:

http://forum.pocketmovies.net/viewtopic.php?t=958

I have DL'ed the most recent cab file, and I would like to install it - but I thought I would check - do I still need to install smartexplorer in IPSM?

No, the file explorer does not need to be installed in IPSM, it can be on the Storage Card.

Yes, you need one file explorer. It can be either "Smart Explorer" (good, shareware), "IA File Manager" (excellent, commercial), or "ALL-Explorer" (commercial). Use PocketTV Menu > Options > File Selector to select the one you want to use.

> If so, can I just remove the old one, reinstall & tell it to install on the phone?

You don't need to do that, the File Explorer can reside on the Storage Card.

> Is that the only change I need to make? I have read all about the registry problems, and the thread is so long and confused, that it is hard to tell now what is what?!?

All the registry problems discussed in this thread have been solved, just get the latest beta from http://forum.pocketmovies.net/viewtopic.php?t=958

> P.S. To the pocket TV team - if all the problems in this thread have been overcome, could I suggest starting a new thread with the up to date instructions, files etc - just to make it a bit easier for thickos like myself!?

Yes, good idea ;)

It's here: http://smartphone.modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=58319

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

Anyone else having problems with the fast forward function - the video goes forward but the audio doesn't go (or doesn't go as fast) so that they become out of synch and the only way to fix is to restart the clip from the beginning - sort of defeating the point.

It has happened with both Matrix and Mike's new car.

Button mapping works fine though.

I see... yes, that's in fact a problem with the files, not with PocketTV. Those files have been encoded at a fixed bitrate and are not strictly compliant with the MPEG standard (so-called VBV constraints are not respected), which causes the audio packets to be too far away from the video packets in the file, and this causes synch issues in the player.

Thanks for reporting the issue, we'll try to fix it. The issue should not happen if you encoded your MPEG at constant bitrate (CBR), but somehow VBR sometimes provides a higher quality at low resolution, low bitrate.

[Guest drblow]

To the pocket TV blokes -

NICE!

A fine definitive answer, leading to a trouble free installation!

Cheers!

[Guest spacecowboy6982]

I have to say that I must have spent hours trying to get this pretty cool app. to work. i have followed the instructions EXACTLY many times and can no longer cope with the hassel. This file association problem is still here (beta-15) and it wont budge with the power on/off cycle or the association command - obviously my phone is goosed and going to HTC. Failing that its an unfortunate accident with the wheel of my car!!

SpaceCowboy

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

I have to say that I must have spent hours trying to get this pretty cool app. to work. i have followed the instructions EXACTLY many times and can no longer cope with the hassel. This file association problem is still here (beta-15) and it wont budge with the power on/off cycle or the association command - obviously my phone is goosed and going to HTC. Failing that its an unfortunate accident with the wheel of my car!!

SpaceCowboy

SpaceCowboy,

The registry is fixed by PocketTV each time you launch PocketTV (i.e if it was not running already), and as an extra safety, we re-fix the registry each time you choose "Select" in the PocketTv Menu. The entry that we fixed is HKCRpockettv_mpgfile, which is incorrectly set to to a MS-confirmed bug in the Smartphone CAB installer.

So yes, the registry entries for file associations ARE correctly associating MPEG files to PocketTV as soon as you run PocketTV.

We checked by installing PocketTV on a clean phone (after a hard-reset).

Maybe we still have a problem, but if so, we'd like to know precisely what it is, since you seem to be the only one to have the problem.

Can you send us the content of all values under the following keys and all they subkeys under HKCR:

.mpg

pockettv_mpgfile

normally the Default value of .mpg should be "pockettv_mpgfile" and somewhere under the pockettv_mpgfile key should be the full pathname of PocketTV.

Of course, if you install of run PocketDivX/PocketMVP, it is possible that the MPEG files association is changed, in which case you can restore it manually with Options > Files > File Association.

[Guest ambro]

the problem people are having is the following,

this is what my fix did earlier on..

it associated not just .mpg files but .mpEg files too!

because a there is a variation in both files but the player can still play them...

please let me know if included the mpeg file in the program because that is what i think the problem is with the program and that is what my patch did before, associated mpeg files with the program too...

[Guest ambro]

please check it and let me know if that is still the case of mpeg files not being associated

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

the problem people are having is the following,

this is what my fix did earlier on..

it associated not just .mpg files but .mpEg files too!

because a there is a variation in both files but the player can still play them...

please let me know if included the mpeg file in the program because that is what i think the problem is with the program and that is what my patch did before, associated mpeg files with the program too...

Correct. PocketTV is associated to a number of file extensions, including .mpg, .mpeg, .mpe (3-letter truncation of .mpeg, sometimes seen on the web), and .m1u (mpeg-1 url in a text file, for streaming).

But that does not pause any problem, and it has been like that for years on the Pocket PC. And there is no problem with that either on the Smartphone.

When you select PocketTV Menu > Options > Files > File Association, PocketTV makes sure that all those file extensions are associated with PocketTV (in case they have been changed by another app, e.g. PocketDivX).

Also, PocketTV sets those registry keys when it is run the first time, if they are not already defined. But I think we will change that, and force PocketTV to overwrite those keys at installation time, since PocketDivX does that...

On the Pocket PC, the Pocket DivX installer is nice and it asks if the user want to associate MPEG with it, so you can keep the PocketTV file association is you prefer PocketTV to play your MPEG's. But whoever created the Smartphone installer for PocketDivX did not do that, and PocketDivX always overwrite the file association to its own. Since it does that, we'll do the same with our PocketTV installer on Smartphone (until PocketDivX offers the option to keep the current file assotiations, just like it does on the Pocket PC).

[Guest ambro]

me back reads to see the pause problem... =) the problem that you have when playing high bitrate and framerated files???

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

me back reads to see the pause problem... =) the problem that you have when playing high bitrate and framerated files???

Sorry ? What problem, exactly ?

[Guest ambro]

heh nevermind =)

i thought u meant there was a problem with the pausing of playing files when you have too high quality mpg files...

its not a bug its a limitation by the phone, me got mixed up... nm heh

[Guest The PocketTV Team]

heh nevermind =)

i thought u meant there was a problem with the pausing of playing files when you have too high quality mpg files...

its not a bug its a limitation by the phone, me got mixed up... nm heh

No such problems, but the Smartphones (today) are just ARM running at 130 MHz, so it's hard for them to decide 1.5 Mbit/sec MPEG's. PocketTV can to it to a point (with low framerate). PocketDivX just cannot handle those at all.

[Guest ambro]

hmm yeah, i wonder whats the max frame rate and bps the pockettv program can handle..

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

http://smartphone.modaco.com/viewtopic.php?t=58319

See the above thread for current issues regarding PocketTV installation.